The Stone That Never Came Down

by John Brunner

  “Do you happen to have a copy?” Malcolm murmured.

  Slightly sheepish, Kneller felt in his pocket. “As a matter of fact, I did manage to make a photostat. I’ve spent half Christmas puzzling over it, and I’m no wiser. Here.”

  Malcolm took the sheet of paper he was offered, glanced at it, and passed it to Ruth. Having read it more slowly, she exclaimed, “Why, it’s like something out of Finnegans Wake!”

  “Right! Professor, Dr Post did leave a record of his experience–at any rate, as complete a record as he thought would be necessary, knowing that with total recall he could later compile as detailed an analysis as anyone might wish for. And here it is. Not a farrago of rubbish, but the result of trying to condense scores of different levels of experience–real and vicarious–into the narrowest possible compass. Language isn’t designed to carry that kind of load. Not ordinary language, anyhow.”

  Kneller, frowning, retrieved the paper, and after another reading of it sighed, reaching for his drink.

  “On that I’ll have to take your word. There’s another and I think more important point. If our reasoning is correct, and Maurice inhaled VC accidentally at the outset, the fact stands that he did later steal some from the Institute and hid it in gelatine capsules to make it look like his asthma remedy, and gave some to you. Not altogether, as your friend remarked, a rational pattern of behaviour! So we’ve invoked the aid of Dr Campbell. As well as being Dr Post’s GP, he was a personal friend of his, and he was among the first people, outside the Institute, to learn about VC. Even now not many people know about it. Its existence has been efficiently hushed up. The one reporter who got to Maurice’s landlady seized on a garbled reference to it, but the old lady, thank goodness, failed to catch half of what we were saying and misrepeated the remainder! So when you mentioned it on the phone, we–well, we guessed something like this might have happened, even though we didn’t think it was very likely. And it’s a miracle to find that we can talk to, and study, someone in the early stages of–uh–infection, as it were.”

  “Infection?” Ruth echoed.

  Kneller licked his lips. “I can’t think what other word to use. VC is a replicant, you know, not a drug.”

  “I didn’t know!” Ruth sat sharply forward. “You mean this stuff is actually breeding inside Malcolm’s body? You mean it’s going to take him over?” Her face twisted with horror.

  “No fear of that!” Randolph exclaimed. “We know from our lab tests that there’s a stable optimum population for each species we’ve studied so far. We have no reason to imagine humans will be affected differently. But of course we must give Mr Fry physical as well as psychological examinations. And owing to the situation Professor Kneller mentioned we can’t simply take him to our own labs. So we’ve asked Dr Campbell whether he’s willing to”–he betrayed a trace of embarrassment–“well, hide the results for the time being, to be blunt. In the medical records computer at his clinic.”

  “And I’ve said yes,” Hector put in.

  “Why in the world?” Ruth demanded.

  “It’s hard to explain, but … Mr Fry, while you were talking to Dr Post, did he mention his conviction that there is bound to be another world war?”

  “Yes, repeatedly.”

  “The professor and I have been trying to work out why, regardless of Christmas, the government should think it worth assigning a dozen top investigators to ransack our labs, and why they won’t allow VC to be mentioned in connection with Dr Post’s murder.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that,” Malcolm said. “They must have ennenyed it, then.”

  Ruth looked at him blankly.

  “N-N-I,” he amplified. “What they used to call a D notice. Stands for ‘not in the national interest’.”

  “Correct,” Kneller said. “And there’s something else. They haven’t involved the police, as you might expect in a case of murder. The barely colourable excuse they’re offering is that they want to make sure no public funds were misapplied to the VC project when we were working on a Ministry of Defence contract last year. Nothing military. Had to do with extracting antibiotic concentrate from a fungus.”

  “It follows,” Malcolm said softly, “that the government must agree with Dr Post.”

  Kneller wiped his face. “We think so. And consider what a trump card VC would be if you could safely give it to your entire general staff!”

  “It goes deeper,” Malcolm said after a moment’s thought. “Not just your general staff. But the élite among the handful of survivors. You could literally divide mankind, from birth, into an upper and a lower class.”

  “Lord, I didn’t think of that one!” Kneller whispered, turning pale. “But it would be of a piece with the rest, wouldn’t it?”

  Randolph shuddered. “Having met Charkall-Phelps, I can just imagine someone like him putting that into practice. Mr Fry, that makes it all the more important for you as our sole human subject–”

  “Of course I’ll co-operate,” Malcolm interrupted. “As to being the sole human subject, though … Professor, you mentioned a supportive medium that VC thrives in. Is there only one suitable medium?”

  “No, dozens. But the one we use gives the best yield so far attained. Maurice designed it himself, incidentally. Why?”

  “Could it survive in human plasma under blood-bank conditions?”

  Randolph frowned. “Plasma we never actually tested. It would have been prohibitively expensive. You know it’s so scarce the Ministry of Health has been buying from abroad?”

  Malcolm gave a wry smile. “Yes, I heard about that.”

  “In principle, though … Hector, what temperature do they store plasma at?”

  “About four degrees, I believe.”

  “In that case I think the answer would be yes. Though I’d have to run a computer simulation to be certain. It probably wouldn’t replicate to any significant extent, but it definitely wouldn’t be inactivated. Why?”

  Malcolm drew a deep breath. He looked extremely unhappy.

  “I’m about to make Ruth furious with me. Darling, I didn’t tell you, but when I was waiting to bring Billy back from the clinic I discovered they’re paying blood-donors now, and since the taxi had cost so much–well, guess the rest.”

  “Oh, no!” Ruth whispered.

  “I’m O positive, so they said mine would go straight to the plasma centrifuge. It’s a continuous-throughput model you have, isn’t it, Dr Campbell? I read about it in the local paper when it was installed. So there’s a chance my half-litre may have been so diluted that no recipient could be given a threshold dose. If not … well, VC must already be loose in the world. Beyond recall.”

  XI

  “Brother Val!”

  Glancing up from the biography of Chaka Zulu which by a miracle he had found in the hospital’s library list, Valentine Crawford thought for a moment that it was one of the hospital’s many black nurses who had parted the curtains around his bed. The doctor in charge claimed they’d been put there because for no apparent reason he had slept for more than two days and they’d been worried. He suspected the real explanation was that white men in the adjacent beds had complained about the presence of a black.

  –Not that I give a damn. I need privacy and the chance to concentrate. The way my mind’s working, I’m almost dizzy!

  Abruptly he realised the girl peering in was Cissy, and with her–

  “Dad!”

  –six-year-old Toussaint in person, letting fall a drawing-book that fluttered to the floor like a dying bird as he rushed to greet his father.

  “Careful, son!” Valentine cried, fending the boy off with his right arm. A transfusion-tube was taped to the left one, and he had had eighteen stitches in the knife-wound across his belly. The buckra who carved him had obviously not meant him to make such a good recovery. Or any recovery.

  Laughing, Cissy captured the kid, sat down, and perched him on her knee. She was looking marvellous today; her coat of bright orange trimmed with white-w
as old, but the brilliant colours suited her to perfection.

  “Your mam been looking after him, right?” Valentine said.

  “No, me!” Cissy countered in surprise. “They didn’t tell you?”

  “I thought your mam …” Valentine licked his broad lips. “See, I was half-unconscious when they brought me in, but I explained he was there on his own, over and over to make sure they knew what I was saying, and gave your phone-number, and then after the operation I didn’t wake up for the longest time, you know?”

  “Sure, I heard. Kind of weird! Got us all worried. But the minute I learnt the news I went and got that key you had cut so we could go in and study up in your books, and there he was squalling his head off, and though I got him calmed down in a little he wouldn’t come back with me to Mam’s, so”– shrugging–“I just kind of moved in. Hope you don’t mind.” She rumpled the boy’s hair. “He’s okay now. He’s fine.”

  “I like Cissy, Dad!” Toussaint said. “She gives me nice things.” He dug in the pocket of the anorak he was wearing, dark with damp from the snow, which was sifting down beyond the windows, and produced a carton of coloured pencils. “She gave me these, and a drawing-book, and I brought lots of pictures to show you!”

  Remembering he’d dropped the book, he scrambled down to retrieve it. Smiling, Valentine laid aside his own reading and prepared to be impressed by his son’s masterpieces.

  “Chaka Zulu,” Cissy read out, leaning to see what Valentine had been passing the time with. “Oh, yeah. I never read about him, but I guess you mentioned him in class.”

  “Mm-hm,” Valentine said absently. “A great man. A genius.” He interspersed his words with admiring comments on the polychrome scrawls Toussaint was displaying. “It tells in there how the first time he met explorers from Europe who tried to persuade him the world was round, he made up off the top of his head all the same arguments about it being flat that the Vatican experts had used only a couple of centuries before to put down Giordano Bruno and Galileo. And he didn’t even know how to read and write! He must have been brilliant.”

  Mouth ajar, Cissy shook her head. “Who was this Bruno? And who was–? I guess I didn’t catch the other name.”

  –Shouldn’t have expected that to register. After all, she is in my class instead of at a regular school because she got sick of being told only what’s proper for a black kid to know. When I was her age, did they tell me about important thinkers like Galileo? Let alone Chaka!

  Aloud he said with a sigh, “Remind me to talk about him when I get better. It’ll tie in with how the South Africans are making the Bantu as stupid as they want them to be by deporting them to land that’s half desert. It’s the only way known to reduce intelligence; you deprive kids of protein before they’re four years old, the brain doesn’t develop right. Before the whites came along, though, the Zulus at any rate were capable of producing a genius like Chaka. Must have scared the shit out of Whitey to run across him!”

  And he added to his son, who had turned the last used page of his book, “Hey, that’s very good. That’s great. Say, do you mind if I draw a picture in your book?”

  “Yes please!” Toussaint cried.

  “Give me a pencil, then–no, a black one … Thanks.” Spreading the book out flat, he started to sketch on the next clean sheet.

  “I guess they didn’t catch the bastard who cut me yet?” he added to Cissy under his breath.

  “Shit, no! Don’t think they even looked for him. Not seriously.”

  “Did you tell–him–what happened?”

  “Sure I did. Remembered what you said: Don’t let the buckras get away with anything.”

  “A bad white man stuck a knife in your tummy!” Toussaint declared.

  “Ah … Yeah, I’m afraid that’s only too true,” Valentine muttered. “Well, if the fuzz won’t look for him, the brothers and sisters will have to. There he is.” He held up the drawing-book. In less than a minute he had produced a portrait of a man with a sharp chin, deep-set eyes, one ear sticking out more than the other, and a broken nose.

  “I didn’t know you could draw!” Cissy exclaimed.

  “Let me see, let me see!” Toussaint demanded, but Valentine held the book out of his reach.

  “No more did I.” His tone reflected faint surprise. “It’s just that I can remember that face clear as my father’s. I only caught a glimpse of him, but… Well, do you know him?”

  “Couldn’t mistake him in a million years,” Cissy said positively. “Runs a shop near my home. Mam doesn’t let me buy things there any more. Mean son-of-a-bitch keeps black people waiting twice as long as anyone else!”

  She hesitated. “You’re sure he’s the one? It’s kind of dark on those stairs at your place.”

  “I couldn’t be more certain if I lived to be as old as Methuselah.”

  “Right!” She tore the sheet out of the book, ignoring Toussaint’s objections, folded it, put it in the pocket of her coat. “Well look after him!”

  “You do that small thing,” Valentine said grimly. “And make sure he knows why– Hey, son, don’t cry! I’ll draw another picture specially for you, with lots of pretty colours instead of just black and white!”

  “Ah, Stevens!”

  Here was Lieutenant Cordery, the smart young officer-younger by six months than Stevens himself, as the latter had learned when sneaking a look at a personnel file he wasn’t meant to read–who had been leading the patrol when the chopper-bomb came down. Accompanying him, but hovering in the background, was a civilian in a tweed suit glancing from one to another of the many shields ranked along the wall. This was Rathcanar Military Hospital, on the Scottish border, and every ward was decorated with the arms and colours of regiments whose soldiers had been treated here. Crests and swatches of tartan succeeded one another in dizzying array.

  “How are you coming along? All right?” Cordery continued as he perched gingerly on a corner of Stevens’ bed. “I see you’re still having to be pumped up, ha-ha!”–with a jerk of his thumb at the plasma-flask hung from a bracket beside the bed-head–“but the MO tells me that can be withdrawn this afternoon, so I’ve comc to enlist your co-operation, if you feel tip to it. You see …”

  He felt in the side-pocket of his uniform jacket and produced a wad of news-cuttings. “You see, as the first soldier actually to be–uh–injured in the Glasgow disturbances, you made the papers in rather a big way.”

  “Thanks, I know,” Stevens said in a dull voice.

  Momentarily disconcerted, Cordery put the cuttings away. Then, with a shrug, he turned to his civilian companion.

  “Mr McPhee, perhaps you’d explain?”

  Briskening, the civilian approached with a broad smile. “Lance-Corporal Stevens! Glad to hear how well you’re getting on. I’m from Anglo-Caledonian Television, and I’ve come to organise a segment of our evening magazine programme. I don’t expect you’ve had much chance to watch TV since you came north, of course”–a chuckle–“but you must know the sort of thing. And the point, really, is that now the strikers in Glasgow are turning to terrorism, like their opposite numbers out there in Italy … You’ve heard about the things that are going on in Turin and Milan? Yes? Shocking, isn’t it? Dreadful! Well, we think, anyhow, that it’s high time to provide a proper balance by interviewing someone who’s suffered at their hands, and show that we are downright determined to stop the rot in Britain, at least, even if those Eye-ties can’t manage it! We only have time to talk to one of you lads, because there’s only six minutes for the whole slot, so since–as the lieutenant just said–your name was in the headlines quite a lot as a result of your most unfortunate experience, if you feel up to it …?” A wave of one well-manicured hand completed the sentence.

  “Yes, sir!” Stevens said. “Never been on the telly. Always fancied the idea!”

  “Fine!” McPhee exclaimed. “We’ll be here at six twenty-six exactly, then.”

  At which time, minus thirty seconds or so, a camera trolleyed down
the ward in the wake of McPhee speaking in hushed tones to a hand microphone. Having lingered on several beds whose occupants were too badly hurt to offer more response than a thumbs-up sign, the operator turned finally to Stevens.

  “And here,” McPhee said solemnly, “is Lance-Corporal Dennis Stevens, who was so tragically injured in the line of duty by a vicious so-called chopper-bomb. Corporal, perhaps you’d like to tell our viewers what you think of the unknown criminals who did this to you.” Beaming, he leaned close.

  “Well, I don’t know too much about them, do I?” Stevens said clearly. “Bar one thing, of course.”

  “What’s that?” McPhee prompted.

  “They must have more sense and guts than I have. I let myself be driven into the Army, didn’t I, when I got sick of hanging around the Labour for a job that wasn’t there? And what do I get for signing on? I get my balls cut off, that’s what!”

  McPhee, in sudden panic, made to withdraw the mike, but he was slow to react and Stevens snatched it from him and shouted, “Don’t shut me up–I haven’t finishedl What’s a ruddy chopper-bomb compared to one of these H-bombs they got ready and waiting to fry the lot of us? Think they wouldn’t use ’em? I seen the buggers that would, quick as a wink! Soon as I can walk I’m going to quit the Army, and let’s see ’em court-martial this phony hero for desertion–won’t that be a giggle, hm? Hero be damned! I’m just a poor bugger who couldn’t get a proper job! Gang of fucking tearaways, that’s all the Army is, only in it you get paid for bashing people about while my mates back home who done the same on a private-enterprise basis got flung in jail ’cause they did it without waiting till they were ordered to! You stupid sheep, you–!”

  At which point they finally managed to cut him off.

  White and shaking after a violent dressing-down from his colonel, Cordery said to the MO in charge of the ward, “A medical discharge right away, of course. I’m still not certain how much of what he said was actually broadcast, but–”