by John Brunner
Circumspect, but moving quickly because it was another dark and very cold night, with sleet pelting down which had soaked and frozen him to the marrow, Valentine Crawford approached the block of low-rent council flats which was his home, humming Big Bill Broonzy’s Black Brown and White to keep up his spirits.
–Wish I didn’t have to leave the boy alone, but bringing him out with that cough of his in weather like tonight … Still, I hope he’ll be pleased with these toys.
He’d managed to acquire some very good stuff for Toussaint, and paid next to nothing for it. It came from a street-market. The trader had meant all the items to sell before Christmas, and today had marked them down because he was in a hurry to push his barrow home out of the wet.
Now, up the outside stairs. Here he was always cautious; this time he was especially so, because during the holiday the light at the corner of his landing had been broken by a gang of drunken youths throwing stones, and it hadn’t yet been repaired.
–Another ten paces, and …
“There he is,” a voice muttered, and two dark shapes rushed from deep shadow. He raised his purchases to shield his face, so they went for his belly instead, and a line that burned like ice was drawn across him hip to hip. He fell screaming in a clutter of ill-wrapped parcels and they kicked him a couple of times and ran down to the street laughing with satisfaction. Whoever they were.
–Bloody awful Christmas! Bloody awful weather! Bloody awful people! Bloody army! If I’d known I was letting myself in for this lot I’d never have signed up!
Dennis Stevens had been no farther north before than Birmingham. Now, with the rest of his patrol–five counting the officer in command–he was nervously marching along a road in a slummy district of Glasgow where half the street-lamps had been smashed and every window was dark, though he was convinced people were watching on every side, waiting to do something dreadful.
He’d had vague mental pictures, as a boy, of army life. His father had been conscripted for National Service and spent a year in Cyprus. But those images of a strange country where you couldn’t read the writing, let alone speak the language, and swarthy snipers lurked among sun-scorched rocks, didn’t seem to correspond at any point with this reality of walking down a cold street carrying a gun.
–I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. It must be what they want the government to do: send us here. Otherwise why would they be planting bombs and setting buildings on fire and all the rest of it? The more they do of that sort of thing, the more troops are going to be shipped north, and in the end, far as I can see, the whole bloody city is going to be a pile of smoking ruins!
Somebody had celebrated Christmas by blowing up the Town Hall. He’d seen the casualties. Only half a dozen of them, people who’d been walking or driving past, because of course the place was empty over the holiday, but it had turned his stomach to watch them being carried away.
–And who’d want to live in a ruined city?
And then …
“Down!” A scream from the lieutenant leading the patrol, and Dennis Stevens reacted just that fraction too late. From a rooftop someone had thrown a chopper-bomb, full of nails and old razor-blades and bits of glass. It landed square at his heels and cut him up, as his sergeant later told reporters, “like a side of butcher’s meat.”
He heard a rattle of shots, and carried that and pain into oblivion.
“It’s a disaster!” moaned Amelia, Lady Washgrave. “The trouble we had to go to, and the expense, issuing all those revised leaflets, and having stickers pasted over our Crusade posters at the last moment–”
“Calm yourself, ma’am,” Don Gebhart soothed. “Everything will be okay.”
“But the dirt the papers have dug up!” She was literally wringing her hands. “I didn’t know that last time he was here he was arrested for possessing marijuana! Nobody told me! I really think the Home Secretary ought to have known, though, and I’m going to ring up Mr Charkall-Phelps right away and give him a piece of my mind!”
“Ma’am, that was before his conversion,” Gebhart insisted. “And isn’t it one of the chief reasons for your Crusade that in the bad old days of even eight years ago things like that were being allowed to happen–girls of thirteen being debauched by young men, sometimes even with the consent of their parents?”
Conscious of having scored a point, though sweating slightly because it had been such a near thing, he added, “So don’t you worry, ma’am. I’ve talked with Bob’s doctors and they say he’s getting on fine, just fine. Like the posters promise, he’s going to be there on schedule come January first, and who could ask for better proof of his devotion to the cause of the Lord?”
“Professor Kneller?” the phone said softly.
“Ah … Yes! Who is that?”
“Professor, does the term ‘VC’ mean anything to you?”
“What? Who is that speaking?”
“Ah. I thought you might recognise the name. I think we ought to have a quiet talk.”
“I said who is that?”
“Do you know a pub called the Hampstead Arms? If you would care to meet me …”
X
“I wonder why ‘Mr X’ chose this of all pubs for our rendezvous,” Kneller muttered as he braked his car opposite the Hampstead Arms.
“Was it Maurice’s regular local, Hector?” Randolph asked from the back seat.
“No, but he liked it better than the one nearest his home. I came here with him two or three times.” Climbing out of the car, Hector shivered. Though the snow and sleet had stopped and the sky was clear, the wind was knife-keen.
“All I can say is, I hope we’re not on a complete fool’s errand,” Kneller grunted as he locked the driver’s door.
“Or walking into an ambush laid by the killer,” Hector suggested.
Kneller stared in horror, then relaxed and gave a snort.
“Hah! I took you seriously for a moment. If that’s what you think, why did you agree to come with us?”
Hastening across the road, he pulled open the pub door and stood back to let his companions pass ahead. Hector, going first, stopped so abruptly Randolph bumped into him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Sorry! I just recognised someone. The man at the table in the corner.” With a jerk of his head Hector indicated a thin man with a skimpy new brown beard, wearing a black anorak, sitting next to an attractive dark-haired woman in a blue coat. Both of them had reacted to the newcomers’ arrival … but then, so had everybody else in the crowded bar, if only to glance up and see who had let in that blast of freezing air and made the Christmas decorations dance.
“Who is he?” Kneller muttered. “He looks vaguely familiar.”
“Name of Fry,” Hector answered. “Came to our casualty department the other day with a friend who’d been beaten up by a godhead gang. Funny to find him this far north. I recall he said he lives in Kentish Town.”
“Lured by this place’s sudden notoriety?” Randolph suggested sourly. “I bet they haven’t done this much business for ages … Did you say he was beaten up by godheads?”
“Not him. His friend. The same morning my office was vandalised–I mean, the same morning I found it had been.”
“Aren’t they bastards?” Randolph shuddered. “You’ve seen the evening papers?” One lay on the seat of a nearby chair which was temporarily vacant; he pointed at it. “Two of them have been charged with setting fire to a Hindu temple in Willesden. Synagogues next, I suppose.”
“What do you mean, next?” Kneller countered. “More like already! Ask my Jewish friends about it … Well, what’s it to be, assuming I can fight my way through and get served?”
“Just a minute,” Hector said. “Fry’s coming this way.”
Pushing towards them with a crooked smile, the brown-bearded man said quietly, “Good evening, Dr Campbell. I didn’t expect to meet you here.”
“I–ah …” Hector hesitated, unwilling to get involved in conversation owing to the r
eason which had brought them. As though divining his thoughts, Malcolm turned his smile into a grin.
“But I did expect Professor Kneller and Dr Randolph.”
There was a dead pause between them, while the rest of the pub chatter continued unabated.
“You?” Kneller forced out at last.
“Forgive the cloak-and-dagger approach, but it was a shot in the dark anyway, and even if I suggested this place for our meeting I couldn’t be sure you’d take me seriously. I’m glad you did so, though.” Lowering his voice, Malcolm added, “You see, Maurice Post not only talked to me in here the night he died, but gave me some VC.”
“You mean you took it?” Randolph clenched his fists.
“Yes.”
“And–?” Kneller demanded.
“And here I am.”
“Side-effects?”
“Yes, but … Look, get some drinks and join us in the corner. The friend I’m with knows all about it. You can talk freely in front of her.”
When, by a combination of pushing and arrogance, they had contrived to group chairs for them all around the table where Malcolm and Ruth were sitting, Kneller took a gulp of his beer and said, “Fry! I thought I recognised you. Weren’t you the teacher who got hounded out of his job about a year ago?”
“That’s right.”
“Of all the incredible coincidences! Maurice mentioned you to me only a couple of weeks back.”
“And to me,” Hector said. “Last time I saw him he cited your case as an example of what’s wrong with our society. He said–let me get this right–he said that among the chief reasons why we can’t cope with the consequences of our own ingenuity is that whenever a genuinely open-minded teacher tries to pass that attitude on to his pupils, the entrenched authorities grow frightened and shut his mouth.”
“Which is true,” Malcolm said with a nod. “He said roughly the same to me, instancing those opponents of Darwin who would rather have lost a limb than abandon Special Creation. But I can see Professor Kneller wants to question me.”
“So do I!” Randolph snapped. “If you knew how … No, you do the talking. What’s VC done to you?”
“Intensified my sensory perceptions to a degree I wouldn’t have imagined possible. Beginning with the senses we most neglect. I hope Ruth won’t mind my saying”–with a sidelong glance–“that it first showed on the tactile level.”
Ruth pulled a face at him, which broke down into a grin.
“Hearing and smell followed concurrently, and sight was affected last. I seem to be able to adjust far faster than before to low light-levels; the rod-cone change-over is almost under voluntary control. As for the senses we don’t normally call, senses … Ruth, that can of fruit-juice I wouldn’t drink.”
She nodded. “I opened it this morning. It tasted okay to me. But when Malcolm looked at the fine print on the label he found it declared some unpronounceable preservative, and this afternoon we looked it up at the library.”
“It’s a suspected carcinogen,” Malcolm said. “Banned in Spain, Israel, and the States, but apparently not in South Africa, where the juice came from.” He made a helpless gesture. “It’s supposed to be tasteless. How I knew it was in there, I can’t say. I just knew.”
“Not because he’d seen the label,” Ruth supplied. “I’d decanted the contents and thrown the can away.”
Kneller and Randolph exchanged stares. “By the sound of it,” Kneller said slowly, “Maurice’s wildest hopes are being overfulfilled!”
Randolph leaned forward. “How did you come to meet Maurice, Mr Fry?”
“Pure chance. I passed by here and came in for a drink. It was five-forty by the clock over the bar.” He pointed, but when the others glanced around all they could see was paper streamers and dangling strips of tinsel. “He asked if I was Malcolm Fry, the ex-teacher, and we started talking. And went on for a good three hours. Making me, I may say, very late for a date with Ruth.”
“And he actually gave you some VC?” Hector snapped.
“Yes, in a little yellow capsule.”
“Was he drunk?”
“Very. I think I know why. I suspect I also know why he got killed.”
Kneller pursed his lips. “Explain!” he commanded.
“Well, the next afternoon I decided to get drunk, too. While I didn’t realise it at the time, there was a valid reason. I was feeling the full impact of the VC. It was as though my senses had been whetted to intolerable keenness. I had to damp down the inrush of data, and alcohol did help. In fact a friend of mine who was manic-depressive before he was stabilised on lithium salts once said alcohol was the best emergency prophylactic against his manic phase. Of course, though, assuming that Dr Post had dosed himself with VC, what he should have done was go to bed and sleep the clock around four or five times.”
“Did it make you sleep for a long time?” Hector demanded.
“I slept clear through Christmas Day, Boxing Day, over five hours into the morning of the twenty-seventh.”
“Evans and Newman!” Hector said with a snap of his fingers.
Kneller looked a question at him. He amplified. “The Evans-Newman theory of sleep states that we don’t sleep to recover from fatigue, only in order to dream. The idea is that the brain needs the chance to review the sense-data accumulated during the previous period of wakefulness and use them to update its programming, so to speak. If you go without sleep for too long, you become irritable, your short-term memory breaks down, and eventually you hallucinate.”
“Precisely,” Malcolm said. “I’m convinced the main reason why I’m here, and tolerably rational, after this fantastic experience, is that Ruth and another friend of ours decided not to have me hospitalised, but leave me to wake up in my own time. But for that …!” He gave–Ruth’s arm an affectionate squeeze.
“When I met Maurice, on the other hand, I imagine he was well past the point at which he should have collapsed into bed. He was already rather aggressive when I insisted at last that I must go away, and since he was drunk as well he could all too easily have got involved in a quarrel … That is pure guesswork, though. I gather the police are making no progress in the case, and I may be absolutely wrong.”
Hector tugged at his beard. “This–this long period of sleep. You think it was purely due to sensory overload?”
“No, another factor is involved.”
“Memory!” Kneller exclaimed.
“Precisely. Much, perhaps most, of the overload is not due to present-time input, but to a kind of stock-taking which represents to consciousness all the data already in store.” Malcolm gave a wry smile, passing his fingers through his untidy brown hair. “Believe you me, that’s exhausting! And not entirely pleasant. But in my case at any rate it has come under control–or at least not got out of control.”
Nodding, Kneller said, “It fits. Oh, yes, it all fits.”
“What worries me”–Ruth spoke up with mingled diffidence and defiance–“is this. Malcolm claims he’s perfectly all right now, he feels fine. Maybe he is okay. But the only other person we know about who’s undergone the experience does seem to have suffered some sort of–well, derangement! Giving a capsule of VC to a complete stranger: can you call that rational? Quite apart from the question of using himself as a guinea-pig!”
Once more Kneller and Randolph exchanged meaningful looks. The latter said, “We’re not certain he did dose himself deliberately. You see, the supportive medium we use to–to breed VC, as it were, is volatile, and though we maintain strict precautions it’s true that Dr Post opened the sealed vats several times as often as anybody else. Just one faulty filter-mask could have allowed a threshold quantity to be inhaled.”
“So you know there is a threshold quantity,” Malcolm said.
“Yes, we’ve demonstrated it with rats, chickens, hamsters … It’s tiny. Of the order of a few million molecules.”
“Proportionately, would it be larger or smaller in the case of a human being?”
Rand
olph hesitated. “Conceivably, smaller. In view of our more complex nervous systems.”
He took a gulp of his half-forgotten beer. “But there’s another reason for assuming Maurice inhaled VC by accident, even though he did later–ah–abstract a sample from the lab, a possible sign of derangement one must concede. You see, he was always meticulous about his research work. We’ve turned over his home, his office, his lab, and found no trace of any record of his experiences. Even if he had decided to experiment on himself without telling us, which I can’t accept, it would have been foreign to his character not to leave a detailed day-by-day description of the consequences.”
“It’s still possible one may be found,” Kneller grunted. “Right this minute our Institute is infested with–”
“Wilfred, you’re not supposed to talk about that!” Randolph snapped.
“The hell with them. I hate their guts, and in particular I hate that smarmy time-serving boot-licker Gifford! He has no right to call himself a scientist!”
“Let me guess,” Malcolm said. “You’ve been invaded by government investigators? Ministry of Defence?”
“Home Office … or so they claim. In fact I think you may well be right. At any rate they have all the nastier habits of the trained security man. Currently they’re looking for records Maurice might have left at a secret address in our computers, and our work is at a standstill. It’s all we can do to keep the test animals fed.”
There was a pause. Eventually Malcolm said, “Wasn’t there mention in the papers of a note which Dr Post left?”
Kneller nodded. “A weirder farrago of rubbish you never saw. That’s why I’m so relieved–I really am–to find you so … well, rational!”
