Mary informed me that in fact her post-mortem communications had been entirely genuine. I knew that several of the supernormal children, following the death of a close family member, had believed that they remained in contact with some nebulous ‘presence’ of the deceased. Being sceptical by nature and by training, they usually attributed what for others might have been a source of comfort to the sheerest wishful thinking on their part. It seemed, however, that the particular form of Mary’s religious upbringing, in which the souls of the departed had been routinely invoked, had caused her to develop the same faculty to a very much higher degree. She had come to realise that her skills were not proof of the survival of the soul, but rather a crude form of astral time-travel, in which she journeyed mentally into the past and came into direct psychic contact with the minds of those who were, according to the way we understand time, long dead.
Once Mary had come under the protection of the Retreat, Percival had taken it upon himself to hone this skill of hers, with a view to soliciting information from the future. His intention was that Mary might be induced to make contact with the Percival of a year in the past; and that, the habit of such communication having once been established, Percival would then be able in the present to call upon the valuable knowledge of the Mary of a year hence. I gathered that, as yet, their success in this had been minimal.
The last inhabitant of the Retreat to whom we were introduced was the youngest; since so far, Violet informed us cheerfully, no attempt to breed a supernormal with another supernormal had resulted in viable offspring. ‘I think you’ll like Freia, though,’ she said. ‘She came to us off her own bat from Germany, two years ago. She’s six.’
This was an exceptional accomplishment, to say the least, but Freia was an exceptional child. She was one of those members of the peculiar species whose divergence from the Homo sapiens norm resulted, not in ugliness, but in transcendent beauty. Her face, the still-chubby face of a young girl, was that of a sphinx or a proud angel, regarding the world with condescending fondness and indulgent malice in equal measure. It was an expression which reminded me profoundly of Percival’s at the same age.
The child was in all respects proportioned as a normal girl of her age, although the plumpness of her limbs belied the strength of the muscle underneath. Her intelligence was prodigious, and she could converse as well in English as many native speakers of the language could as adults. Emotionally, however, she was still a child, with all the attendant insecurities thereof, and a child’s weird insensitivity to the feelings of others. Freia spent some time studying the two of us, with eyes the crystal blue of Alpine gentian, before she spoke. In a piping, almost unaccented voice, she declared, ‘Neither of you are the same shape as other people. Why is that?’
‘What do you mean, Freia?’ Emily asked her gamely, as Violet smirked. I knew from long and embarrassing experience the difficulties of dealing with the young of the superior species: one might not treat them either as a human adult nor as a child, for they were neither one’s equal nor one’s inferior. One could only address them as the individuals they were at any given time, a fact which required constant adaptation to their rapid mental development.
‘You are like an amputee,’ Freia told Emily with great precision. ‘Your past and future have been sliced away. And you –’ she turned those ice-blue eyes on me ‘– have two lives, and only one of them is yours. There is another person hiding inside you. I should like to study you both some more.’ I was unsure whether she was referring to Emily and myself, or to me and my mysterious inhabitant.
Violet was smirking still. ‘Quite the little catch, isn’t she?’
‘You see people’s lives, don’t you, Freia?’ Emily asked gently. ‘You can see the shapes they make, back and forward in time.’
Freia sighed heavily. ‘Yes,’ she said with a child’s exaggerated patience. ‘What happened to you, that cut off your past like that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Emily told her. ‘I’ve never known.’
Solemnly the little girl absorbed this, nodding. ‘I’m going to play with the dogs now,’ she said.
‘That’s all right, Frey,’ said Violet. ‘You run along. We didn’t make the connection until yesterday,’ she told us as the German girl bounded merrily away. ‘We thought Freia’s perceptions were another aspect of that gift Mary has. But after what you told me about time-sensitives, she’s obviously one of them. Percival’s going to be chuffed.’
I thought of Percival, loose in time, his experiments with Mary instantly surpassed by that effortless symbiosis which made a channeller and a sensitive into their own time-machine. As a young boy, Dr Tremaine had told me, Percival had always seen the normal passage of time as an arbitrary and annoying restriction. He would demand, ‘Why must I wait? Why can’t I have it already happening now?’ or ‘What do you mean, it can’t be helped? Why don’t we just do it again, and do it right this time?’ He saw time as just another limitation imposed by Homo sapiens on itself, like laws or language. In this instance his natural arrogance (which I confess had never needed much nourishment in order to flourish) had perhaps been nurtured by the instinctive feelings of a time-channeller.
‘You see now, don’t you?’ Violet was asking us. ‘I had to bring you both here to the Retreat so you’d see. What we’ve got here’s too important and precious to be compromised by your people. When those soldiers arrive, there’s going to be a struggle for survival. Our survival, not yours – we’re not planning to put Homo sapiens in danger, yet.’
‘What do you mean, not yet?’ asked Emily.
Violet regarded her with cool appraisal. ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘the time for that will come, one day. The future lies with us – us supernormals, I mean – and our children, when we have them. Poor old Homo sapiens’ days are numbered. Of course some higher specimens of your race may be kept on – I’m sure you’ll be very useful to us. But you can’t be allowed to keep up your breeding. If you went on unchecked, in ten years there’d be three thousand million of you, perhaps ten thousand million in a century. We can’t let that happen.’
I had heard this refrain before, many a time, from Percival. He had been ten, and ignorant of the existence of others of his kind, when he first reached this conclusion, and he had been implacable in it since.
‘You’ve done well enough,’ Violet said. ‘Given your limitations, you’ve made a pretty good job of preparing our Earth for us. And it’s not such a bad fate, really. Do you think Neanderthal man mourned his own passing, when he allowed our ancestors to supplant him?’
‘I would imagine he did, yes,’ said Emily stiffly. It was the same tone I had adopted with Percival on countless occasions.
‘Well,’ Violet allowed, ‘perhaps. But that just shows how under-developed he was. In that little struggle, Homo sapiens was the more developed type, you see, and he acquitted himself admirably. The poor old Neanderthal should have been happy, seeing as his extinction was allowing a higher, more vivid form of life to take his place. And so should you be happy now – or in ten years, whenever the struggle comes. Come on, if you knew you were the lesser candidate for an important job, one which it was really vital to everybody got done properly, you surely wouldn’t try to put yourself ahead of the other person, would you? It’s a noble thing, to give way to those better than yourself.’
Emily did not appear at all convinced, and I remembered her concerns of the previous day. She had been shocked then at the idea of one people attempting to wipe out another; and I could not imagine that she would reverse her judgement merely because this boot was on the other foot. Still, I thought, she would come around eventually, as I had, and quietly accept our species’ fate. In the end, all of us would have to come around: the supernormals would make quite sure of that.
The Opinions Of Gideon Beech
Emily and I were not the only visitors from the mundane world whom the inhabitants of the Retreat were to rece
ive that afternoon. At around four o’clock, the deliberations in which we, Violet, Bridget and Jimmie were embroiled were interrupted by the noise of a second motor-car approaching the site. ‘Is it the soldiers?’ Emily asked, in immediate concern.
‘No fear of that,’ said Violet scornfully. ‘They’d never have got past the perimeter, not without making enough fuss that we’d know about it. It’s just Lou and Jelena coming back with Giddy.’
This was not the first time that this mysterious ‘perimeter’ had been mentioned. It seemed that among the technical advances which had been provided by Percival, Jimmie and the other engineers of the community (these included, along with numerous labour-saving mechanisms, a highly advanced generator for powering the entire site from ‘the absolute annihilation of matter’, and a device which I understood to be called ‘the terminal’, whose function was not at that time explained to me) was a mechanical means of focusing, directing and controlling personal psychic energy, whether it be that of an individual or of a psychical grouping such as the Retreat itself.
The collective state in which the group-mind of the community had been able to aid Violet in her escape from the town-house, and incidentally to condemn her rescuer, was not habitual and required considerable mental effort to sustain. This mechanism provided a less burdensome, and potentially an everlasting, alternative. Over the years, certain of the supernormals had become adept at the use of their telepathic abilities for offensive purposes, the assault which Percival had earlier directed against Lechasseur being an example, and by the use of the new device the engineers had been able to automate the process.
The machine could not, of course, replicate the specific technique whereby Percival had adapted his attack to Lechasseur’s personal vulnerabilities, but a mechanised assault might be overwhelming nevertheless, as the device was able to draw for its power on the combined psychic potentialities of the Retreat’s entire populace. It was, as Jimmie had informed us blithely, solely Violet’s presence in our car which had spared Emily and myself from ‘having our brains blasted to bits as we went along.’
(‘I can’t help wishing Percival was here, though,’ the young man had admitted. ‘He’s the one who designed the damned contraption, and he’s the one we’ll be needing if repairs or adjustments are to be made.’
‘He’ll be back soon enough,’ Violet had said. ‘Those soldier boys won’t know what’s hit them, you’ll see.’)
On this subject of their scientific ventures the young people were unusually forthcoming, and I could only respect the trust which they were placing in Emily and myself as members of the normal species – even if certain of their hints as to the potentialities of their other devices seemed to me both intriguing and terrifying.
The supernormals had decided unanimously that in the current crisis their defences, strengthened as necessary, would have to suffice. The sole alternative, that of evacuating the Retreat, was judged to be altogether too risky. The children would be far too conspicuous if they travelled en masse, and too vulnerable if they proceeded in smaller groups. Besides, there was no other refuge to which they might escape.
‘And who is Giddy?’ I asked Violet. Jelena I knew, naturally, and I had already heard mention of Lou as her paramour.
‘Ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’ Violet said pertly. ‘You’ll see soon enough.’
Just as earlier in the day the supernormals had crowded into the farmyard to greet our party as it arrived, so now they ran out to meet the approaching motor-car, whose occupants I had difficulty discerning in all the hubbub. When they finally emerged from the crowd, Jelena and the young person whom I assumed to be Lou were escorting a very elderly man, who was to all appearances of ordinary human origin. He was talking animatedly with such of the crowd as addressed him, and seemed infused with an energy which must have been altogether exceptional at his advanced age. He carried a stick, but his sprightly manner of walking suggested that he must have recourse to it but rarely. His eyes were bright, his high forehead lined, and he sported a square, methuselaic beard of wiry hair.
‘Good Lord!’ I exclaimed. ‘Is that – that surely can’t be Gideon Beech, the playwright?’
Violet was smug. ‘We’re gathering our friends together. Those we’ve got left, at least,’ she added, more soberly.
‘But he must be ninety if he’s a day!’ I protested.
In point of fact, Mr Beech, who has the distinction of being probably our most eminent living dramatist, was at that time ninety-three years of age, and has since turned ninety-four. He has been a prominent figure in the sphere of English letters for very nearly as long as I have been alive, and it is fully twenty-five years since he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
I had had no idea that he was known to the supernormals, nor that they were interested in him. He had not been among the literati or the theatrical people with whom the young Percival had consorted during his brief time in London.
Mr Beech was conveyed into the rustic outbuilding, now hollowed out into a capacious and well-appointed refectory, where Emily and I had been conversing with Violet and the others. He took a seat at the head of the one long table, and gazed complacently about himself. ‘Well then,’ he said, addressing the room at large. ‘This is a fine pickle you young people have got yourselves into.’
‘Mr Beech,’ I said. ‘I had no idea that you were known here.’
He frowned at me. ‘And who the devil might you be, laddie?’ he asked.
Hastily I introduced myself, aiding his memory by mentioning that the two of us had corresponded once or twice on literary matters. ‘And this is Miss Emily Blandish,’ I added, trying and failing to remember when I might last have been addressed as ‘laddie’.
He smiled at Emily. ‘Charmed, m’dear. And Mr Clevedon, too. Well well. You write those novels full of stuff that’s supposed to be some sort of scientific philosophy, don’t you? Yes, Jelena told me you might be here.’ (I could have wished that Violet had done me the like courtesy, but I did not say so.) ‘It seems we’re letting anybody in these days – I don’t mean you, of course, young lady. Well, never mind.’
I recalled now, amidst a growing dismay, that a greatly inflated sense of his own importance to the world had always permeated Beech’s writings. This spilled over into his public dealings, and had certainly stood as a prominent feature of our correspondence. His genius was doubted by none who were familiar with his work and field, but least of all by himself. Many contemporary critics considered him to be the greatest British dramatist since Shakespeare: Beech, however, had observed on more than one occasion that Shakespeare’s claims to greatness had yet to convince him, and some of Beech’s best-known plays were attempts to set the record straight on historical matters where he felt his illustrious predecessor had been in error.
Despite his arrogance and condescension, however, I had thought that I recognised in Gideon Beech a kindred spirit. Now I was revising that judgement.
‘Quite right, Giddy,’ Violet said patronisingly. ‘It’s Liberty Hall here. We’re open to all – even ancient geniuses.’ Beech smiled, acknowledging the gibe.
It did not take long for Beech to be apprised of the details of the particular crisis currently facing the supernormals. He asked perceptive questions, and made some trenchant points concerning the difficulties which might arise during the defence of the Retreat. Plainly, despite the venerable age which he had reached, his formidable intellect had not yet deserted him, and I came grudgingly to realise that the young people had made a very sensible choice in recruiting him to their cause.
Still, there was something incongruous about the tenor of his discourse, and it took me some time to put my finger on it. ‘Well, then,’ Beech observed again, after some discussion, ‘it looks like this may be the beginning of that cataclysm which we’ve been anticipating, my children. Tomorrow may well see us all embroiled in the deciding struggle of normal versus
supernormal, man versus superman. I suppose that each of us here has the good sense to see whose part Life will take in such a conflict; with the exceptions perhaps –’ (here he smiled and nodded) ‘– of Clevedon and Miss Blandish.’ He beamed benevolently at the assembled company, and it struck me suddenly that Beech was conceited enough to count himself (surely erroneously!) among the supernormals’ number.
I stared at him for several moments. Much of his face was hidden by that famously patriarchal beard, but he clearly had none of those aberrations of physiognomy which were the outward indications of the Homo peculiar type. Besides, save Pedro, he was six or seven decades older than the oldest of them.
‘I’m not sure I follow you, Mr Beech,’ Emily was saying. ‘Are you saying that you think the children have a chance of winning against these soldiers? Not just surviving, I mean, but defeating them?’
‘My dear young lady, that and more besides,’ Beech said. ‘The thing has all the inevitability of history. These children whom you see around you are the heirs to what little claim we have upon humanity. It is they, meek though they most assuredly are not, who shall very shortly inherit the Earth. Don’t you agree, Clevedon?’
‘I suppose that you believe them to have been purposely created for that end,’ I said, ‘by your blind Earth-goddess.’ Like most of the reading public, I am aware that Beech follows an arcane and pseudo-scientific religion of his own devising, one which elevates the ‘Will of Life’ (a half-hearted personification of evolution, and evolution understood according to an arcane pre-Darwinian scheme, at that) to the status of a deity. According to Beech, the development of life is a self-directing process, in which this formless and half-conscious creatrix strives constantly to improve upon herself.
Peculiar Lives Page 6
