by Transit
He learned that Mary worked in the West End office of Empire Chemicals, that she had been with the company five years, that her boss was called Mr. Jenkins (he was mildly surprised that anybody could still be called Mr. Jenkins), that she played tennis and Scrabble and liked Dixieland jazz, that her parents were dead and that her fiance had disconcertingly married someone else.
In return he told her a little about himself. Presently he was even telling her about Christine. Which was surprising, because he never told anyone about Christine. Not unless he was drunk or knew the listener very well. In this case, neither circumstance obtained. But, he told himself with amusement, this was quite an exceptional case, really: it was the first time he had ever been imprisoned by bug-eyed monsters. He didn’t regard them (and it had to be plural for there was surely too much for one to handle) as bug-eyed monsters in the literal sense. Well, not necessarily. More in the metaphorical sense. And that was possibly even more disturbing.
‘You’re miles away,’ said Mary. ‘What were you thinking about?’
‘About how I would like to be miles away,’ he answered lightly. ‘Or at least, back in Kensington Gardens with the prospect of returning to my empty little flat. I never knew it could be so attractive.’
‘I do and I don’t,’ she remarked inscrutably.
‘Do and don’t what?’
‘Want to get away from here. I mean I do, of course, really—but not until I’ve found out what it’s all about.’
Avery was surprised. The girl had more spirit than he would have thought. He was about to predict that they would not let their victims find anything out if it could possibly be avoided, when Mary’s teletypewriter began to chatter away.
Please return to your own accommodation, it said. You will not be separated for long.
‘That’s what the wretched machine told us last time,’ said Avery moodily. ‘But it wasn’t exactly telling the truth, was it?’
‘You never know,’ said Mary, ‘we might find later that it was.... It seems to have been pretty honest about most things.’
Avery laughed. ‘No comment. That’s the catch-phrase in our crazy little world. What I mean is that it put us together instead of me and Barbara and you and Tom.’
‘I think it’s probably making introductions,’ she said seriously. ‘Did you want to see Barbara again very much?’
‘Yes, of course. But not in a special personal sense. What about Tom?’
She shrugged. ‘Not particularly. He was rather tiring.’
‘Am I rather tiring?’
‘Not in the way that Tom was.’
Avery was amused. At least he seemed to have a negative virtue.
The teletypewriter chattered at them once more.
It is necessary for you to return to your own accommodation immediately, it said, adding emphasis to the original message. Please then lie down on your own bed and await further developments.
Mary giggled. ‘That seems to indicate breath-taking possibilities.’
Avery smiled. ‘Not with these goons, it doesn’t—well, not like that. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it is some kind of remote-controlled medical check. They are very inquisitive little beasties I suppose I’d better get back to my own state room, otherwise it will be crystals for two.’
They both lay down on their beds, waiting—and feeling oddly embarrassed.
‘It was nice meeting you,’ called Mary.
‘A pleasure,’ he answered. ‘Let’s hope it’s a tea-party for four next time. We might be able to work something out if we could all get together.’
The wall came back. It came back with a speed that astonished Avery. But then he had other things to think about than the kind of mechanism that could project walls almost instantaneously; for the illuminated ceiling began to darken slowly. And presently he was lost in a roomful of blackness.
But for a moment only.
Where the ceiling had been there was now a magnifi-began to appear.
They were stars.
Where the ceiling had been there was now a magnificent window—a window on the universe.
That it was real, Avery did not doubt. Nothing but reality could provide the sheer brilliance, the hard unwinking intensity, the awful remoteness of so many living suns. They hung motionless, infinitely small and great beyond imagining. They hung like lanterns on the far Christmas tree of creation. They hung like teardrops of frozen fire.
For a moment, the impact was so great that Avery wanted to curl up like a foetus, to reject the outward reality and know only the blank, bleak security of his square metallic womb. But the moment passed; and he was hypnotized into acceptance.
He never knew there could be so many stars. He had known intellectually, of course, that the universe contained stars outnumbering the grains of sand on the shores of the world’s oceans. But he had never known that this was real, that it was anything more than empty words.
But now the knowledge etched itself into his brain, swallowed his personality, shrank his ego to a single molecule of humility, seared all his human experience into a lonely atom of wonder.
There, above or below—for he no longer knew whether he was looking up or down—were blank space-ways curling over the deserts of infinity. There, above and below and beyond, were the milky golden nebulae of star cities—impossible flowers of fire and time locked in the dark glass of the cosmos. There, if anywhere, was the face of God.
He wanted to die, he wanted to laugh, he wanted to sing or cry out with pain and fear. He wanted to dance for joy and simultaneously mourn the absolute tragedy.
He did nothing. He could do nothing. Nothing except stare with a subtle anguish that came near to praying.
Then suddenly the universe began to dance. It swung slowly into the gay leap of a long parabola. Stars and star cities, space, time and creation swung slowly round the fixed microcosm that was Richard Avery.
And then there was the greatest shock of all.
The planet danced into being. The planet. A pumpkin filled with light. A celestial pumpkin whose face was green with oceans, blue and white with clouds, red and brown and yellow with islands.
It was entirely beautiful. It was a ball of life.
There was a remembered voice. A voice remembered over centuries and light-years and the long limbos of dreams and imagination.
‘This,’ said the voice, ‘is home. This is the garden. This is the world where you will live and grow and understand. This is where you will discover enough but not too much. This is where life is. It is yours.’
Richard Avery’s eyes were filled with tears, because the pain and the knowledge and the promise and the truth were unbearable. His body was icy cold because, also, there was fear.
He knew he could not take any more. And at the moment of knowing, a tiny crystal burned into transient glory above the face of the planet.
It was a crystal he already recognized. It was the crystal of oblivion.
It was an act of mercy.
SIX
Avery opened his eyes. The sky was blue—an intense, lovely blue—the kind of blue that nobody could ever paint. He lay staring at it for a moment or two, staring and listening to the sound of the sea. And thinking back....
He had been in a kind of prison, and the roof of the prison had dissolved into a window on the universe, and then it was as if God had spoken. And the whole sequence was just too damned fantastic for words.
So now he was lying on a camp bed on the sea-shore, listening to the waves and drinking in the warmth of the early morning sun. It was a pleasant hallucination. He hoped this one would stay with him for a while.
‘Ah, you’re awake at last! ’
Avery turned his head cautiously, then sat up. The hallucination contained a man sitting on another camp bed and smoking a cigarette. It also contained two more beds bearing the presumably sleeping forms of Barbara and Mary. It also contained an infinity of ocean, a superb beach, a fringe of what looked vaguely like palm trees and a litte
r of camping equipment that might have been left over from a boy scouts’ jamboree.
‘I’m Tom Sutton. I imagine you are Richard Avery.
... Quite an interesting situation, don’t you think?’
‘Quite,’ said Avery. He took the outstretched hand.
‘Pleased to meet you.’ It sounded ridiculous, even though it happened to be true.
Tom Sutton was a tall, solidly built character, and looked as if he could give Avery a couple of stone without missing it. Although he only seemed about thirty, his stomach tended to bulge slightly with its tell-tale evidence of good living.
‘The girls are still out,’ said Tom. ‘That Mickey-Finn-type crystal certainly packs a wallop.’ He sighed. ‘Wish I’d had the knack of it. There have been times when I could have used it to good effect on clients.’
‘Have you any idea where we are?’ asked Avery.
Tom shrugged. ‘Hawaii, Tahiti, Tonga—you pays your penny and you takes your choice.’
‘We’re not on Earth,’ said Avery with sudden conviction.
‘Come again?’
‘I said we’re not on Earth.’
‘Now look here, old man. Don’t get too imaginative. It’s been a very peculiar experience, I agree. But one mustn’t let the balance of one’s judgement be disturbed.’ ‘Don’t talk rot,’ retorted Avery irritably. ‘I presume you had the same kind of experience as I did—roof dissolving into stars, and then an inscrutable message from a heavenly voice?’
Tom smiled. ‘It seems so.’
‘Well, I have news for you,’ said Avery, determined to break through the barrier of smugness, ‘I was not too busy having hysteria to notice that the stars weren’t our stars.’
‘What precisely do you mean, old man?’
Avery’s nerves were on edge, and he didn’t much care for the ‘old man’ bit. It was just too public school to be true. ‘I mean,’ he said evenly, ‘that the constellations were not terrestrial constellations—old man.’
‘Are you a bloody astronomer?’
‘No, but I have eyes in my head.’
Tom did a bit of rapid thinking. ‘So what? We live— perhaps I should say lived—in the northern hemisphere, old chap. The stuff we saw may be stars that are way down under.’
‘I’ve seen the southern hemisphere constellations,’ persisted Avery, ‘and I’m reasonably familiar with them.
... What I saw just didn’t belong.’
‘Hell,’ said Tom, ‘don’t try to frighten me—and for the love of Mike don’t start a panic when the girls are finally with us. The sun looks normal enough, the sea looks normal enough.... Take my word for it, we may be in foreign parts, but we are still on dear old terra firma.’
Avery’s irritation dissolved in his amusement at what he considered to be Tom’s ostrich-like attitude. ‘The terra may be firm enough, but it isn’t our terra—that’s the only point I’m making.’
‘You’ve fallen for the treatment,’ said Tom complacently. ‘For reasons unknown, some nit has dumped us in the South Pacific—or some equivalent region. I can tell you one thing. There’s going to be fun when I get back home. Habeas corpus and all that rot.’
‘Hello, people, I’ve arrived.’ The welcome interruption was provided by Barbara sitting up and regarding them both brightly. ‘What was that somebody was saying about the South Pacific?’
Tom shot Avery a warning glance, then he grinned cheerily at Barbara. ‘Glad you feel able to join the party at last.... I was just pointing out to Richard that in all probability we have been dumped somewhere in the South Pacific.’
Barbara yawned and shook her head. ‘Grow up, lover boy. Richard is right. We’re elsewhere.’
Avery raised an eyebrow. ‘How long have you been awake?’
‘Long enough.... A girl likes to know what kind of party she’s joining before becoming an active member.’ She stood up, stretched, then peered at Mary. ‘The sleeping beauty is still out. Ah, youth! Ah, carefree youth! ’
‘You’re both crazy,’ persisted Tom. ‘They haven’t been able to send a man to Mars, yet—so I don’t see how they could pop this little expedition down somewhere in the deep blue yonder.’
‘They?’ echoed Barbara. ‘Who do you mean by they?’ ‘Boffins—the space wallahs.’
‘My dear, dear Tom,’ said Barbara sweetly, ‘do me a small favour and stop talking like something out of the book of the film.... Incidentally, I know something you don’t. Try looking over your shoulder—in the sky.... A little higher.... Now a little to the left.’
He stared for a moment or two then became aware of a faint silvery crescent—high, remote, almost lost in the blueness.
‘The moon,’ said Tom finally. ‘So what. The moon in daytime is a perfectly normal phenomenon. See it a lot in summer. In the South Pacific the seasons and daylight appearance will be reversed, that’s all.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Barbara. ‘Now look low over that bunch of palm trees.’
Tom looked. So did Avery. There was a long silence. ‘Jesus! ’ said Tom. He sat down heavily on the camp bed and fumbled shakily for another cigarette. ‘Stone me! This is bloody ridiculous. It’s—it’s...’ Words quite definitely failed him.
Avery looked at Barbara. ‘You’re very observant,’ he said, ‘and very self-composed.’
‘It takes more than a couple of moons to give me the vapours,’ retorted Barbara. ‘Besides, hasn’t it struck you as rather odd how calm and reasonable we’re being after recent experiences? Especially that last one.’ She shuddered. ‘I was screaming for mercy at the end of it. And now here I am, cool as anything, dumped on a bloody alien sea-shore, counting the number of moons in the sky and taking away the number I first thought of If you ask me, they not only slipped us the crystal, they also slipped us a pretty good tranquillizer.’
Avery thought that one over. ‘It’s more than possible,’ he admitted. ‘By all the laws we ought to be pretty shattered. To tell the truth, I feel remarkably tranquil.... I just hope to hell it doesn’t wear off.’
‘It will,’ said Barbara grimly. ‘I just want someone to be there to catch me when it does, that’s all.’
‘Where—where am I?’ Mary suddenly sat up, with a dazed look on her face.
‘I never thought to hear those immortal words!’ exclaimed Barbara joyously. ‘Relax, ducky. You are among friends. The unhappy look on Tom’s face is simply due to the fact that he has just seen a couple of spare moons. Tom is very orthodox. He finds the situation a wee bit upsetting.’
Mary stood up cautiously. She gazed at the sand and the sea. Then she said suddenly: ‘This is very silly, I know, but at the moment I’m ravenously hungry.’
Avery surveyed the pile of camping equipment and the four neady stacked cabin trunks. ‘Well, let’s see what we can find. Whoever was responsible for this lot seems to have thought of just about everything. I just hope he, she or—more probably it—didn’t forget to include food.’
‘Look!’ said Barbara, pointing to a small cloth-covered basket. ‘Three will get you five it’s a picnic breakfast.’
Avery smiled. ‘No takers: This just about fits the absurd logic of the situation.’
It was indeed a picnic breakfast—of a kind. Chicken and ham sandwiches, bottles of milk, a thermos flask of coffee—and a bottle of champagne.
Tom looked at the champagne in awe. ‘This beats the celestial band. Nothing is real any more. We’re all cutting out regulation-size paper dolls in a psychiatric ward somewhere in London.’
‘Don’t open it,’ said Avery. ‘I have a feeling there is going to be a time when we really need that champagne.’ Barbara pulled a face. ‘I need it now.’
‘No you don’t. You need some nice, wholesome milk. It’s going to be a long day.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Mary, taking an envelope from the bottom of the basket. It was a thick brown envelope. She opened it and slipped the contents out on to her bed. There was a number of thin pieces of plastic, each about
post-card size and each bearing a coloured picture of an animal, a fish or a plant together with a few lines of text in English.
Avery picked one of them up and gazed at it curiously. It showed an animal. A long and rather ferocious-looking hybrid of snake and lizard that was basking by a small pool with its tail hanging in the water. This creature is dangerous, said the text. In habits it is similar to the terrestrial crocodile. The flesh is not good for eating.
Mary was looking at a slip of paper that she had found among the plastic pictures.
‘Listen to this,’ she said, her voice shaking a little. ‘From now on you will be required to find your own food and to ensure your own survival. The environment in which you have been placed is not abnormally hostile to human life. It is hoped that you will orientate successfully and derive something of value from the experience.,
The four of them looked at each other. Suddenly and strangely, the nightmare had become real. Too real.
‘Jesus H. Christ! ’ exploded Tom. His mouth opened again, but the words seemed unwilling to come out.
‘Oh, well, who’s for breakfast?’ said Barbara, with an attempt at brightness.
Mary vainly tried to hold back a flow of treacherous tears. ‘I—I’m not really hungry any more.’
‘Eat! ’ said Avery in a surprisingly harsh voice. ‘We’re all going to eat. And then we’ll decide what we are going to do. I don’t know where the hell we are, or what we’re supposed to be doing, but I’m going to stay alive. With all the crazy things that have been happening it’s more than a matter of survival, now. It’s a matter of principle. ... Somebody or something is playing very elaborate games with us. If for nothing else, I’m going to live long enough to reverse the process.’
He stared moodily at the sea-shore. A few moments ago it had seemed attractively unreal—almost like the setting for a romantic piece of nonsense in cinemascope. But now an invisible shadow loomed obscurely over the whole bright morning. The fiction had been switched into a peculiar reality. And even the sunlight had become sinister.
