The Shift Key

by John Brunner

  Miles to the east of Weyharrow, tour guide Ella Kailet sighed with relief as the coach drew in sight of Stonehenge barely half an hour later than the schedule called for.

  Last night had been purgatory. It was never much fun conducting forty or more Americans on a whirlwind trip around the history-beset West Country. But when the coach broke down, so that they had to put up with a snack in a transport café instead of a square meal at their overnight hotel as they’d been promised, and then it broke down again barely ten miles from that hotel, and took another two hours to fix …!

  At least, however, the mechanic who had turned out from Weyharrow Goodsir seemed to have cured the trouble. She had been none too happy about his competence when he showed up, nor about the state of mind of her tourists; the night was chilly and they had stayed huddled and grumbling inside the coach – as had the weary driver, who claimed he had no help to offer; that was going to earn him a bad report when they returned to London! – while she stood shivering in mist and badgering the mechanic to get a move on.

  Still, here they were at last, and she knew this part of the drill by heart. She rose to stand beside the driver.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ she told the microphone, forcing an air-hostess’s smile to her weary face. ‘We are now approaching Stonehenge, perhaps the most famous of all prehistoric monuments. It was here that visitors from outer space landed in flying saucers to bring to the primitive inhabitants of Earth the arts and skills that came to be reflected in the pyramids of Egypt and South America.’

  The driver was tugging at her skirt. She slapped his hand away and ploughed on doggedly.

  ‘Later, of course, other similar landing sites, with their great dolmens that served as interstellar beacons, were constructed – keep your paws off me, you oaf! – were constructed as far away as Brittany and Scotland …’

  Her mouth grew dry. The tourists were staring at her. Some of them had begun to mutter.

  Oh, no! There wasn’t going to be another crisis, was there? What on earth could have gone wrong now?

  ‘Sarge?’

  Constable Joseph Book was in Weyharrow’s only public phone box. He lived in Weyharrow, in a police house, but there was no actual police station here; the nearest was at Chapminster, and he spent most of his time patrolling the area by car or on foot. He preferred the latter.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said the phone. ‘I thought you must have got lost in last night’s fog … Sorry, only kidding. Someone said you had a spot of bother. Ken Pecklow and Harry Vikes again. Wasn’t Joyce threatening to have Harry put away?’

  ‘She gave up on that one, thank goodness … But don’t poke fun, Sarge – please! This time it’s serious. Ken bust a tooth and the doctor sent Harry to hospital with a broken nose. It’s all in my notes and I’ll be in as soon as I can to make out the incident report. But …’

  He hesitated. Impatient, the sergeant prompted him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘That isn’t all,’ Constable Book said slowly. ‘There’s something very funny going on.’

  ‘Come and tell me about it, then!’

  ‘I’m not sure it wouldn’t be better if I hung around’ – with dogged persistence. ‘You know I’ve lived here seven years. That’s enough to get the feel of a place, isn’t it?’

  ‘I would say so … Come to the point!’

  Bridling: ‘Sarge, people keep stopping me and telling me the weirdest stories!’

  ‘I know, I know’ – with a sigh. ‘They’ve been ringing here all morning.’

  ‘Did they say what Mary Flaken did?’

  ‘I don’t think so … No, we don’t have that name in the log. What happened?’

  ‘Seems she got up, same as normal, found she’d run out of eggs and popped down the road to buy some for breakfast. But when she came back she didn’t go home. She went next door to Bill and Hannah Blocket’s –’

  ‘Where exactly do you mean?’

  ‘They live across the river, on the new estate.’

  ‘I wonder when they’re going to stop calling it that. It was there before my time, or yours … Sorry, go on.’

  ‘Well, she tried to open the back door. It was locked. She banged away till Hannah came to answer. Then she went spare! Marched in, yelling that Bill was her husband, not Hannah’s, and wound up throwing the eggs all over the kitchen! They got her back home in the end, but I swear we haven’t heard the last of that one – not by a long chalk!’

  There was a pause. Eventually the sergeant said heavily, ‘Sounds as though you’re right, Joe. Something very odd indeed is going on.’

  4

  At Weyharrow the valley of the Chap broadened out; its water purled on pebbles. Two miles higher it tumbled over rocks; that was at Trimborne. Allegedly the name meant ‘where the river is made neat’, and certainly its stone-sided mill-race must be ancient, for the mill was named and priced in Domesday Book. To the Norman Odo, first lord of this once-enormous manor, Trimborne doubtless seemed far more precious than Weyharrow and its ford.

  But the days when the mill had been a constant source of income, because the owners of the nearby farms were compelled to bring their grain for grinding and pay taxes for the privilege, were far in the past. Not in living memory had that or any other yearly rent from Trimborne brought much profit to those who nominally held the land.

  With the arrival of Helvambrit Pharmaceuticals matters had admittedly taken a turn for the better. The company, a Swiss-based international conglomerate, had been among the first to decide that dingy urban sites assorted poorly with its claims to be promoting public health; moreover, bad though unemployment was in cities, in the countryside it was often relatively worse, implying that plenty of cheap labour was to hand. Add in a touch of conservation, by restoring the facade of a historic mill – that had in fact not been a corn mill for over a century, but by turns a snuff mill and a gunpowder mill and even an engineering works – and hey presto! A major public-relations coup! If heavy lorries had to lumber up the narrow lanes nearby, forcing tractors to back out of the way and walkers to seek shelter in the hedgerow, that was a petty price to pay.

  Petty price …

  Indeed Helvambrit had paid one! Pacing the library of Weyharrow Court, Basil Goodsir brooded on the fact. How could he have been duped into letting his father Marmaduke sell the Trimborne mill instead of leasing it? The old fool must have been both greedy and short-sighted! Why, they’d certainly have paid by way of annual rent ten, even fifteen per cent of the price they’d paid for the freehold, so the mill could have been furnishing a steady return – to be continued for the foreseeable future.

  Of course, when the matter first arose, his son Cedric had just been sent to boarding school, and he and Helen had been faced with all the attendant expenses … Even so, it had been unfair of Marmaduke to take advantage of his own son’s temporarily straitened circumstances! If the old fool had had an ounce of wit left in his addled pate, by now the deal would have been showing an enduring profit!

  And to think that just a couple of years’ revenue from that source could have set him on his feet again, maybe placated Helen who now nagged at him so constantly …

  Basil Goodsir was forty-seven. His straight black hair had started to recede and his complexion was florid, with a tracery of broken veins on his nose and cheekbones. His face was set in an expression of permanent discontent, for he had been brought up to expect that he would make a success of his life, with the implied assurance that if he didn’t there would always be some financial cushioning from the family.

  That assurance, though, had come from his mother, who was dead, and had left her personal money not to him but to his sisters, now both married and living abroad. So far Basil had inherited nothing, for at seventy-five his father obstinately clung to life. As for his own career, it was pockmarked with failed business ventures. Currently he was drowning in debt, and the vultures were closing in. And here he was surrounded by priceless heirlooms but forbidden to capitalize on t
hem! It was high time to make the old dodderer see sense!

  About this library, for example. He remembered with a start why he had come in here this morning. It was his intention to list a few of the prizes that he had once – oh, he had to admit the fact, if only to himself – dismissed as so much waste paper, fit chiefly for a Guy Fawkes bonfire, because so many of these splendid leather bindings covered nothing more remarkable than reprints of sermons.

  But great-great-grandfather Abel had been a notorious opponent of Darwin, and collected scores of books about the evolution dispute, and now there were all these colleges of ‘Bible Science’ breaking out in America like a rash. What might people like that not pay for a first edition of, say, Gosse’s Omphalos, that famous study of all the reasons why Adam must have been created with a navel?

  At least, that was what Basil assumed it must be about. He was wrong, not having read it. As a matter of fact, he had read precious few of the books in here, even as a child. Reading had never been his ‘thing’.

  Nor writing, come to that. But determinedly he gathered pencil and notebook and set about tabulating the items he thought might fetch the most on the American market.

  ‘Good morning, young fellow!’ wheezed Marmaduke from his velvet-backed armchair at the head of the dining-table. The days were long gone when at breakfast time the sideboard groaned with kedgeree and chops and devilled kidneys; he was eating porage because that was what there was, bar cereal or toast and marmalade. Still, he seemed to be thriving on his reduced diet; his eyes were bright above his wrinkled cheeks and sparse white beard.

  ‘Morning, Gramps!’ said Cedric, making for the coffeepot. He was twenty and should have been at university again this year. However, there had been a regrettable disagreement with his tutors, and …

  Cedric didn’t mind. He enjoyed living at Weyharrow Court, above all because of his grandfather, whom he liked infinitely better than either of his parents. Besides, during the summer at least the village was always full of fascinating people of his own age, if not his social class. His fondness for them annoyed his parents so deliciously…

  ‘Where’s your father?’ Marmaduke inquired.

  Loading a slice of toast with ginger marmalade, Cedric shrugged. ‘In the library, I think. At any rate I heard someone muttering in there as I came past, and it can scarcely have been anybody else.’

  ‘The library. I see.’ Marmaduke pushed aside his bowl and drained his cup. It held tea rather than coffee, and left a tealeaf on his bewhiskered upper lip because he abominated tea-bags and would only have his morning beverage brewed in the traditional fashion. ‘You do know what he’s up to, I suppose?’

  Cedric nodded. Around a mouthful of crumbs he said, ‘He wants to carve up the library and sell it to America.’

  ‘That’s right. He can’t get over the fact that neither the house nor its contents belong to him, although he treats them as though they do.’ A heavy sigh. ‘Sometimes I wish, you know, that I hadn’t let his mother keep him under her wing –’

  ‘Far past the proper time,’ Cedric supplied. ‘Yes, Gramps. You have told me before, and I’ve always agreed.’

  ‘Then what about yourself?’ – eyebrows bristling. ‘You evidence no great desire to flee the nest!’

  ‘Oh, I live in hopes. One of these days I’ll probably pack a bag and hitchhike round the world.’ Cedric’s tone was light; it was hard, even for his grandfather, to know whether he intended to be taken seriously.

  ‘Damned young escapist!’ Marmaduke rumbled, though there was a twinkle in his eye. ‘And suppose while you’re away the lightning strikes and he and I and your mother all get carried off?’

  ‘I’d come back at a run, and make this place into a pilgrims’ refuge. Have you heard that phrase? Vic Draycock, who teaches history at Powte, applies the term “pilgrim” to the young folk who come here in the summer –’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about them!’ his grandfather barked. ‘They’re a bunch of lazy, drug-addicted layabouts! Most of them have never turned their hands to honest work!’

  Cedric concealed a sigh. He said placatingly, ‘You must remember how few alternatives are open, what with unemployment at an all-time high –’

  ‘There’s always some work needing to be done!’

  And more under our present lords and masters than under most we’ve had before …

  But Cedric bit that back. Seeking politer turns of phrase, he was saved by, if not the bell, a shout. It was his mother, Helen, in the entrance hall.

  ‘Basil! Basil! You’re sitting at Chapminster today – have you forgotten?’

  ‘Coming!’ was the loud reply, and doors were slammed. By then Cedric had worked out what he most wanted to say and what, he thought, his grandfather would best accept.

  He said daringly, ‘Would you rather see me keeping up a front like Dad, sitting on the magistrates’ bench and pretending that everything’s all right when in a juster world he’d be in court himself? He’s the next best thing, to bankrupt, isn’t he? Would you really like me to turn into the same sort of hypocrite?’

  Marmaduke seemed uneasy, and evaded his grandson’s eyes as he hunted for a proper reply.

  ‘You mustn’t think he’s unaware of his responsibilities, you know,’ he said at last. ‘Why, only last night I heard him pacing up and down the river-terrace, right below my window, worrying aloud about his problems.’

  ‘One of which,’ said Cedric softly, ‘he calls – you.’

  For an instant he feared he’d overstepped the mark. The old man’s mouth set in a thin accusing line, and behind the curtain of his beard his Adam’s apple bobbed on his stringy throat, sure harbinger of an explosive outburst.

  At that moment, though, in strode Helen, tall and lean.

  She had been a model when Basil met her a quarter of a century before, and never given up the habits she’d been trained to. Not a wisp of her blonde hair was out of place above her strong-boned face; her make-up was flawless; red ovals flashed on all her fingertips. As befitted a country setting, not the town, she had donned a V-neck pullover, its neckline filled in with a bright silk scarf, and jeans … but designer jeans, of course, their label prominent on her still-shapely bottom.

  As usual, Cedric thought she looked ghastly, like one of the living dead. But he had never said so. He only went on wondering privately, as he had for years, how many of his father’s debts were due to keeping up her wardrobe.

  ‘The bloody coffee’s cold,’ was all she said before she drank it anyway and set about a bowl of mushy health-food.

  Watching her eat, Cedric found himself fascinated – not for the first time – by another private question:

  Does she not know what a three-time loser my old man is? Or is it rather that she knows and is avoiding the risk of being told by someone else who’s noticed? Gramps has. It hasn’t been a secret between me and him since I was – what? – sixteen, I suppose.

  But today, for the first time ever, a third possibility stole under Cedric’s guard, and he contemplated it with vast dismay.

  Or could it be that she does know – has known for years – and wants to take advantage of the fact? What? How?

  The idea was so disturbing he had to excuse himself on the pretext of sending off an urgent letter.

  Of course, that wasn’t his real reason for biking down to the village. What he actually wanted was some of Stick Bember’s current crop of grass, and he detoured via the amusingly-named Wearystale Flat to pick up enough for a dozen spliffs. But he believed in backing up his lies, if he ever needed to tell any, so he took the precaution of carrying along a genuine letter. Therefore it was at the post office that, waiting patiently behind a score of old folk queueing to collect their pensions, he first heard of the strange goings-on in Weyharrow.

  Something else, equally peculiar, happened not long afterwards in Chapminster Magistrates’ Court.

  Jenny Severance had got over her hysterics. She hated to admit that that was what they had been,
but how else could one describe sobs and moans that stemmed from remembering something that couldn’t possibly have happened? She had come so close to letting other people know …!

  Still, everyone had been remarkably kind, even Dennis Dewley, even Ian, who had muttered something about her being overtired because she had worked extremely hard since joining the paper, and stressed the need for her to get back on the job like the pilot of a crashed plane, who must fly again at once to stop the rot from setting in.

  The upshot was that she’d been sent to cover the morning session at the magistrates’ court. Of course she wouldn’t have anything to show for it; the paper closed for press at noon, and Ian had looked over the roster of cases due to be heard and told her not to get her knickers in a twist about filing a story before lunch. But just in case anything did show up that might still be live next Friday …

  Grateful, appalled at herself, afraid of going mad, amazed that she had been given this reprieve, she took station on the press bench.

  As usual, she was alone. Now and then, if a juicy case was on the docket, the locals were crowded out by stringers for the national press or even visitors from Fleet Street, but that had only happened a couple of times so far this year, the latest back in June when a few hippies camping at Weyharrow had been arrested for possessing cannabis.

  Today there was nothing so newsworthy offered to the three magistrates: one fight – both parties bound over to keep the peace and barred from the local pubs for a year; one arrears of maintenance – adjourned for reports from a social worker; one road accident with injury – the driver concerned electing to go before a jury …

  As noon approached she was trying to stifle yawns, though her pencil still flew over the pages of her notebook. After making such a spectacle of herself this morning (Why? Above all, how had she escaped so lightly?) she needed to get back in her editor’s good graces.

  Before he repeated the comment she had not been meant to hear, made behind his hand to Dennis, concerning her need to consult a doctor, or better, a psychiatrist –