So I went to Aberdeen with Robbie. Why not? I said. Perhaps an old dog can learn new tricks, for I’m no longer the Queen’s man, but disreputable, and a low sort. I am Humf. What’s to lose?
Aberdeen had lately enjoyed an oil-boom, which now was all but over, and unemployment as bad there as anywhere else. In a few days I heard much bitter talk, and saw much organisation.
Five thousand of us started south on foot a week after Robbie and I got there. We rarely kept company after the march began. To him I was an oddity. I was still in a dream, yet also enthralled by the strange spirit of the movement I’d casually joined. It was defiant, devil-may-care, yet desperation underlay it, though nobody openly admitted it. So, we set off down the road, police patrolling us, and helicopters hovering low and threatening above, which caused much booing and cursing. By night we slept rough in fields along the way. We carried supplies with us and helped each other out; and by day we marched with much singing of songs and chanting of vehement slogans: there was excited talk of what we might gain through the unity of half a million of us from many cities all in London at once. Yet I was confused by the great variety of dissenting organisations on the march, many of whom apparently hated each other, but who had for the time being agreed on common cause. There were Trotskyites, Leninists, Marxists, Maoists, Nationalists, United Fronts against this and against that, and representatives of many Unions, and many, many more. I was reminded of the great rally in St. Louis where I drank the PepsiCola spiked with LSD—but in fact there was little similarity. The people on this march were mostly socialist, and their material condition much worse than among those at St. Louis; worse even than among those Chicano rioters in San Francisco. Also there were few groups dedicated, as in the States I had found so common, to individualistic causes such as Gay Rights and Jews for Jesus and the rest of it. The loathing of government and cynicism about its intentions were common factors, yes, but where in the States the government was powerful and blatantly corrupt, here in Britain it seemed too weak to be blatantly anything, and I could not see what gain the march would bring. Once or twice I tried to argue that perhaps there really was no more money in Britain, and that no government, left or right, could find a quick solution to such general misery—save perhaps by declaring war on France, which always worked well in the past as a means of diverting popular attention.
But soon I learned I could not say such things if I wished to stay healthy, and I heard many a tirade full of facts and figures proving beyond doubt that Jewish bankers and Tory businessmen had stolen all the money and banked it abroad for their own use. No doubt some of this is true, but what it did tell me was that Reason is no more humanity’s strong point now than it was four hundred years ago, or four thousand years ago, being still for the most part the whore and slave of Desire, Interest, and Prejudice.
We marched through the depressed grey city of Dundee, where ten thousand joined us, banners flying, and then to Edinburgh, which added another few thousand; three days later we were at Berwick on the English border, and thence to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where more than thirty thousand increased us as we went on through Jarrow, South Shields, Darlington, and other towns with a long history of poverty. Thus in time we came near York over sixty thousand strong, and I finding my feet, as it were, yet again forgetting Sir Humfrey, and speaking passionately at our nightly camps on what I’d learned in America, ranting on the struggles of red man, black man, yellow man, and many a white man too, and I did not forget the Woman’s Movement. I spoke as if I knew what I was talking about, and indeed came to believe I did, political fever and the desire to be well-regarded both being so seductive. But of Horsfield I said nothing.
Then one night police came and said there would be trouble if we did not disperse. They said the army would stop us if we tried to march through York. They advised us to be sensible, saying we could not succeed in our aims. So in a field we had a great meeting, and nobody knew what to do, until a man named Robert Auld made a fiery speech that roused us. He said we had them running scared, and they could not stop us, more than two hundred thousand marchers from other parts also being on their way to London. “Let them do their worst!” he cried. “What can we lose? How can we turn and creep home now?”
When he had us at fever-pitch we rose and continued at dawn.
The army met us outside a village called Easingwold, attacking us with gas and rubber bullets. Many of us were injured before we were broken up. But a large band of us, over two thousand strong, evaded the troops by striking across country, and we came into York. Many there were eager to help us, and told us that two thousand more were coming from Hull. But the army4 came after us and caught us near the university grounds where students had joined us. Armoured lorries rumbled among us with blinding gas, and when we were utterly confused and vomiting the soldiers moved in with force.
Now some of us had guns, of which many disapproved, saying use of them would cause tragedy—which is what happened. For temper was utterly lost, guns were fired, several soldiers were shot, at which they exchanged rubber bullets for real bullets, and advanced on us shooting to kill. Over twenty of us were slain, and I was shot in the shoulder. Amid this debacle I crawled into a garden to escape the searching soldiers, and somehow got in through the unlocked back door of a house. I collapsed, bleeding heavily, on the clean linoleum floor of a kitchen. And I remember, as the dizziness rushed over me, hearing the shocked voice of a woman calling out: “Michael! Quick! One of them’s in here! He’s been shot!”
That is how I met Michael and Ursula Greene.
31. Telephones Ringing: A Circle’s Completed
It’s after three o’clock and black deep night but the telephone is ringing again! A pox on the pernicious thing! On and on and on! I should have torn the wires of it out of the wall! There’s no privacy left at all in this world! Shrilling at me like a shrieking child—no, I will not answer you! God, so nearly done, and I feel watched again, the fear’s back on me! Did I claim I’d lost it? Hah! It’s still ringing. What if it’s Michael again? His voice sounded so strange: what if someone was at his shoulder? Maybe he was trying to warn me, but I didn’t listen close enough. No, it feels bad, don’t answer it. Perhaps now I should stop and eat and pack my gear in case—no! I’m not tired, and I will finish this, tonight! Complete the circle, cut the knot, or never at all! I cannot flee incomplete! Trust in the Hawk, Humf! Keep on!
The ringing has stopped.
Michael, what will you do with this, if you get it? Burn it? Shut it in a drawer? Submit it for publication as a strange romance, with certain names and relevant details removed or changed? Or stick your neck out like a fool still mad for the publication of Truth that is true if you publish or not? I hope you don’t do that. Do what you like with this, but don’t crucify yourself. You don’t have to be a hero, so look after yourself and listen to Ursula.
Michael, you’re the only ghost who still haunts me. The others are laid to rest. Your prompting persuaded me to it.
It is so ironic, your ill-luck now. I would never have told you the truth if not for that documentary we saw on TV.
To start with, you knew only that I was a wounded Right-to-Work marcher, bleeding all over your kitchen floor. Neither you nor Ursula had much sympathy with the political spirit or intention of the march, and you had a lot to lose by harbouring me. We were called “common criminals,” but you could have been had up for conspiracy. Yes, and I must have looked as “disreputable” as can be imagined. Yet both of you were horrified by what you’d seen of the fighting from your upstairs window, and when I crawled in you realised you had four options. You could throw me out to military mercies; you could call the police; you could take me to a hospital to be treated, then arrested; or you could give me refuge, quietly calling a doctor-friend to come as soon as possible. You chose the fourth. “I don’t like seeing that sort of thing in this country,” you said later, when I asked you why. Ursula had deep misgivings, but you prevailed on her humanity. “The poor man’s
bleeding to death,” you said. “We should get him patched up at least,” and your wife agreed. So you told me. But you realised no mystery about me until, putting me to bed, you saw the scars, and the U.S. Passport that slipped out of my pocket. Then again in delirious sleep I started babbling nonsense in strange accent that had you wondering what I was.
Discreetly when the troops were gone you called your friend. The wound was not serious. It was mainly exhaustion and loss of blood. The bullet tore muscle while passing through, but little worse.
Yet the coincidence was serious.
Or was it the Hawk again?
Forty-eight hours later, with the nation still in tumult of media-babble about the massacre, I sat with Ursula and yourself in a comfortable living-room. The night was warm, but the curtains were fully closed. My constitution being good, my recovery was swift, though my left shoulder was heavily bandaged and my arm was in a sling. But there was still danger. Twice the soldiers had returned, making door-to-door searches throughout the neighbourhood, and each time you successfully turned them away with your reputable composure. But Ursula was very unhappy about it on grounds of patriotic conscience, and it was agreed I’d leave as soon as the heat was off and I could get by without a conspicuous sling.
In fact I planned to leave that very night, secretly, and take my chances. But it never happened.
Michael, I still didn’t know your work. The room held wall-to-wall bookcases overflowing with volumes on history, and the only unbooked wall carried gilt-framed reproductions of miniatures from my time by Hilliard and others. But I was blank, hardly taking in anything. I had briefly spun my usual yam of long exile and recent return, but no more. I felt most uneasy, wondering only why you were helping me when evidently it caused your wife such distress.
But you were already curious about me. I remember noting how you started at the way in which, when you turned on the TV for the News, I promptly reseated myself to one side to avoid the harmful rays; this precaution by now habitual, though I no longer felt them so acutely.
So, stiffly, each gripping our little glasses of sherry, we watched the News with all its riot and fury of battle, Parliamentary uproar, foreign denunciation. The other columns of marchers had stopped, some had begun to disperse, but the air in the land was most poisonous, and it was unclear if the government would survive. Students had been shot amid the debacle; you groaned to hear again of a victim in your own department, and Ursula’s face was a study in conflicting loyalties. I wondered if I should get up and walk out right away. And when the main story was over you got up to turn the television off. But even as you did, the telephone rang.
It was a fatal interruption. You went into a neighbouring room to answer it. Ursula and I spoke not a word. When you came back, again you went to the TV to turn if off, but even as you entered the room, the BBC announcer was saying: “Our next programme, after a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Social Democrat Party, is a documentary concerning events said by some to have been triggered over five years ago in the Atlantic by Project Vulcan. The programme will look at the evidence pro and con the existence of “Distressed Temporal Immigrants,” who, some claim, exist and are secretly held by the…”
“The world’s falling apart!” you remarked angrily, hand on the switch, “and they try to lull us with rubbish like this!” Ah, the ifs and buts of life. Had the phone not rung, and had I kept quiet, none of this would have been. Perhaps I should not slander the telephone. It is only a messenger.
“Please!” It burst sharply out of me. It surprised me. I had thought I’d stay quiet. “Forgive me, but… I must see that programme! It is of great personal concern to me!”
That was the first time Ursula met my eyes directly. She is a fine woman, Michael, I imagine her eyes can be very warm, and I do not blame her at all for giving me only ice.
“Why, Mr. Loomiss? Had you something to do with it?”
“Yes.” I looked away, regretting my big mouth. “I did.”
“You do seem to get involved in the most odd situations,” you said, hovering, your tone light, but grey gaze piercing. You appear vague to people, and in some ways you are, but in other ways not. “Are you sure you’re not a journalist, you know, the sort who goes into the thick of it for the best story?”
“No… I’m not.” I was confused, and wavered, but I’d said it already. I looked up. “Please… I don’t wish to impose… but it is important to me to know what they have to say.” I hesitated. “It’s the first chance I’ve had to learn… media-opinion about the business. Perhaps you’ll know that in America people who tried to speak out on it were killed or intimidated into silence?”
By now you were a most puzzled man. Part of you wanted to laugh it off… but there’s a bloodhound in you, and you were on the scent.
“Well!” You turned down the volume but left the set on. “Evidently we’ll have to watch it.” You met your wife’s eye and she sat stiff and upright as you sat and lit your pipe, eyeing me curiously. “Of course we never knew much about it here. I always thought it was something to do with an alternative energy-source, and that all this stuff about time-travellers was on a par with bug-eyed monsters from outer space. Were you on one of the, er, ships involved in the affair?”
“Yes.” I was trembling now. “In a sense I was.”
“One of the crew, or technicians?” asked Ursula.
“No. No. Nothing like that.”
“Do you believe in these… Distressed Temporal… whatsits?” she asked, staring now as if I might dissolve at any second.
“There is evidence,” I said carefully, “that they exist.”
She shook her head. You raised your brows and said nothing.
“I have to see to the supper,” said Ursula, and left us, and rather than speak you turned up the volume on the political broadcast, and poured me another drink in an almost conspiratorial manner.
But what did you think was coming, Michael?
When the political broadcast was over, Ursula returned willy-nilly and we settled to watch. Rather, you settled—I was on the edge of my seat, finding it hard to breathe, and Ursula too was nervous.
And with good cause.
The documentary did not endorse the existence of DTIs. On the contrary. The commentator spoke most skeptically of belief in such unlikely beings, alluding with typical British sense of superiority (even in such times, yes, is it not remarkable?) to the tendency of many Americans to believe naively in escapist nonsense of the most wild-eyed variety. It doubted the authenticity of documents leaked from the State Department and other sources that indicated a coverup, managing at the same time to suggest that U.S. Security was not all it could be. It laughed at tales of DTIs held prisoner in a secret institute, and subtly deprecated the testimony of “renegade” U.S. Scientists and Navy personnel (at this point you both cast worried looks at me) who’d fled the States in order to speak out. Likewise it scorned claims that U.S. Law agencies had arranged the “accidental” deaths of several such “renegades” in the States.
In connection with this came the first of the shocks. Onto the screen flashed the image of a man lying twisted and obviously dead in a city street. When I saw his face I recognised it immediately and could not hold my tongue. “I know that man!” I exclaimed wildly. “I met him in Chaunticleer’s last year. In San Francisco. He was a cameraman on the Slocum when they…”
I stopped. This time you both looked at me as if I were mad. Then came the commentator’s explanation. Apparently three months earlier this man had phoned the San Francisco Chronicle claiming to have videorecorded DTIs as they were brought on board the USN submarine Slocum.
Michael, your eyebrows climbed right up, and Ursula hissed.
The commentary went on. It seemed this man claimed to have deserted the Navy with copies of the tapes he’d made.
He said he was scared that “something” would happen to him. He wanted the Chronicle to send a reporter to meet him at a safe rendezvous. He was told this
was impossible, that he must bring the tapes to the Chronicle offices for assessment. He agreed reluctantly: so said the subeditor said to have taken the call. An hour later, approaching the entrance of the newspaper building, the man was struck and mortally injured by a van that mounted the sidewalk and pinned him to the wall. The driver, later described as “Oriental,” jumped out and bent over him as if in horror and to help, but then leaped back into the van, reversed, and drove off through a red light. Before the man died he said enough to confirm him as the voice which had called the Chronicle. He was dead by the time police got there. Later the police issued a statement. The dead man was a John Doe, no tapes had been found, the hit-and-run driver had not been caught, and his plates could not be traced.
You stared at me with mounting perplexity.
Worse, or better, came next. The commentator, in the same urbanely sarcastic manner, went on to disparage:
“…chrononuts and their supporters, who claim either that they are DTIs, or that they have met DTIs. A person in this latter category—a singer with American rock group KRONONUTZ, Sylvia Kasaboulis—recently approached us with videotape she claims to have shot four years ago, in St. Louis, when…”
The shock of it! My shivering was visible and acute. “Are you all right, Mr. Loomiss?” demanded Ursula, half out of her chair, not looking too steady herself as I tried to speak. “You… you had better turn it off,” I whispered, “I don’t think that what you’re going to see will… will help to…”
I couldn’t go on. All I’d denied! I thought I would faint. “Michael, turn it off, please!” said Ursula.
“No!” Your voice had an edge. “Now that it’s on we’ll watch it, if you don’t mind!”
“Michael, I insist!”
“I will watch it!” you stated flatly, setting down your pipe. I remembered that tape, made in the suburb of St. Louis where we stayed after the rally. Now through a haze of foreboding I saw Sylvia’s face. She spoke with a woman interviewer who was offscreen.
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