Edmund Cooper

by Transit

  Tom’s mind was working along the same lines. He dumped the bundle of sleeping bags he had been carrying and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘What are we going to do about the bug-eyed monsters?’ he asked. ‘Can’t have the girls crawling up a wall because some dear little five-foot lizard wants to be friendly.’

  ‘Great minds,’ remarked Avery, leaving the platitude unfinished. ‘I think we are going to have to build a fence of some kind.’

  ‘Tall order. What about keeping a fire going all night?’ ‘That too.’ Avery smiled. ‘But the animals here may be a little different from the ones on earth. They may even like a fire. We shall just have to find out.’

  Tom was silent for a while. At length he said: ‘The trunks seem reasonably weatherproof. If we take out the kind of things we’re likely to need in the immediate future; and then lay the trunks end to end round the back of the tents, they ought to make a fairly substantial part of a barrier.... What do you think?’

  ‘They certainly ought to be used until we can find something better. We’ll have to complete the circle with driftwood—and we’ll want a stack of that for the fire, as well.’ Avery took the revolver out of his pocket and felt the sore patch on his leg gingerly. He put the gun into one of the tents. ‘I’m tired of lugging that thing around with me,’ he said, watching Tom carefully.

  ‘All hands have to go armed,’ remarked Tom drily. ‘The Fuehrer’s personal orders.’

  ‘The Fuehrer will wear a knife,’ retorted Avery. Tom made no move to claim the gun. Presently the two of them went to collect driftwood. The sun glared fiercely down.

  They came back hot, weary and loaded about half an hour later. Finding driftwood of a suitable size had not been as easy as Avery had hoped.

  They saw Barbara and Mary sitting in front of the tents, sipping water from plastic tumblers.

  ‘That’s something I should have thought about,’ said Avery, licking his dry lips. ‘How do we know it’s fit to drink?’

  ‘I found a canvas bucket,’ said Mary. ‘It had a box of pills inside. The instructions said to dissolve one pill in each gallon of drinking water.’

  ‘I see. About how many pills are there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Five hundred. Perhaps a thousand. See for yourself.’ She gave him the box. Avery did a rough count of the top layer and then an even rougher multiplication sum. He thought the answer came to nearer two thousand.

  ‘How does the water taste?’

  ‘Like Vichy water,’ said Barbara. ‘It’s got a pleasant sort of tingle. Try some. You both look as if you need it.’ She got two more tumblers and poured from the canvas bucket.

  Avery sipped some of the water, rolled it round his mouth and swallowed. For a split second, the entire landscape seemed to ripple slightly—as if he were drinking some kind of alcohol with an immediate and powerful kick. Then the ripple froze back into reality, and it was as if colours and shapes were even sharper than before.

  Barbara was right. It did taste a bit like Vichy water. But, perhaps because of the strenuous work they had been doing, it seemed the most refreshing liquid he had ever drunk.

  ‘Quite a wallop!’ said Tom with enthusiasm. He drained his tumbler and held it out for more.

  It was then that Mary screamed.

  Avery dropped the tumbler and whipped round, his knife miraculously already in his hand. Out of the comer of his eye he saw—and was enormously reassured by it— that Tom was in a similar, half-crouching position, with his knife ready to strike as well. They gazed towards the trees, about twenty yards away, at which Mary was staring and pointing. There was nothing.

  ‘I—I saw a man! ’

  Still there was nothing. They all stared in silence for a few seconds. Then Barbara broke the tension.

  ‘Never scream at men, honey. It tends to give them a bad impression.’

  ‘What was he like?’ asked Avery, still keeping his eyes on the trees.

  ‘Tall, golden hair, very solid looking.’

  ‘That wasn’t a man. That was a vision,’ said Barbara. ‘The spring water seems to be more potent than you’d think.’

  ‘I did see him,’ persisted Mary.

  Avery looked at her. She looked rather shaken, but she did not seem like the sort of girl who might be inclined to have visions of tall golden men. ‘What was he wearing?’ asked Avery.

  ‘Nothing—I think.’

  Tom snorted. ‘That’s just about all we need—a bloody naked Adonis lurking in the background.’

  ‘Do you know whether he was armed or not?’ went on Avery.

  ‘He didn’t seem to be. But—but it was all so quick. ... I think he was just as surprised as I was.’

  Avery thought that at least a token investigation was called for. ‘Tom, you and I will go and take a look. If there was somebody, he is probably half a mile away by now; but I suppose we had better try to make a thorough search of all possible cover within range of about a hundred yards.’ He turned to Barbara. ‘I parked the revolver in the tent here. You’d better get it and keep your eyes skinned while we’re gone. Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to.’

  The search took quite a long time. Nobody saw anything. By the time they got back to camp, Avery was feeling tired, and irritable. He saw the smoke rising from the fire that Barabara and Mary had made, and was unreasonably angry.

  ‘Who the devil told you to make a fire. It can be seen for miles.’

  Barbara gazed at him coolly. ‘No one, actually. I just used my own little brains.’

  ‘You didn’t use them very well, then. Tom and I collected that driftwood to make a fence, not a bloody picnic fire.’

  ‘I assumed,’ said Barbara, ‘that you would not care to eat your meat raw. Perhaps I should have enquired more closely into your tastes.’

  Someone had skinned and dismembered the ‘rabbit’, and Mary was busy roasting parts of it on a couple of sticks. Someone had also been collecting fruit. There was a small pile of what looked like grapefruit and some extraordinarily large pears. Someone, in fact, had been busy.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Avery. ‘My nerves are on edge.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Barbara. ‘Incidentally, I checked the fruit with our coloured cigarette cards. The pears are supposed to be very nutritious, and the others are thirst-quenchers. At least we shan’t starve to death. About every tenth tree has fruit of some kind.’

  The pieces of rabbit were spitting and sizzling as Mary, with sweat pouring down her face, doggedly turned them over the embers of the tiny fire. The smell of cooking meat that assailed Avery’s nostrils was positively enchanting.

  Mary sighed. ‘Lunch is about ready. You can have roast fingers as well, if you like.’

  ‘Hang on a second,’ said Barbara. ‘I’ll get plates and cutlery. We might as well keep it as civilized as possible.’ She laid four plates neatly on the ground in front of one of the tents.

  The rabbit tasted good—not like terrestrial rabbit, but still good. It had quite a strong flavour, but its flesh was very tender.

  As they sat in front of the tents at this, their first meal that could come under the heading of ‘living off the country’, Avery marvelled at the unreal normality of it all. Not so long ago they had been living in London in a bleak February. They had been strangers. Perhaps they had even passed each other in the street; or during the rush hour maybe a couple of them had been pushed together in the Underground. Yet now they were no longer strangers: they had been collectively banded—was that the right word?—light-years away from Earth in a conspiracy of survival.

  Avery began to try to take stock of his companions. Tom was the kind of man with whom, he knew, he had very little in common. If the two of them had been brought together somehow in the old days—funny how one already began to think in terms of the old days—they would have taken an instant dislike to each other and would probably have avoided any further meeting. But now, depending upon each other, each of them was going to have to adapt. Avery would have to
get used to Tom’s silly jokes, his brittle bonhomie and his little stupidities. Tom, he supposed, would also have to adjust to Avery’s irritability, his impatience and what, trying to be objective, he regarded as his own colourless personality. Yet, in an odd sort of way, Tom seemed reliable. He seemed to possess a combination of stubbornness and staying power. Within the limitations of his vaguely adolescent approach, he could be a useful character. Avery remembered the moment when Mary had screamed. Tom had not stood by with a foolish look on his face. He had been ready to fight. And if there had been cause to fight, doubtless he would have given a pretty good account of himself.

  As for the women, well, they were more complex characters than Tom. Or, perhaps, thought Avery, it was just that all women seemed complex to him—all except one. But he stopped that train of thought immediately. Now was not the time to think of Christine, even though recent experiences had somehow made her seem obscurely close.

  He gave his attention to Barbara. Superficially, she was tough and capable. Superficially—and, indeed, so far all the evidence had supported this impression—she did not seem like the kind of woman who would have the vapours if things went badly. But, thought Avery, the toughness could be no more than a front—a mask which she had learned to present to a tough and unfriendly world. Underneath, he suspected, there was a different Barbara: a child looking for a lost doll, a little girl in search of security...

  Mary, perhaps, was the reverse—superficially fragile, yet with the kind of inward reserves that might, in the end, permit her to endure a great deal. Physically she was not as attractive or as exciting as Barbara, but her personality was more subtle, more intriguing. Perhaps there would come a time, especially if they were stuck here for long—God damn it! there was almost certain to come such a time—when sex problems would be the most important factor affecting the success or failure of their bid for survival. Avery didn’t want any sex problems. He was even pretty sure that he didn’t want any sex relationships. He was afraid of them. And he had been afraid for a long time....

  Suddenly, he realized that Tom was talking to him. ‘Daydreaming, old sport? You haven’t said a word in the last twenty minutes. You’re not going into a decline, I trust.’

  ‘Sorry, I was miles away That was a decent bit of meat, Tom. I’m glad you bagged it.’

  ‘Permission to hunt for some more?’

  Avery smiled. ‘Yes, but not with the gun. We must try to keep that as a great deterrent.’

  Mary stretched and sighed. She gazed up at the still clear sky, shading her eyes against the sun, which had apparently passed its zenith and was now fairly low over the sea. ‘What a gorgeous climate this is. It’s the one good thing about the whole situation I don’t feel like doing a thing this afternoon. I just want to lie back and luxuriate.’

  ‘No reason why you shouldn’t, I suppose,’ said Avery. ‘But Tom and I will have to go after some more driftwood. There still isn’t enough for a fence and a fire.’

  ‘It still strikes me as remarkably odd,’ observed Barbara, suppressing a yawn, ‘that we aren’t having fits of hysterics, gloom and despondency.’

  ‘Simultaneously?’enquired Tom.

  She laughed. ‘Or in sequence—according to taste. The trouble is, how does one behave in a situation like this? I’m sure it hasn’t been laid down in any book on etiquette. So I don’t know whether to scream or relax.’ ‘There’ll be plenty of time for screaming,’ Avery assured her seriously, ‘when we have made ourselves as safe and secure as possible. At the moment, I suspect we are both traumatized and sedated.’

  ‘Big words,’ scoffed Barbara. ‘Big empty words. Meaning we don’t know a damn thing. Maybe it’s as well.’ There was silence for a minute or so. Silence wrapped in the even murmur of the sea.

  At length, Avery said: ‘Well, let’s go after that wood. We want to get as much as possible before sunset.’ Barbara collected up the plates. ‘Please, sir, may we bathe while you’re away?’

  Avery thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said, ‘definitely not. I’ll think about it tomorrow. Hell, there’s far too much to think about, as it is.’

  NINE

  Sunset came with tropical suddenness. The evening meal was over—nothing but fruit, this time—and the fence, such as it was, was in position. One moment the world was still light and warm; and next moment, it seemed as if the sun had been completely swallowed by the sea. And a cool wind rustled through the trees, bearing with it an invisible tide of twilight and darkness.

  The fence was less of a fence than a three foot high tangle of driftwood. It enclosed a few square yards containing two tents, four human beings and a fire. It enclosed a world within a world.

  Avery looked at his companions in the firelight and wondered if they felt as lonely and exposed as he did. During the hours of daylight there had been so much to do, so much to think of doing, that there had been little opportunity for private thoughts and feelings. Daylight itself was a cloak of comfort; but now the cloak had been taken away, and there was a feeling of nakedness and fear.

  The stars were coming out. Alien stars. Stars of another galaxy or perhaps just another part of Earth’s galaxy. What an arrogant way to describe it—Earth’s galaxy! It was related to the archaic thinking that had placed man at the fixed centre of the universe, sitting on a flat world, the one and only darling child of an anthropomorphic god.

  But perhaps God had many children, and perhaps some of his children were adept at the manufacture of hypnotic crystals. And other things...

  Anyway, the stars were no less beautiful for being unfamiliar stars. They shone without warmth, without compassion. But that was part of the beauty; for they were the ultimate in detachment. Hydrogen bombs, London winters, human hopes and fears—even interstellar abduction—were as nothing to those bright needle points of eternity.

  Avery felt that it was going to be a long time before he could come to terms with his predicament. He could already accept it as a fact—in so far as any of the facts of recent experience had proved acceptable—but he could not yet accept it emotionally. London, evidently, was light-years away. That, in itself, meant nothing. It might just as well be a few hundred or a few thousand miles over the seaward horizon. Each was remote, in different ways, beyond the power of imagining.

  What he could not accept was that, for all practical purposes, London both as a symbol and as a place had ceased to exist. Intellectually, he knew that the chances of seeing it—or Earth—again were very low. Yet the rattle of the Underground was still in his ears, the subtle throb of the city seemed to find an echo even in his pulse. He wondered what would happen to him if or when he abandoned hope—not a specific hope, but the curious, almost unformed hope that some day, once again, he would belong. For the first time, he was surprised to discover, mankind felt to him like a great family. It was an odd sensation, this knowledge of being a child, lost and far from home. But he was not entirely cut off from mankind; for he had the company of three people. Looking at them, he wondered what kind of confusions were whirling round in their heads.

  Barbara had a bottle of whisky. In fact, Barbara had about six dozen bottles of whisky. Her cabin trunk had been lined with them just as Avery’s had been lined with cigarettes. Somehow, he had not thought that she would be a heavy drinker. It was not, as she had carefully explained when the bottle was produced, that she was an alcoholic or even ‘in a sordid state’. It was just that she had needed a crutch on which to lean in a world where she had had to endure an unending role as a TV immortal in a hospital that looked as if it would go on admitting imaginary patients until the entire population was neurotic, bed-ridden or both.

  Barbara sat with Tom in front of the tent that he referred to brightly as ‘the girls’ dorm’. They each had tumblers—and the whisky. Mary and Avery sat less than a couple of yards away, but enough to make it a gap, outside ‘the men’s dorm’. Avery also nursed a whisky—a small one. But Mary had steadfastly refused to drink. She looked at Barbara somewhat
anxiously. Barbara was on her third generous double, but so far there did not appear to be much effect. Tom, however, was looking rather melancholy. He had matched her, glass for glass.

  For a little while, there had been a lull in the conversation. But the spell was broken when Avery threw a handful of wood on the fire and sent a shower of sparks up towards the sky.

  Barbara let out a deep sigh, shook her head, then said abruptly: ‘We’re going to have to have a naming of names.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Avery was bewildered.

  ‘The flora and fauna, stupid. All those pretty pictures tell us what the animals and plants are like in these parts, and what they’re good—or bad—for. But they don’t have any names. I think it’s very important for animals to have names. Besides, how the hell do we talk about them if they don’t?’

  ‘She’s got a point,’ said Tom solemnly. ‘Damn confusing to pop off at a six-legged rabbit when it isn’t a rabbit, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ said Mary primly.

  Tom laughed. ‘The Leith police dismisseth us.’ He delivered himself of the tongue-twister safely, and with as much satisfaction as a scientist propounding a new and revolutionary theory.

  ‘Simple. It’s a rabbitype,’ announced Barbara.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘A six-legged rabbit. It’s a rabbitype. There’s also a rhinotype, a crocotype and a doggotype, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.’

  Avery smiled. ‘That’s nice and convenient. But how would you describe the Greek god that Mary saw? Incidentally there doesn’t appear to be a picture card to tell us what he does.’

  ‘Simple,’ said Barbara. ‘He’s either a supertype or a sexotype,’ she giggled, ‘depending upon your sex, how you look at him, and what he does to you.’

  ‘I hope,’ retorted Avery, ‘that he doesn’t do anything at all—if he exists.’

  ‘He exists, all right,’ said Mary. She shivered. ‘I wish you hadn’t reminded me of him.’