The Quy Effect

by Arthur Sellings

  “Course I will, son. Course I will.”

  Ten

  The letter arrived two mornings later. He tore open the envelope and tried to read the letter, his fingers, to his acute annoyance, trembling so that the words jigged before his eyes.

  “We… pleasure… awaiting… costing… however… completion… £225…”

  What was this? He sat down and anchored the letter to bench with a tripod.

  “We have pleasure in informing you that your order has been satisfactorily completed and that the specimen is awaiting collection at our main office. However, accurate costing (details of which will be rendered with the specimen) shows that the terminal cost figure of £10,000 was reached shortly before the specimen was completed.

  “However, we proceeded to completion, and beg to inform you that a small sum of £225.8s is outstanding on the account and will be payable on collection, or against pro forma invoice should you wish delivery.

  Assuring you of our best…”

  “The bastards!” Quy swore. How much did he have about the place? Which meant in the world. Forty, fifty quid? And there was the printer to pay for the press invitations, not to mention transport and drinks. Journalists were a thirsty lot, from what he knew of them. Of course, he could always try—

  But he had barely started to dig in his pocket for coppers for the phone before he killed that line of thought. Maggie had done enough. He wasn’t going to go back to her this time without the prize in his hands. He had even decided, after soul-searching, not to invite her to the trial. He couldn’t bear that, if it should turn out a failure.

  What was he thinking of? Failure? Letting a mere two hundred quid deflect him now after all he had surmounted? He rummaged among his belongings and found what he was looking for. He started to change, then remembered something. He looked in the mirror.

  His hair looked like a patchwork rug of ginger and white. He grimaced, threw on a jacket and went to the Greek barber up the road. He came out with a crew cut—the only way Nick was able to eradicate the second color.

  Back home he donned his best shirt and suit, then set off down Caledonian Road. He knocked at a door halfway down, made a request and waited patiently while Tiny Bradford put a clean shirt on too. He felt better with that six foot three of brawn—even if it was running to fat after a five-year retirement from the wrestling ring—beside him.

  They took the Tube to Piccadilly Circus, and walked up Regent Street. The receptionist rang through and showed them to a seat. A few minutes later the scholarly-looking young man came out of a lift and across the marble floor to greet them.

  “Ah, Mr. Quy. Just come this way, will you?”

  He looked a trifle surprised when Tiny got to his feet too.

  “One of my men,” explained Quy, “One has to keep in with the union. I felt it advisable to come myself for this, but it does come under the heading of Deliveries and Collections.”

  Past a bronze door, the floor changed abruptly from marble to concrete. They went down a ramp that opened into neon-lit acres, with a loading bay beyond. They brought up at a counter. A snap of fingers and a brief word and a brown-coated attendant departed into recesses beyond. He emerged with a flat package and a sheaf of papers in a folder.

  Quy took the package and tore at the tape at one end. He fumbled open the packing and drew out what was inside. It .was a dull blue in the harsh light of the neons. It looked like nothing more important than a scrap of board from a carton for washing powder or lump sugar. But the old man’s hands began to tremble and he hurriedly stuffed it back in its wrapping. He handed it to Tiny.

  “Now, what about this two hundred and… what was it?”

  “And twenty five pounds, eight shillings to be precise.”

  “We must be precise.” Quy took out a check book and a pen whose cheap alloy finish he hoped would glint Sufficiently like gold. He wrote a check, tore it out and handed it over.

  “Well, that’s taken care of. Thank you for everything, Mr—what did you say your name was?”

  “Gregory.”

  “Gregory. I will remember that in my future dealings your company. You have given me good service.” He the folder and pumped the young man by the hand. “Come, Bradford.” And he was halfway up the ramp Gregory called out, “Just a minute.”

  Gregory came hurrying up. “You’ve filled this in wrongly.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve filled in two fifty five.”

  “Have I? Oh, keep the change for yourself, Gregory.”

  “But—”

  “You mean, the firm won’t allow that?”

  “I mean, the words say the right sum, the figure differs. It wouldn’t be passed.”

  “Let me look at that. Why, so I did. A slip of the pen, old chap.” He altered it and handed it back, but he was cursing to himself that the stratagem had failed. A wrongly written check would simply be returned to drawer for replacement. But a dishonored one—and there was no reason why it should be honored at a bank where he hadn’t had an account for ten years—was a different kettle of fish.

  If he failed to replace a wrongly written one, that was only a matter for debtor’s court—and he knew his way around them. But a dishonored check was a matter of… ugly word… fraud. He had never had that proved against him. And fraud was a prison offense.

  They came out into the roar of Regent Street’s traffic.

  “Two hundred nicker for a bit of cardboard?” said Tiny in his deep slow voice. “That’s a lot of money, Mr. Quy, ain’t it?”

  “West End prices, Tiny,” Quy said blandly. But he brooded as they walked down Regent Street towards the station. He brightened. “Wait here,” he said to Tiny.

  He went into the post office and filled in a telegram form.

  BIOTECHNICS, REGENT STREET. QUERY COST FIGURES. HAVE STOPPED CHECK IMMEDIATELY PENDING CONSULTATION MY ACCOUNTANTS BEFORE DEPARTURE AFTERNOON FLIGHT USA. WILL INSIST ON CONFERENCE IMMEDIATELY ON MY RETURN EARLY 1974.

  Let them sort that one out! he said to himself as he handed the form in at the counter. Then he went out blithely into the Piccadilly Circus sunshine.

  “Come, Tiny. We’ve done a good morning’s work. I think we’ll take a taxi home.”

  Eleven

  The day dawned bright and blue. When he got back with the van he had hired, Alan was waiting on the doorstep, camera in hand.

  “It’s loaded,” the boy said excitedly. “Only black-and-white film, though. I couldn’t afford color.”

  “That’s all right, son. Now, give me a hand getting this on the wagon, will you?” He went to one end of the contraption and groped under the tarpaulin for a hold on the angle iron. “Ready? Heave.”

  Only one end lifted—Alan’s.

  “Come on, lad—it’ll be easier as soon as we get it out in the alleyway. We can use rollers then. Ready again?”

  But this time he straightened quickly with a yelp.

  “Blast the damn thing! What price antigravity? Norman! Where are you?”

  A ginger head poked out of the window above them.

  “Coming right down, Mr. Quy.”

  Half an hour later, with the aid of planks borrowed from the builders’ yard down the road, they had it on board and lashed fast.

  “Right,” said Quy. “We’ve got to hurry. We’ve got to be the other side of Epping by eleven o’clock. Can’t keep the press waiting. You’re the youngest and healthiest, Alan. You can sit in the back and watch the precious freight doesn’t come adrift. You, Norman, ride up front with me.”

  They climbed in and set off.

  By the time they had covered the mile to the Nags Head, Norman Was sweating hard. It had taken them twenty minutes—a testimonial to the thickness of the traffic at that hour of the morning rather than to any sedateness of old Quy’s driving. In between jams he reacted like a long pent-up spring, engaging gear ferociously and hurtling into the next snarl of traffic, arriving with a screeching of brakes.

  At the
Nags Head, the junction with the main trunk artery to the M1, he got into the wrong lane and got stuck across the traffic. The air rapidly became blue with diesel fumes and the imprecations of lorry drivers. One of the latter got down from his cab and stalked across to the van. When he saw Quy at the wheel, he gave a kind of frustrated sigh, heaved his great head disgustedly and guided the van free, with several inchings forward and jerky backings and bellows of “Full lock now,” and “Left hand down now, Christ I said left!”

  “Let me take over,” Norman pleaded as they got under way again.

  “Take over! Whatever for? I haven’t driven a vehicle of this make before. I’m just getting the hang of it.”

  As he spoke, the van lurched out to avoid the back of a bus whose indicators were flashing and which pulled out just as the van drew alongside. Norman caught one look of the driver’s startled face, and covered his own with his hands. There was a blare of horns. Then he was thrust back fiercely into his seat. When he opened his eyes the van was hurtling into comparatively open road.

  “See!” said Quy triumphantly.

  “Pull in,” said Norman weakly. “I think I’ve got a call of nature to make.”

  “You should have gone before. Anyway, we’ll be hitting open country soon.”

  “We’ll be hitting something,” Norman muttered. At the next holdup he switched the engine off and took out the key.

  “Well, all right,” said Quy crossly. “There’s one just over the road there, next to the pub.”

  “That was only an excuse,” Norman informed him. “This is an ultimatum. Either we change seats and you let me drive the rest of the way or I get out and you can lug your own flying machine onto the launching pad. I’ve got too many adventures of Anthony Hard to write yet—and I never realized until this moment just how precious that could be to me.”

  “Are you sure you can drive properly?” Quy enquired.

  “Give me that wheel,” Norman snarled and shoved the other to one side. Quy submitted grumpily and contented himself with intermittent and largely irrelevant advice for the rest of the way.

  They arrived at Wileys Green, an open space bordering Epping Forest, at ten twenty.

  “Ah, there’s the Blue Boar,” said Quy. “Pull up there. That’s the place I put on the press invitations.” The van ground to a halt. “Funny, where are all the cars?”

  Only one red sports car and an old gray van with a flat tire graced the forecourt. The Blue Boar had obviously seen better days.

  “I know,” said Quy, climbing out. “There’s a big car park round the back. I remember the place well.”

  He came back almost immediately. “It’s locked. So is the pub.”

  Norman looked at his wrist. “They won’t be open till half past, I suppose. But it’s a bit off the beaten track, isn’t it? It’s been B roads for the last twenty minutes.”

  “Nonsense. This is a famous pub. Or used to be. I think We must have turned off too early. I know the main coast road is only a mile away. That’s why I chose the place. It’s accessible, yet not too densely populated.”

  “You can say that again,” said Norman, looking about him.

  “Still, the invitation said eleven,” said Quy cheerfully. “We can’t expect the rush yet. The press are busy men. So it behooves us to be ready for them. Let’s get the van over to the far side of the green and set the machine up. Then you can come back here, Norman, and greet the scribes. Here’s a fiver, but watch how you go with it. Those lads can mop up scotch like sponges.”

  They lumbered across the green and got the machine down. Norman left, while Alan checked his camera and Quy had a last-minute run with the generator and radio control. As he moved the controls of the transmitting box, the motor obediently speeded up, then slowed. He walked a hundred yards away and repeated the process. He could hear that it worked. He came back and brought the radio control to zero. The motor cut off immediately. All the same, he switched off manually on the machine before bolting in the precious blue strip.

  “What’s the time, boy?” he asked when the job was done.

  “Ten to eleven,” Alan told him.

  “Fine. Now you stand guard while I go back to the pub. Whatever you do, don’t touch it and don’t let anyone come near it.”

  He set off back across the green. There was a blue Volkswagen in the forecourt. He went into the saloon bar to find Norman talking to a middle-aged character in a hairy jacket. The man had a spirit glass in his hand. He had a complexion that hinted that he had held many spirit glasses in his hand.

  Quy’s heart warmed immediately.

  “Hah, press?” he exclaimed genially as he went up to them.

  “Yep, I’m Arthur Fenton.”

  “Happy to meet you,” said Quy. “If I hadn’t dedicated myself to science, yours is the profession I would almost certainly have chosen. I’m Adolphe Quy, of course. My colleague—ah—” He suddenly realized, for all that they had lived in the same building for over a year, that he didn’t know Norman’s last name.

  “Burroughs,” Norman filled in quickly.

  “No relation to the great Edgar Rice?” the reporter enquired, gazing into his empty glass.

  “Not that I know of,” said Norman.

  “Great man,” said the reporter nostalgically. “Cut my teeth on him. Barsoom and all that, eh? Galloping across the desert on a thoth under the orbs of Phobos and—what was the name of that other moon.”

  “Deimos,” said Quy. And hurriedly, “Have another drink. What paper did you say you’re from?”

  “The Times.”

  “The Times?” Things were brightening. They reported things properly. The paper the Top People read. He could see it now—in a half-dozen of the top board rooms a hand would lift, turn over the pages, and stop. It would reach for the telephone. “Smithers, what’s this I see about a revolutionary new kind of—”

  Fenton interrupted his fantasy, killing it in mid-flight.

  “The Mid-Essex Times. Here’s my card.”

  Quy took it and read it. “Arthur J. Fenton. Mid-Essex Times and Epping Advertiser. Correspondent for the London Press.” But it didn’t say which papers of the London press, and Quy didn’t feel it was worth bothering to ask.

  “The Echo forwarded me your invitation, seeing that it was in my territory.”

  Quy felt his elation ebb away, leaving desolate salt flats. Less than thirty miles from London, and one paper, at least, couldn’t bother to send one of their own men. As for the rest—

  The door opened and a young woman, in a dazzling black-and-white suit and a strictly urban blonde hairdo, came in.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Adolphe Quy,” she said in a Knightsbridge accent.

  “That’s me.”

  “Oh, good. I’m from the Globe.”

  The tides of hope came running in again. The Globe was a leading London evening paper.

  “What’ll you have, young lady?”

  “I’ll have an Orient Express, thank you.”

  “A what?” said mine host who was taking a puzzled, if gratified, interest in the unusual influx of visitors.

  “That’s a vodka, grenadine, and Campari.”

  “We don’t have any grenadine. Or Campari.”

  “Just give me a straight vodka, then. A large one.” She turned to Quy. “Now, Mr. Quy—that is how you pronounce your name, is it? Or French style—Key? Come and sit down over here and fill me in with some personal details.”

  Two vodkas later, Norman said, “It’s eleven thirty, Mr. Quy.”

  “Time enough yet, Norman.” The old man turned back to the blonde. “But, of course, my most notable—” He broke off. “What is it, Norman?”

  Norman spoke hoarsely and urgently in his ear. “Our friend over there is beginning to get sloshed. He’s on his fifth double whisky now. And there isn’t a sign of anyone else.”

  “All right,” Quy sighed. He was beginning to enjoy the company of the blonde. He turned back to her. “We have to get started on
the demonstration now, my dear.”

  As they came out of the pub, Quy saw a large dark-green van pulling up on the other side of the green.

  “Come on,” he hollered and went trotting away over the grass.

  “You see!” he said as he drew up, puffing but triumphant. “It’s the B.B.C.”

  He spoke to the technicians.

  “I think you’d better move the van away as far as you can. The demonstration won’t be dangerous, but we’d better take proper precautions. Now, your cameraman had better take up position at the edge of the woods there. There’s a bit of a bank. We can all get down behind it.”

  The blonde, Fenton and one of the BBC men looked the machine over.

  “Briefly,” Quy told them, “this is simply an ordinary generator. But it powers a strip of special anti-gravitic material in the base. If you’ll just look under? I’m not at liberty yet to divulge either the composition of that strip nor what exactly happens when a current is passed through it. Suffice it to say that it works by screening off the power of gravity, with the result that this machine will rise from the ground. Just observe that there are no moving parts—apart, of course, from the generating unit. No airscrews, no jets, no rockets.

  “Right, shall we take up positions?”

  He switched on the manual switch on the sled and they trooped over to the edge of the woods.

  “Right?” He nodded to the cameraman. “Get that zoom lens ready. Okay, Alan?” He moved the controls. The petrol engine started up, with a puff of blue smoke. “Now, there won’t be a count down. I’ll just say one, two, three, on. Ready?”

  He prayed to a god too undefined for any church to have ever worshipped, and said, slowly and quaveringly, “One… two… three… on.”

  He activated the radio control. Fifty yards away a whine came from the generator and leveled out.

  And nothing happened. The sled remained motionless on the grass, apart from a slight vibration from the generating unit. Or it might have been heat haze.

  The seconds passed. Quy felt sick. “What’s up, Prof?” called the cameraman.

  “Wait,” said Quy. “The field’s got to build up.” He didn’t know how true that was, but if it was going to build up it should have done so by now, surely. “Just keep your camera on—”