The Giant Stumbles

by John Lymington

  “If he does not see me now, there may be no midday,” Nigel said.

  The cold eyes behind the lenses grew sharp.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and went out.

  She went to Mr. Plender’s room. “It’s the scientist, Rhodes,” she said. “But he looks very queer to me. Most excitable. Very wound up.”

  “Nigel Rhodes?” Plender said, stirring coffee and frowning. “I read about him yesterday, was it? He’s gone barmy or some such. A breakdown.”

  “Oh!” Miss Walton seemed relieved. “So that’s it. He said if he didn’t see the Uptop there wouldn’t be a midday.”

  “He said that?” Plender stared and then relaxed. “Oh. Then it’s true. He’s run off the rim.”

  “What am I going to do?” she asked.

  “I’ll handle him if you like,” he said. ‘You’d better stay in the room though. By the bell.”

  “But he insists on seeing the Minister. You won’t do.

  “Illusions of grandeur,” said Plender. What’s the matter with me ? I’m permanent. The Minister’s only a name …” . .

  “I didn’t ask him,” said Miss Walton with a faint sign of irritation. “He just keeps saying the Minister or no body.”

  “Well, shall I go in and see what George has to say. he offered.

  “It won’t hurt. You see, he does know this man.

  “Yes, well I’ll go in.”

  He got up, straightened his tie, hair and jacket, then knocked on the door of the adjoining room. When e went in at the command, George Sheppard was writing an answer to a letter on the back of a duplicated press handout. He looked up stonily.

  “What is it, Wilfred? Do you know this coffee’s cold. The milk’s gone skinny. You know it makes me vomit.

  I don’t know why. It’s just any bits in drink. Perhaps as a child… ”

  “I’ll get another cup,” Plender said, and took it oil the desk. “What I came about was a man. You know him. He’s rather well known, but I just don t know w at to do.”

  “What is this? A quiz programme? Who is he.

  “Nigel Orson Rhodes, the scientific writer.

  “I remember,” said Sheppard, pen poised over is letter. “What about him?”

  “He’s rather queer. I heard he’d had a breakdown, and he’s here and says if he doesn’t see you straight away there won’t be any midday.”

  Sheppard looked up slowly. “He says that?

  “It does sound rather peculiar, doesn’t it?

  “I am prepared to wait and see if midday turns up, Sheppard said with heavy humour. “I shall be disapointed if it doesn’t. There is the lunch at the French Embassy, and I would not miss the cuisine for any small natter, like the sudden stoppage of time.”

  “Quite,” said Wilfred Plender. “But what shall I do?”

  “Ask him to come back this afternoon.”

  “He insists that it’s very urgent.”

  “Well, see him.”

  “I’ll try, sir,” said Wilfred and went out with the coffee cup. As he closed the door he said to Miss Walton, “We’ll see him in the waiting-room. There won’t be anybody there at this time of day.”

  “What—both of us together?” Miss Walton said.

  “I might need a witness,” Plender said.

  “But he’s quite reasonable,” she objected. “I’ve been thinking. He didn’t mention politics, so I don’t think it’s a stunt.”

  “I’ll just leave the door open,” Wilfred said, and went in to the waiting-room. He listened to Nigel’s request.

  “The Minister is very busy and has asked me…”

  “This is the most serious matter he is ever likely to handle,” Nigel said quietly. “It is absolutely essential that I see him.”

  “But can’t you give me some idea of what it is about ?” “I can, but I won’t. I must see the Minister.”

  The Under Secretary was impressed by the man’s sincerity, his earnestness. He excused himself and went back into the Sanctum.

  “The man seems perfectly genuine, sir,” he said. “I think it might be as well to see him.”

  Sheppard went on writing on the backs of typed sheets. “Very well. Midday seems to be his favourite time. Let it be then.”

  Wilfred Plender went and gave Nigel the message. “Bloody fool,” Nigel said and walked out. In the passage he shouted, “I’ll be back on time.”

  Leila was waiting in the car listening to the radio. She switched off as he got in and took the wheel.

  “Noon,” he said. “Let’s go across the river and get a drink. I’m mad.”

  As he drove away she said, “He’ll see you, anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  She felt uneasy, nervous, depressed. He drove her to a pub whose doors were only then rattling open, and a cleaner was in the act of walking out of the bar when they went in. He ordered drinks and talked to the fat barmaid about the weather.

  “It seems they’ve had some very bad storms all along the south coast, though,” she said. “Done some damage, it has. It was on the wireless just now.”

  Leila suddenly felt she could not sit there any longer. She gave him a passing glance of bitterness, then went out, saying:

  “I won’t be long.”

  She walked quickly through the hot air, angry with herself and everything. She went into a phone box and rang a private number.

  “Is that you, Rex? Leila here … All right. Yes. He’s in town with me now. Seeing the Minister of Defence at twelve… . Yes. It isn’t so simple as it was … I mean, there’s been some sort of speed-up. The date’s come forward … Well, he was right. It isn’t a mathematical error. It’s just that somebody’s been loosing off some more bombs somewhere. He didn’t allow for that … If you

  like. I’ll tell you where it is…. ”

  When she came out of the box she felt she had deliberately hurt herself and felt a strange, savage delight in having done it.

  Under an hour to go, she thought. Under an hour.

  He was sitting on a stool, staring at the floor. She guessed he had had more than one since she had been away. He looked as if he had suffered another downswing of emotion, but when he looked up at her his eyes were bright and cool.

  She did not meet his glance.

  “I’m going to walk,” he said. “I want to get my thoughts together. Pick me up at the Ministry later.”

  She nodded and he went out into the bright sun and the quick, scattered traffic of the mid-morning.

  She got on with the drink she had left unfinished and sat there glancing at the morning papers on the counter. Holiday news, racing, cricket—it was all so very ordinary and peaceful on a hot morning. But it was extraordinary now, in that it didn’t mean anything anymore. The Time was coming on so fast that, to her then, it seemed his effort to get something done was quite useless. Nothing was of any use any more.

  Rex came in, quick, hard, suspicious.

  “He’s gone walking,” she said.

  “What’s this new twist?” he asked. His face was grey under a tan, and his eyes weary with fear. She was shocked to see so many signs of demoralization in him since the night of the revelation. She had never thought him capable of such belief.

  She told him the change that had come about.

  “If there were more tests, the news hasn’t been released,” he said. “But if there weren’t, the whole calculation falls down, eh?”

  “There must have been,” she said. “The storms are quickening up. There can’t be any mistake.”

  “Why did you ring me ?”

  “Because I hate your guts, and as I hate myself too, that makes good companions of us,” she said sharply. “You want me to stop him?”

  “You couldn’t now. Why do it, anyway? There isn’t an estimated deadline any more. It can come any time, Rex eased his collar with a finger.

  “How did he get here, anyway? I had a couple of thugs down there to scare him.”

  “They did more than scare,” she
said. “I nearly killed one. Drove him down.”

  “I didn’t know what to do.” He stared at the wall an drummed the counter with his fingers. “I don’t know now. I should have known he would get by … Why can’t he calculate the new time?”

  “There are details he can’t get soon enough.”

  “I’ve tapped several sources—it’s true all right. It’s a true as hell.”

  “What are you doing about it?” she probed suddenly He looked at her, then away, and gave a too-careless shrug.

  “What can one do? Anyone?”

  “I bet you’ve thought of something for Self.”

  “I’m taking the risk, the same as everyone else.” “Then why worry about what time it comes?”

  He signed for another drink, which gave him pause “How can you help worrying? It’s natural, isn’t it?” She said nothing for a while.

  “What about those men down there. Aren’t you worried?”

  “I just hadn’t thought of them. They’re useless, anyway. I was never very serious about them.”

  “One’s hurt,” she said.

  “I’ll phone through a message to forget the whole thing. We arranged to collect any message. Where’s the phone ?”

  She told him where and he went out, slow, thoughtful. When he came back he said:

  “There are no phones through to the area. Apparently storms have blown the whole system down there.”

  “It’s getting hotter,” she said, watching her finger draw aimless circles on the counter.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I

  The Defence Minister listened, stared and, against his will, became fascinated. For relief from the strange magic of the man’s telling, he watched the slow revolutions of the tape reels recording Nigel’s voice.

  “I see,” he said, and switched off the tape and pressed his buzzer, using a hand for each simultaneous action.

  Plender came in and Sheppard indicated the tape.

  “Get the details out to these departments,” he said and gave a brief fist. “I want most immediate action.”

  Plender took the tape and went. Sheppard sat back and made a steeple of his hands.

  “What do you think might be the effects ?” he asked.

  “I think that the sudden deceleration will cause a change in the gravitational pull which will momentarily loosen the earth’s crust, or outer skin. There will also be inertia, so that the crust will be shifted over the earth. Meaning that everything we know will be engulfed by a mass of rock and surface matter.”

  “You mean that our civilization and everything we know might suddenly be buried perhaps miles deep in a new resettlement of the earth’s surface?”

  “That will be the final movement of this deceleration, yes. But I think that water will, for the time being, swamp everything because of its greater volume and volatility.”

  “You know that this shifting of the earth’s crust is one theory put forward as explaining the Ice Ages—the more recent ones, that is ?”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  “We might then be drifting into being the Mammoths of another Ice Age.”

  Nigel shrugged. “Anything is possible. The only thing that I am grateful for is the practical way you’ve taken it.”

  “I know about these storms,” Sheppard said. “Also of one or two other phenomena. People have been blaming Service experimental stations for it. There are certain people anxious to blame us for everything … The thing which has really impressed me is that there have been cobalt bomb tests carried out in the last few hours, but you could not possibly have known it, nor the location.” “So that’s it.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Sheppard looked at him with steady, unfrightened eyes.

  “What can I do? I have given orders, as you saw, for every great brain in the country, and out of it, to be given these facts of yours. Frankly, I do not think that anything can come of it but further proof.”

  “You don’t think that anything can be done ?”

  “As a religious man, I am a believer in miracles,”

  Sheppard said. “I shall pray for one, but it is for God to decide.”

  “Is that all?”

  Sheppard gestured with his hands. “I may as well tell you that for some time in recent tests there have been unusual indications which have greatly puzzled our scientists. As I recall these indications now, I can see the warnings they were giving. I can only say that it is a pity we did not read them before this.”

  “And that’s as far as we go,” Nigel said, getting up.

  “I will do everything that I can,” Sheppard said, rising. “But I believe that—apart from the miracle I hope for— it is much too late.”

  II

  “If we waited till this afternoon,” Harry whispered, “we could go and get them all aboard. Then it wouldn’t matter.”

  “What will Mummy say?” John squeaked.

  “Mummy won’t know.”

  “She’ll be cross as anything, I ’spect.”

  “We can get them in the back end,” said Harry. “She’ll see us coming up the jetty.”

  “She won’t because she won’t be here,” said Harry, triumphantly. “You see, Amanda’s coming and I heard Mummy say she would have to go to the doctor’s, and Amanda and Joe always go off together and so it will be ill right.”

  “But it’ll spoil the game, won’t it?”

  “Course not, silly. When Mummy’s gone and Joe’s with Mandy, we’ll go ashore. Then we can get everything we want.”

  “I’m getting tired of this game—being on the boat, I mean,” John said. “I wanna ride my bicycle.”

  “Well, you can have a ride this afternoon. There’ll be plenty of time. We can sneak down the jetty and put the drawbridge down again. Joe won’t see.”

  The idea of conspiracy fascinated them, and as long as they managed to keep their chokingly exciting secret, they would be ashore by just before tea that afternoon; Harry to rejoin his beloved animals, the rabbits, the goat, the pigeons, the lizards, the snakes and a cat or two, who would be sure to turn up at the sound of feeding, and John to his bicycle.

  “Don’t forget,” said Harry in a hiss, “don’t tell a living solitary soul. Swear !”

  “Swear,” agreed John, and buckled on his revolver belt.

  III

  “The house is empty,” the Top Man said. “They seem to be on that hulk out there.”

  “Well, we can’t get on the jetty,” Bill said, feeling his damaged ribs. “They’ve chained it up.”

  “We’ll just wait,” the Top Man said. “They can’t stay on there for ever.”

  “I don’t know why it didn’t sink in that storm,” Bill said.

  “It’s an old river barge,” the Top Man said. “You can’t sink them.”

  “They must have gone on there because of us.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “He got away,” Bill said. “What’s the sense in staying?”

  “The orders were if he did get through we were to have the kids. Remember?”

  “It’s a snatch. I didn’t reckon on that.”

  “You reckoned on easy money, as usual. Sometimes you have to get it the hard way.”

  Bill felt his ribs.

  “I don’t like this place,” he said gruffly. “That storm last night gave me a feeling—smell of death ”

  “For God’s sake, Bill!” the Top Man said angrily. ‘What’s the matter with you? Did that car knock your bloody head off?”

  “It’s just a feeling,” Bill said. “I got it again, that storm this morning. I never saw one like that before.

  I could feel it trying to lug my guts out.”

  “Cut it out!” the Top Man snarled.

  “Oh,” Bill said, with sudden insight. “It got you too, did it?”

  The Top Man’s lip twisted, but he did not reply.

  IV

  Nigel did not look at Rex in t
he back as he got into the car beside Leila.

  “Where did you pick up that scum?” Nigel said.

  “She wanted to talk—to tell me the new development,” Rex said urgently.

  “There is no new development,” Nigel said. “The time’s shorter, that’s all. How have you planned to meet it? With prayer or a couple of bodyguards to stand around and take the first shock?”

  “I’ll take my chance,” Rex said.

  “You will. But how are you trying to dodge it?”

  “I’ll take my chance, I say!”

  “I don’t believe it. You’ve got some way. Top-flight executive….”

  “Air,” said Leila. “Why didn’t I think of it?”

  “What happened in there ?” Rex demanded.

  “They can do nothing,” Nigel said. “Pity, but there it is.”

  Rex fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes.

  “What’s the new time of doom ?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” Nigel said. “Is it air? Is that your gateway to glory?”

  “Not so easy, if you don’t know when to expect anything,” Rex said.

  “You don’t want to go anywhere,” Nigel said. “Just stay up there till it’s over. Come down to refuel every four or five hours. You’d be unlucky if it caught you on the ground.”

  Rex ignored him, seemingly.

  “So there’s nothing new, that you can tell?” he said.

  “Why do you want to know?” Nigel sneered. “You won’t publish anything but that I’m a looney. The only reason Sheppard didn’t bother about your story was that he doesn’t read the cheap blatts. Now, get out of it. I’m going back.”

  “Listen, Nigel….”

  “Get out,” Nigel said again. “I know that we may never see each other again. We will probably both die within hours. But I’m not shaking hands. As far as I’m concerned, if I’ve got to die I’ll have the consolation of knowing you’re bloody well dead, too. Now get out, you bastard.”