by Bob Shaw
“It was bound to happen sooner or later. Shall I make a salad?”
“Salad? I… Do we still want to eat?”
“What do you expect us to do?” Vicky examined him curiously. “Lucas, I do hope you’re not going to go all egotistical over this.”
“Egotistical?”
“Yes — your famous seeing-every-sparrow-fall bit. There isn’t one person in the world who would benefit from your having a nervous breakdown, but that doesn’t stop you assuming responsibility for things happening ten thousand miles away.”
“Damascus is more like two thousand miles.”
“It wouldn’t matter if it was two hundred miles.” Vicky slammed the casserole down, sending a flat, ghostly billow of flour along the counter. “Lucas, you aren’t even concerned with what happens next door, so kindly do us all a favour and…”
“I’m hungry,” David announced from the doorway. “And what time are we going out?”
Hutchman shook his head. “I’m sorry, son — we’ll have to call it off for tonight.”
“Huh?” David’s jaw sagged theatrically. “But you said…”
“I know, but we can’t go tonight.”
“Why not?” Vicky asked. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to sit in front of that television set all evening, listening to Robin Day and a band of experts who have no idea what’s going to happen next telling us what’s going to happen next. We promised David we were going to the stock-car racing so we’re going.”
A mural of shattered, tortured bodies pulsed momentarily in Hutchman’s vision. He followed David back into the lounge, where the television set still exhibited its slow-rolling flickers, and sat down. David punched the channel selector, got a vintagecomedy film and squatted contentedly to watch it. Amazed and slightly reassured at finding a normal program on the air, Hutchman picked up his drink and allowed his consciousness to sink into the screen. A frantic motor chase was taking place along the sparse, sunny avenues of Hollywood in the Twenties. Hutchman ignored the central characters and studied the inhospitable frame buildings blistering in the lost sunshine. To his eyes they resembled sheds more than houses, yet they had been real, and by watching them closely he sometimes observed fragments of real lives recorded in the ancient celluloid. Anonymous lives, of dripping iceboxes and giant radios with fretted wooden cases, but filled with the security of a past in which the worst that could happen to one was a few years on the breadline or, in wartime, a comprehensible death from machine-gun fire.
I’ve got to do it, Hutchman thought. I’ve got to make the neutrons dance.
Following the vintage movie was a string of commercials, more normality chopped up small. He was beginning to relax when the television screen went blank and abruptly came to life again. A mushroom cloud, roiling but motionless, sculptured, the white cubical buildings of Damascus hidden under its billowing fronds. The picture juddered and swung, obviously taken from a helicopter not equipped with camera mounts. Music filled the room, strident and urgent. That damned apocalyptic jangling, he thought. Couldn’t they have left it out for once? This isn’t a dock strike or one of those eternal gray trade-union conferences. A news reporter appeared and began to speak, quickly and soberly. He repeated the basic known facts, adding that the death roll was estimated at 400,000, and went on to sketch the feverish diplomatic activity in various capitals. Further down the story came an item which, in Hutchman’s estimation, should have been one of the major headlines: “It is now believed that the nuclear bomb was not delivered by a missile or by a military aircraft. Reports indicate that it was on board a civil airliner which was passing over the city, making its approach to Mezze airport seven kilometers to the southwest, when the detonation occurred.
“The seat of Syrian government has been transferred to Aleppo, where offers of immediate aid and messages expressing shock and sympathy have already been received from all Middle Eastern countries, including Israel and the members of the League of Arab States, from which Syria withdrew in April last year.
“All branches of the Syrian armed forces have been fully mobilized, but in the absence of any obvious aggressor no military action has yet been undertaken. The entire country is in a state of stunned grief and resentment. …
Vicky passed between Hutchman and the screen. “What’s the latest? Is there going to be a war?”
“I don’t know. It looks as though the bomb was on a civil airliner, so some guerrilla organization could be behind it — and there’s a dozen or more for the Syrians to pick from.”
“So there isn’t going to be a war.”
“Who knows? What do you call it when guerrillas can do a thing like that? They’ve graduated from rocket attacks on nursery schools to… to…”
“I mean a war that involves us.” Vicky’s voice was sharp, reminding him he was not permitted to indulge in vicarious guilt.
“No, darling,” he said heavily. “The human race may be involved — but not us.”
“Oh, God,” Vicky whispered. “ Pour me a drink, Lucas. This looks like being a long hard evening.”
As soon as they had finished eating, Hutchman went into the hall and looked up the number of the stadium where stock-car racing was held. He dialed it and listened to the blurry ringing tone long enough to convince himself there was going to be no reply. Just as he was putting the handset down it clicked.
“Hello,” a man’s voice said hoarsely. “Bennett here.”
“Hello, Crymchurch Stadium?” Hutchman had been so certain there would be no reply, he was temporarily lost for words.
“That’s right.” The voice sounded suspicious. “Is that you, Bert?”
“No.” Hutchman took a deep breath. “I’m calling to see if the stock-car racing will still be taking place tonight.”
“Course it will, old son.” The man’s chuckle was like nails being shaken in a bucket. “Why shouldn’t it be? The weather’s just right, isn’t it?”
“I guess so. I just wanted to make sure — the way things are…” Hutchman set the phone down and stood staring at his reflection in a gold-tinted mirror. The weather’s just right — no sign of fallout.
“Who were you calling?” Vicky had opened the kitchen door and was looking out at him.
“The stadium,” he said.
“Why?”
Hutchman longed to ask her if it really made no difference to anybody, one major city more or less. “Checking the time of the first race.”
She eyed him soberly then moved away into the kitchen, her own insular universe, and a moment later he heard her singing as she tidied up after the meal. David emerged from the kitchen, his jaws working furiously, and he went into his bedroom trailing a faint aroma of spearmint. Hutchman tried hard to play the game.
“David,” he shouted. “What did I tell you about eating chewing gum?”
“You told me not to eat it.”
“Well then?”
For a reply David gave the gum some extra loud chomps which were plainly audible through the closed door. Hutchman shook his head in reluctant admiration. His son was as indomitable as only a healthy seven-year-old can be. But how many indomitable seven-year-olds had died in Damascus? Six thousand or so? And how about the equally indomitable six-year-olds, and the five-year-olds, and the…?
“Leave David alone,” Vicky said, passing him on her way into their bedroom. “What harm will a little chewing gum do him?”
The walls, which had been falling toward Hutchman, shrank back into place. “You know he always swallows the stuff.” He forced his lips to form the words, his mind to accommodate the domestic triviality. “It’s totally indigestible.”
“What of it? Come and help me dress.” He followed her into the bedroom, shamming response to the coquetry, setting his course on the oceans of time which would have to be crossed before he could lie down and lose himself in sleep.
The attendance at the stadium was about average for the time of year. Hutchman sat aloof in the airy darkness of the sta
nd, unable to derive any warmth from the presence of his wife and son, unable to comprehend the spectacle of slithering, jouncing, colliding vehicles. When finally he got to bed sleep came almost immediately.
Dream universes spun like roulette wheels, unreality and reality flowed and sifted through each other, producing transient amalgams, solarized colours darting and spreading among crystal lattices of probability. Hutchman is a soldier — strangely, because he had never been in the army — and he is walking through the narrow, congested streets of an Eastern city. He has a companion, another soldier, and the city is… Damascus. Naturally Damascus. Hadn’t something awful happened there? Something unthinkable? But the city is not quite real. All perspectives are choked, claustrophobic — this is the Middle East of a low-budget movie. The heat and dust are real enough, though. A kind of market square — and there’s a woman. A Rita Moreno type of woman. Hutchman and the other soldier speak to her, boldly, making their desires clear without actually stating them. The woman laughs delightedly, then invites them to come home and have stew with her family. You’re on, Hutch — if only the other soldier would remove his insensitive, intruding presence. But he won’t. There is rivalry there, much overplayed gallantry, displays of coarse wit mingled with, supposedly, unconcealable flashes of genuine warm attraction. Very much the mixture as before, but the woman enjoys it…
Her house is a dark place. Small rooms and walls that seem to be made of nothing else but carpets — oh, this is vintage Abbott-and-Costello stuff. Although the woman is real. Real enough, anyway. As she sits down on the floor her navel is lost among small, satisfying rolls of fat. Her mother is predictably huge and motherly, moving about, putting a black-iron pot of water on an open fire in the center of the room. She adds vegetables to the water in the pot, smiles, begins stirring it, and it smells good. Hutchman and the other soldier are still jockeying for the woman, but suddenly he notices there is a big, pale green lizard swimming around in the pot. He has not seen the mother dropping it in, but he announces that he could not eat any of the stew. Immediately the woman is concerned. It’s all right, she assures him — that isn’t a real lizard.
It looks real to me.
No. We’ve been making this kind of stew around here for thousands of years, always with the same ingredients. And every time the mixture reaches the boil one of these things appears in it. They simply happen. Spontaneously.
I still say it’s a real lizard.
It isn’t — it has no soul, and it feels no pain. The woman jumps to her feet and snatches the lizard out of the pot. See! She drops it right into the middle of the fire. It lies there, hissing and crackling, making no attempt to escape from the searing heat, and its shiny black eyes are fixed on Hutchman’s.
I told you so, the woman says. The other soldier goes back to his amorous snuggling, but now Hutchman finds her repulsive. The lizard swells up horribly and bursts — all without struggling to get off the glowing cinders — and the whole time its eyes are staring straight into Hutchman’s eyes, reproachfully, intently. It seems to be trying to tell him something. He gets to his feet and runs out of the house, and his horror is mingled with guilt — as though he had betrayed the creature in some way.
But it just lay on the fire, he protests. It sat there and let itself be burned.
He lay between the sheets, appalled, for a long time. Fluffy little particles of light drifted down from the sky, floated in through the bedroom window and sought out their assigned positions, gradually recreating the walls and furniture exactly as they had been yesterday. Vicky was sleeping peacefully close by, but he derived little reassurance from her presence. The ghastly mood of the dream was still upon him, its symbolism baffling and impenetrable, yet creating in his mind a counter-reality in which all the ancient verities no longer stood firm.
All he knew for certain was that he was now committed to building the antibomb machine.
CHAPTER 3
While Hutchman was listening to the breakfast-time news Vicky switched the radio off twice, complaining that she had a headache. He got up from the table each time and switched the set on again, but at reduced volume. There was news of sporadic fighting on Syria’s borders with Turkey and Iraq, apparently triggered off by sheer frustration on the part of the Syrians, plus multilayered reports of UN meetings and diplomatic activities in a dozen capitals, statements by obscure liberation fronts, hints at vast fleet movements in the Mediterranean. Hutchman, his senses drowning in the morning sunlight and the welter of domestic immediacy, was able to absorb little of the world situation beyond the fact that as yet no aggressor had been identified. He performed a number of rituals — tying David’s shoelaces, taking fresh yoghurt out of the culture box, setting a halibut liver-oil capsule beside each plate — while his mind made the first tentative assessment of what could be involved in actually building the machine.
Producing the maths for a neutron resonator had been one thing, but translating it into functioning hardware was a daunting prospect for a theoretician, especially one depending on private means. The machine was going to cost money. Real money — perhaps enough to necessitate mortgaging the house which, ever-present thought, had been given to them by Vicky’s father. To start with, all Hutchman had was a frequency corresponding to a fractional-Angstrom wavelength, and the only conceivable way to produce energy at that precise frequency was with a cestron laser.
Problem number one: there were, as far as he knew, no cestron lasers in existence. Cestron was a recently discovered gas, a short-lived product of the praseodymium isotope, and without the guiding star of Hutchman’s maths there had been no reason to use it as the basis of a laser. He would have to build one from scratch.
Staring at his son’s daydreaming face across the breakfast table, Hutchman felt himself slide into a depressed unease as he considered the practical difficulties. His first requirement was for enough unstable praseodymium to produce, say, fifty milliliters of cestron. He would also need a crystal of praseodymium for use in the laser’s exciting circuitry, and the circuits themselves were going to be difficult to build. Hutchman had a little practical experience in electronics, but a machine to handle frequencies in the 6 x 10^18 Hertz bracket would employ tubular waveguides in place of wires. It’s going to look more like a piece of plumbing than…
“Lucas!” Vicky tapped his plate with her fork. “Are you just going to just sit around brooding?”
“I’m not brooding” …and the radiation’s going to be hot stuff. More dangerous than X-rays — I’ll need shielding — and it’ll have to be coupled in to the laser optically. That means buying gold plates and using one of those spinning concave mirror arrangements to…
“Lucas!” Vicky tugged angrily at his sleeve. “At least answer David when he speaks to you.”
“I’m sorry.” Hutchman focused his eyes on David who now had his school blazer on and was about to leave. “Have a good day, son. Did you finish your spellings last night?”
“Nope.” David tightened his lips obstinately, and the face of the man he would one day become momentarily overlaid his features.
“What will you say to the teacher?”
“I’ll tell her…” David paused for inspiration “…to stick her head down the lavatory.” He strode out of the kitchen and a few seconds later they heard him slam the front door as he left for school.
“He tries to sound tough at home, but Miss Lambert tells me he’s the quietest boy in his class,” Vicky said.
“That’s what worries me. I wonder if he’s all that well adjusted to school.”
“David is perfectly adjusted.” Vicky sat down at the table and poured a second cup of coffee, not enquiring if he would like one — a sign that she was annoyed with him. “You could give him more help with his homework.”
Hutchman shook his head. “Telling a kid the answers to his homework problems doesn’t help him. What I’m doing is teaching him a system of thought which will enable him to solve any kind of problem regardless of…”
“What does David know about systems of thought?” Vicky’s voice was scornful.
“Nothing,” Hutchman said reasonably. “That’s why I’m teaching him.” He felt a flicker of malicious pleasure as Vicky compressed her lips and half-turned away from him to increase the volume on the radio. On an average of once a week he cut her short in an argument by the simple, though logically irrelevant, expedient of answering a rhetorical question as though it had been posed seriously. Vicky never rephrased the question. He suspected this was merely because she had an instinctive contempt for formalism, but its effect was roughly equivalent to a conclusive victory on his part. Now that Vicky had chosen to listen to the radio she seemed to be shutting him out, addressing all her being to it. The morning sun reflected upward from the floor, permeating her dressing gown with light, making the flesh of exposed breast and thigh creamy and powdery and translucent. A good morning for going back to bed for an hour, Hutchman thought, but there was a sensation of guilt. The vision of Vicky and himself on the lush, soundless divan was bleached into the mural of broken bodies which flared behind his eyes. How many indomitable seven-year-olds had died in Damascus? And how many…?
“Oh, Christ!” Vicky switched the radio off with a violent flourish. “Did you hear that?”
“No.”
“Some pop singer has burned down his house in Virginia Water — as a protest.”
“A protest?” Hutchman spoke absent-mindedly. It had just occurred to him that he was going to need a gas centrifuge to purify the cestron sufficiently for use in a laser.
“With full press and television coverage, of course. How much do you think the publicity will be worth to him?”
“Perhaps he wasn’t looking at it that way.”
“Perhaps my ass,” she said with uninspired coarseness. “You don’t understand the whole ‘Be a millionaire for peace’ philosophy, Lucas. The thing, is to do exactly what you want to do, gratify every dirty or selfish little desire you have, but proclaim loudly that you’re doing it for peace. That way you can have a hell of a good time and still feel morally superior.”