PLAYERS AT THE GAME OF PEOPLE by John Brunner
Page 11
That explanation was plausible, but it did not feel true.
Was his remembered experience real in some halfway sense? It could not be objectively so—Bill Harvey had demolished all hope of him being able to pretend that it was, but in any case he had always been content to enjoy the benefit of his rewards without inquiring too deeply into the way they were created—yet perhaps it had taken place at some kind of skew-wiff angle between the main line of reality and the diffuse worlds of simple fantasy.
He trembled. He was unused to thinking in these terms. He had done so when he first began to live the life he had chosen, but gradually the habit of enjoying what he had offered himself took over. He had endured unquestioningly for…
No, it was not to be thought about, even now. How the hell could Bill bear to count his birthdays? He gulped the rest of his tea and reverted to a simpler but more pressing matter. There was no doubt at all why it was wrong to let somebody know both who he was and where he was living. All this was explicable on the plain human level. There were things like taxes, justifying your expenditure, keeping medical records, entering data in computers, applying for passports, driving cars, and more and ever more interlocking networks of information between the interstices of which he must continue to keep slithering. All this was automatic—or had been. Suddenly, dismayingly, he was faced with the need to take even more action than just using the flex. Until he had done so, he knew he would continue to feel… would the right term be uncomfortable?
Maybe that was why his attempt to enjoy a reward chosen at random had failed. Maybe it was because he had been less-than-consciously aware of the risk he was running from the moment he saw the blond woman talking to the commissionaire and nonetheless drove the Urraco out of the car-park in full sight of where they were standing. Now there were so few cars in London, the mere possession of one was a marker. Having chosen such a rare model compounded the difficulty.
Simultaneously he felt relief and renewed dismay: the former, because he had reasoned out his predicament and decided to take action, even though as yet he did not know what kind; the latter, because as he rose and headed for the exit—where the one-legged man was leaning on both crutches and extending a hand for the tip which was his due for saving the customers from being importuned by beggars—something reported from his stomach the need to visit Luke. Scarcely surprising. Hygiene here was rudimentary. Flies swarmed on sugar bowls; food was handed to purchasers with unwashed hands; cups and dishes were rinsed in cold and often greasy water because of the cost of fuel; the display of sandwiches and salads remained until someone was fool enough to buy because it was prohibitively costly to throw away anything remotely edible.
Why the hell had he come here, anyway? Already memory of the state he had been in when he rose had receded to the same blur as those other memories, masked and blanketed and overlaid, which he was so determined to hide from himself, the reasons why he would never take the least sip of alcohol except in the security of his home.
He was suffused with a pang of gratitude for the good care that was being taken of him. But he had no money to tip the door guard.
Oh, never mind! He had just realized he knew where to go from here. Not directly to Luke, because underused though they were, his body’s immune reactions and other defenses were in fine fettle, thanks to Irma’s regular attention, so for a while he could afford to disregard that particular impulse.
No. He must visit Hamish.
The decision clicked in his mind and he strode past the guard as though the man did not exist, nor anybody else who could not contribute to making their encounter more immediate.
Dense and stinking fog that made the eyes water—a real London pea-souper—closed in around Godwin as he approached the home-cum-office of Hamish Kemp. Here and there gas lights glimmered, though it was midafternoon, creating fragile bubbles of luminance lost almost as soon as sighted through the murk. The air resounded with the clatter of hooves, the rattle of iron-tired cab wheels over cobblestones, the continuing tintinnabulation of bicycle bells madly rung by errand boys terrified of punishment were they late with a single delivery. Now and then there was an accident, invisibly far away; old ladies screamed and cats yowled and shouts were raised to find the nearest chemist’s shop for the injured. Small wonder. Godwin could literally not see his own hand at arm’s length.
Fortunately his feet remembered better than his head, and at no worse cost than a sense of clammy chill due to fog droplets penetrating his unsuitable clothes and being half blinded with tears owing to the sulfurous reek of a million coal fires, he attained Hamish Kemp’s door. It opened to his touch… naturally.
The air inside was crystal clear. He stepped onto deep-piled Persian rugs; on either side enormous overstuffed chairs with leather or tapestry upholstery stood ready to welcome visitors, grouped around low tables set with tan taluses and wire-encaged refillable soda syphons. Paintings by Landseer and—daringly—Alma-Tadema hung on walls papered with designs by William Morris. Here stood a whatnot with the indefinable stamp of Mackintosh of Edinburgh, on which reposed a humidor containing fine Havana cigars; there, a radiant electric heater with five elements—each containing a twisted red-glowing wire within an evacuated glass envelope like an oversize and misshapen banana—shed welcome warmth across a tiled hearth innocent of ashes. A glass-fronted cabinet, with locked doors, stood against one wall, containing an Afghan jezail, a Snyder, a pair of dueling pistols with ivory-inlaid handles, a snaphaunce flintlock, and a blunderbuss. More practical weapons were stored, of course, out of sight.
There appeared to be no one in the gas-lit room. Godwin, whose meal was now more and more insistently announcing that it was about to disagree with him and who consequently was more and more driven to leave at once and go consult Luke, lost patience and shouted at the top of his voice.
“Hamish!”
Panels at the far end of the room folded back to reveal a white-walled, stark, chrome-and-stainless-steel-and-glass laboratory where Hamish, clad in a green surgical gown and mask, was rising from a revolving chair before a complex instrument board, beset with TV screens, switches, buttons, scales, analogue dials, warning lights, and digital counters. He was a portly man with a somewhat florid face, sporting muttonchop whiskers. When he doffed his gown it was to reveal a striped-on-white flannel shirt minus its collar and studs, the trousers of a brown tweed suit, and brown boots.
Sighing, he said, “Yes, God. I deduced you or somebody was about to bother me. It had better be urgent or else—”
A shrill noise interrupted him, which came from the far end of the lab. Both men reflexively glanced that way. A section of wall had slid aside, revealing clear black sky beyond… or its image. Across the velvet-dark oblong a bright disc wavered, for all the world like a paper plate tossed Frisbee-fashion. Suddenly it plunged toward them. The shrill noise ceased. A deep-toned bell chimed once. The wall closed again. There was a succession of loud clicks, which Hamish, head on one side, counted in anxious fashion.
At length he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Lucky I just finished automating that part of the machinery!” he said in a loud and accusing tone. “Not for you nor anyone would I forgot the pleasure I derive from my sole hobby nowadays, pointless though it may seem to you and your kind! Have a chota peg?” he added, as by afterthought, and waved Godwin to one of the overstuffed chairs.
Godwin shook his head, while—seeming to have forgotten the offer—Hamish served himself a generous four fingers of whisky and baptized the glass with a sprinkle of soda-water.
Sitting down in turn, while the laboratory faded from view, Hamish said, “Now have you the least idea where that—that disc you saw had been to?”
Godwin shook his head, wondering how long this preamble would last. This wasn’t the Hamish he remembered—
Correction. It could be no one else.
We register change.
Conceivably he had made one of the stupidest mistakes of his entire life by com
ing here.
But who else could he possibly have turned to?
And Hamish was saying with a kind of triumph, “No more do I! But I shall know, tomorrow at the latest! I send out hundreds of them all the time, and some of them are smashed by storms and some go on such a huge and random trajectory they may not find their way home for years—for decades! Some may come back in the far and distant future, because when I say they were driven down by storms that is, remember, only an assumption! My current record is one which went on flying for over eleven years, signaling in emergency mode for most of the time—that makes them luminous, you understand! That one informed me precisely where it had visited! You appreciate they carry no instrumentation? They are simply what they are—discs cast out into the wild blue yonder, to fly and home as chance decrees. And each that returns bears with it clues to where it wandered. By tonight I shall know whether that latest one to arrive has crossed the Arctic ice or the grain fields of Canada or the industrial Ruhr. Ah, you’ve no idea how fascinating, how endlessly fascinating it is to deduce from such tiny hints, such scraps of data, the entire course of an object which has traveled thousands upon thousands of miles.”
He sounded as though he were trying to convince himself as much as his listener. But when he had gulped down the last of his drink, he set the glass aside and at once became briskly businesslike.
“Well! It doesn’t take a detective to work out that you came here because something has gone wrong. Conceivably something to do with your last assignment? In which case, obviously, I can’t intervene.”
“No, it isn’t that. I want you to trace somebody for me. A woman.”
Hamish raised one bushy eyebrow. “A woman, eh? I had no idea you were so susceptible. I understood you were always well provided for.”
“You don’t generally jump to conclusions,” Godwin said cuttingly. “Shall I explain?”
Hamish sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes.
When he had heard his visitor out, he gradually began to smile. By the time he finally reopened his eyes he was positively beaming.
“This is a problem worthy of my mettle, indeed! You know of only two people that this woman knows: the commissionaire, who may have met heron a single occasion and never have heard mention of her name, and this policeman Roadstone—perhaps. In the ordinary run of events we could simply ask him. But this is not ordinary. You have used the flex on him and his colleagues, and in consequence they are no longer even able to think about the matter. But you’re quite right. You do need to trace her and, as it were, eliminate any threat.”
“I don’t want to eliminate her. Why should I?”
“I said eliminate any threat,” Hamish corrected. “Use the flex on her too, perhaps. With the techniques that the forces of the ungodly have at their disposal nowadays, it would be fatal if even a breath of suspicion were to get about.” He had no need to describe what kind of suspicion. Witch burnings might be out of date; witch hunts most definitely were not.
“Still,” he continued, hoisting himself ponderously to his feet, “we have resources of our own. Come into the laboratory and we’ll work out a portrait of her.”
Godwin complied. Standing in front of a computer-controlled image-creation system, Hamish called up detail on a screen while Godwin corrected his approximations. He muttered as he worked.
“Fair—slim—about how tall? Five six, seven? Hair not so far down the forehead, right… Nose not so long? How about that?”
Within a matter of minutes there was a full-color picture on the screen which matched Godwin’s recollection almost flawlessly. Relieved, and increasingly in a hurry to visit Luke, he nonetheless hesitated before turning away.
“There’s one thing still not right,” he admitted reluctantly.
Hamish chuckled. “I know,” he said, and made some minute adjustments to the face. “What you were asking for was the face of a little girl, a mere child. That makes her look her age, doesn’t it?”
Godwin nodded, suppressing a shiver.
“Fine!” Hamish tapped an instruction into the keyboard below the screen, and the image vanished. “We have something to work from, at any rate. There’s a chance her picture may be on file—I have over a million news photographs, to start with, and the machines are already sifting through them. But it’s bound to be a slow job, I’m afraid. Now if you take my advice”—ushering Godwin toward the door—“you won’t go home for the next few days. Find somewhere else to put up. The fact that she actually saw you coming out of the house is what disturbs me most. Incidentally, how about the car?”
“Still where I left it. Did you expect me to drive here?”
“No, but… Well, I’m sure you can detect whether or not you’re being followed, particularly in light traffic. Put it in a popular garage—the Soho Lex would do—and make a detour through some large and busy department store with several exits. And do it as soon as possible.”
“I need to visit Luke first,” Godwin said after a brief pause. Hamish threw up his hands.
“Dear, oh dear! And I understood Irma took such good care of you! At least she always boasts that she does when I call on her. Well, as and when you can. And I’ll contact you as soon as I have anything definite to report.”
“Have you any idea how long it might take?”
“None whatever, my dear fellow—none whatever! After all, on the information you’ve given me she may perfectly well be an Australian visitor in London for a couple of days.”
“Why should an Australian come with the police to find me?”
“Perhaps she works for Melbourne CID and you’re the going-double of a wanted drug smuggler! How should I know? Really, God, you do expect miracles, don’t you? I grant, I’m often in a position to work one, but on something this flimsy—no, I must have time. But I promise you, I shall get on with it straight away, and it will enjoy my undivided attention. That is, unless I unexpectedly find myself otherwise engaged, as it were.”
“Is that likely?”
“Well, it has been quite some while, so there’s rather a high probability. However, there’s no need for you to worry about that.”
His tone meant “pry into that.” Godwin, slightly embarrassed, shook hands and left. Hamish called after him, “Give my regards to Luke, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course. And thank you!”
Dr. Luke Powers received his client in a room completely bare except for a couch draped in white, a green carpet on the floor, and on one wall a beautifully hand-lettered scroll with illuminated margins bearing the full text of the Hippocratic oath in the original Greek. He was a lean, ascetic man whose age might have been anything from thirty to fifty but almost certainly wasn’t, with piercing gray eyes deep-set above a neatly trimmed brown beard.
“Welcome,” he said, and his voice was resonant and thrilling. He made no offer to shake hands, but stood stock-still with his total attention fixed on Godwin while the latter undressed. There were hooks, hangers, and a rail on the back of the door.
“You ate something inadvisable,” the healer said at length. “Not only was the food of poor quality and rather stale, it was heavily contaminated with chemical adulterants. Lie down. It’s as well you came to me now rather than later—I feel the urge to retire from the world and meditate. But I think there may be time to put you right. Close your eyes.”
He laid both hands on Godwin’s abdomen and began to murmur under his breath. The queasiness, which had become acute by now, dissipated; a painful bubble of wind passed a resistant sphincter; what little goodness and nourishment there was in Godwin’s meal entered his system while the remainder was securely locked up until it was time for it to be expelled.
“There,” Luke said after five or six minutes. “You may dress again now. But be careful, God. You ought to know by this time that, living the way we do, we risk allowing our natural defense mechanisms to atrophy.” The last word concluded in a yawn, for which, with a chuckle, he apologized as soon as he could.
“Of course,” Godwin muttered, zipping up his trousers and silently wondering why everybody except himself seemed unable or unwilling to accept the truth but must always disguise it by some such term as meditation or communion with the infinite or seeking astral guidance. They must know what was going on! After all, they invariably recognized the term when he referred to being called…
But he had more urgent matters to consider, such as moving the car. He took his leave of Luke and headed homeward.
He was half hoping the fair woman would be watching the house again. It would simplify matters if he let her find him; after Luke’s treatment he was sufficiently recovered to use the flex on her, and if he got the chance that would be an end of the matter.
However, there was no one in the street exhibiting more than casual curiosity when he climbed into the Urraco. He started up and drove a quarter of a mile, keeping an eye on his mirror, but no one was following.
Now: where to go? After the infuriating disappointment of his last reward, he felt the need for some sort of relaxation, but he didn’t want to go abroad again on the same passport, even though on his last trip no one had asked to see it.
Just as he was dutifully parking the car in the Lex garage in Soho, as Hamish had instructed, inspiration dawned. He snapped his fingers. Of course—the Global Hotel. The chance of the Arab princes still being there was vanishingly small; in any case, if they or the discothèque staff took exception to his presence, he was fit enough to use the flex again. And a suitable bribe would surely persuade Jackson the commissionaire to relate whatever he knew about the fair woman, so the data could be relayed to Hamish.
And conceivably the woman herself might turn up.