by John Brunner
“Hello, Harry,” he said, half an hour later.
“Hello,” grunted Harry Bott from the other side of the plain wooden table which, with three equally plain chairs, furnished the remand centre’s interview room.
“So what do you want to see me about?” Sawyer went on, sitting down. “If it’s Vera, I–uh–I tracked down the right kind of doctor for her.”
“I heard. Thanks.” Harry put his fingertips together, closed his eyes, seemed to squeeze himself; his jaw-muscles knotted and his elbows pressed into his ribs. He said after a pause, eyes still shut, “Mr Sawyer, I got to talk to somebody. I’m scared of going out of my mind.”
Sawyer was startled, but kept his tone carefully neutral. “In what way?”
“I–I can’t face going back to jail! You know I done a bit of porridge before, don’t you? I was still pretty much a kid–twenty-two–and it was only six months, four after good behaviour, but I remember clear as crystal what it was like, and … Oh, sweet suffering Mary mother of God! Being shut up with two other men in a cell for years on end–I’d go crazy! My mind is spinning and spinning and all the time I keep remembering and it won’t stop!”
There was a dead pause. Harry took advantage of it to collect himself, while Sawyer simply stared at him.
–But that’s exactly how I feel! I don’t know what the hell’s happened to me, let alone to him, so– Oh, no. I don’t see how, but … Dr Randolph. What he said about VC.
It was clear in his mind in the space of a heartbeat and all his earlier facile assumptions blew away on the wind.
–What do we have in common? Same hospital, same time … I’m going to start digging into this! Contact Kneller!
“So?” was all he said aloud, however.
“So I want to make a deal, Mr Sawyer.”
“Try me. I’m listening.”
Harry licked his lips. “Just what I’d have expected you to say, Mr Sawyer. I’ve always thought of you as a square jack, not like some of the bent bastards I’ve bumped into. I know you’d rather knock off real villains than people like me … Funny thing for me to say, isn’t it? But at least I’ve bothered big companies, chain-stores, the sort of tickle where people get hit in the pocket, not the guts! Except once. For about a year. I was a–a frightener. Did you know?”
“And …?”
“And I got sick of it. We used dogs, we used petrol-bombs, we shipped in tarts and junkies, just to force people out of their homes so a bastard with more cash than he knew what to do with already could tear down houses and put up luxury flats. I could finger that bugger for you. Didn’t think I could, but I’ve been working it out in my mind. Little hints, little clues … And how would you like someone who owes half a million in tax? How’d you like a crook solicitor who takes a thousand nicker a go to supply perjured witnesses? How’d you like–?”
Sawyer held up his hand. “Very much. And you know it! But what do I have to do to get it?”
“Spring me and get me out of the country. To Australia. With Vee and the kids.”
Sawyer whistled.
“I know it’s a lot to ask!” Harry pleaded. “But–but I’ve got to go straight now, Mr Sawyer. Just got to! I simply couldn’t carry on like I used!” There was anguish in his voice. He literally wrung his hands. “Thinking back on my spell as a frightener, I can’t sleep! I swear it! What I did to people who’d never harmed me or anyone …!”
“You know something funny?” Sawyer said. “I believe you. There’s a million who wouldn’t. But I do.”
“Are ye no’ feeling well?” inquired the plump old body behind the counter of the little sub-post office, peering at Dennis Stevens over her glasses.
“Och, I’m fine,” he muttered in reply, planting the parcel he had brought on the scales beside her. He gave an anxious glance around. This place was far enough away from the centre of the Glasgow disturbances for there not yet to be an armed soldier on guard at the door in case of a raid by strikers after money to supplement their union’s strike fund. Three days ago they had audaciously carried out one in broad daylight which netted almost four thousand pounds.
–And bloody good luck to them, I say!
But he hoped to heaven the postmistress wasn’t going to try and engage him in a long conversation. He was getting the hang of the local accent well enough to make a sentence or two pass muster, but it was terribly difficult to concentrate. What he had just told her was a he.
He hurt.
Well, he had been expecting that. But he had carefully duplicated the treatment they’d been giving him at the hospital–he could remember, as clearly as though they were still before him, the labels on the packets of dressings and the phials of antibiotic which the MO had used, and the gradation to which the hypodermics had been filled, and the intervals between injections, and he had raided one of the largest chemist’s shops in the city, eluding locks and burglar-alarms with ease, and possessed himself of all the necessary equipment and drugs.
And other things as well, which were here in the parcel.
But something, nonetheless, wasn’t right. There was a wetness between his legs, and this morning when he awoke there had been a yellow ooze from the hideous, hateful, horrible wound the stitches closed. He felt giddy, and now and then his eyes drifted out of focus despite his best efforts. Ideas came and went in his mind–went before he had time to examine them properly. It was going to be necessary after all to appeal to a doctor. But how? Would the strikers, embattled in their no-go zone, where soldiers dared not venture on foot, welcome him if he admitted who he was? Surely they would-surely they must! Because anyone else would doubtless call the police immediately and have him arrested …
“What?” he said foggily, realising that the plump woman had asked a question.
“I said first class, or second?” the woman repeated. And went on, staring at him: “Are ye sure ye’re no’ ill?”
“I have a headache!” he answered curtly. “Mak’ it first! The sooner it arrives, the be’er!”
He glanced one final time at the address, confirming he had remembered it correctly: Mrs June Cordery, No. 35, Officers Married Quarters … Yes, no errors in that. He felt in his pocket for coins to pay the postage. Under his fingertips, squelching foulness.
–Oh, no! It’s getting worse by the minute! But what’s happened to me is nothing compared to what will happen to that bastard’s wife when she opens what looks so much like a present from her husband, what with its Glasgow postmark and everything. I hope she’s leaning close when it blows up. I hope it blinds her–no, only in one eye, because I want her to see the look of loathing on her husband’s face next time they meet …
The world swam. The day turned dark all of a sudden.’ The floor rocked and abruptly rose to hit him on the side. At a very great distance he heard a cry of alarm.
–But I haven’t paid for the parcel yet. I must. I …
Only it seemed like too much of an effort to say so.
“I shouldn’t have brought you this way round,” Cissy muttered as she felt Valentine leaning on her instead of merely holding her arm companionably. It was dark and cold here on the narrow street; as in most low-income areas of London–and other British cities–they had switched off not half the street-lamps, but three out of four of them. Who, after all, gave a damn about people who had to live in slummy districts like this one?
“Keep going!” Valentine directed, gritting his teeth. “I ought to see what the brothers and sisters did to the bastard who carved me!”
Cissy gave him a doubtful glance. Somehow, in a way she could not fathom, that last remark had rung hollow.
–Forced? Yes. But … Oh, well: here we are.
And they rounded a corner, waving hello to a newspaper-seller who (exceptionally, in London) was black, and stood shivering as he presided over poster-displays announcing glasgow deserter captured and italian government defeated, and came in sight of what had been a grocery store.
Now, its entire frontage was bo
arded up and there was a for-sale sign straining in the wind, threatening to pull loose the nails that secured it to a black-painted pole, and smears of smoke-grey washed up the wall towards the windows of the small apartment above it.
“There!” Cissy said with pride. “And when he came rushing out we grabbed him and tore his pants off and left him right here in the street to watch the place burn!”
Valentine said nothing, staring at the ruined shop.
“Val?” She drew back a fraction, turning to him. “Is-?”
“Is something wrong?” he interrupted roughly. “Yes, something! I don’t know what!”
“Don’t tell me they turned you out of hospital too soon!” Leaping to an obvious conclusion. “I did think it was kind of–”
“No, not that.” He bit his lip. “My body’s mending okay, no doubt of it. Think I’d have let them buckra doctors turn me out before I was well on the way to being healed? No, what’s wrong is …”
He hesitated. “I don’t get it. It goes into words, and then it doesn’t make sense.”
“Explain!” Cissy ordered, hunching the fur collar of her coat higher around her pretty face.
“It’s so complicated … To start with, though: the way you’ve helped me and Toussaint. I–uh–I love you for it.”
“Man, I’ve loved you since the day I met you!” Cissy threw her arms around him and administered a smacking kiss on his cold dark cheek. “So what else is new?”
“So it makes me feel bad to know that because I got cut up you got involved in–that.”
“It was a pleasure! How often do you watch one of them bastards swallowing his own medicine?”
“It’s not like that. It’s– Ah, shit! Let’s get on home. But I hope one thing. Really do.”
“What?”
“You never have to do that again.” With a jerk of his thumb at the shop as he moved away, stiffly to favour his half-knit belly-muscles.
“So long as they walk on us like we were dirt, we’ll have to keep it up!” Cissy snapped.
“Yeah, but … Cis honey, I got things cooking in this head of mine. I’ll tell you about them when we get back. Right now, you go in the baker’s, and find some cake for Toussaint’s tea.”
XV
Tonight snow in big soft pillow-down flakes was adding the latest of many layers to the winter-glaze of London’s streets. Snow, thaw, frost, sleet, frost, snow … It had been going on since November. Caught by surprise as usual, the city council had snowploughs enough only for a few crucial thoroughfares. Elsewhere they had fallen back on men with shovels and truck-loads of sand, and in minor streets not even that much effort was being made any longer. Like miniaturised geological strata, ice and sand in alternation had compacted to the level of the kerbstones or higher, embedding rubbish for fossils. No council employees had been spared to clear litter-bins since early December, and all of them had been overflowing for weeks.
Now, at the end of this narrow street–what was it called?–reddened eyes searched for, found, failed to read a name-plaque covered by a fringe of icicles–a bus had skidded and rammed a wall. White-faced, teeth chattering from shock now as well as cold, its passengers were returning to the last stop to await a replacement. Passive, he stood watching from about thirty yards’ distance.
–Fossils … Yes, this is like being a corpuscle inside a dying dinosaur. Half the street-lamps out. Cars abandoned. Buses running off the road. Not enough power to keep the underground trains on schedule. Gangrene is setting in.
At the thought of that, he reflexively touched his arm. Amazingly, though, it was healing well. It no longer hurt.
“Are you all right?” The question, kindly enough, from one of the frustrated bus-riders as he drew abreast: a man in a fur-fabric coat, worn at collar and cuffs, but still enviably warm.
“Me? Oh–yes, thanks. I’m okay.”
“You don’t look it! Standing out here in your shirt-sleeves, soaking … What you ought to do, chum, is go to St Sebastian’s. They’ll give you a cuppa and something to eat, and they may have a coat to spare.” The man hesitated as though about to venture an obscenity. “That is, unless you–uh–take drugs? They don’t let in addicts.”
With a reassuring headshake: “Thank you. I didn’t know about this. I’m pretty much a stranger in London.”
“I can hear that. Canadian, aren’t you? Well, just turn right at the end of this street, and …”
So he did, and found himself in a few minutes on the front steps of a pillared building declared by a big board to be church of saint sebastian martyr. He climbed the steps, pushed open a heavy door of dark wood on iron-strap hinges.
A high roof. Empty chairs. Air marginally warmer than outside, not much. Candles burning distant on an altar backed by a stained-glass window depicting Sebastian the Human Pincushion in all his gory. Childhood image: a fakir drawn by Ripley, with believe it or not great spikes through arms and calves.
He walked slowly towards the eastern end.
“Here, you! What do you think you’re doing?”
Emerging from a side-chapel, a portly florid dark-clad man, bustling and puffing with self-importance. And, taking in the shirt-sleeved soaking stubble-chinned stray: “Down the crypt, get along with you! Don’t want you up here making a mess all over the place–we got a special service in the morning, and we only just cleaned up for it!”
There were wet smears from the door to where the snow-saturated shoes had halted.
But his flow of words broke off abruptly. The newcomer had looked at him, square in the eyes.
And now said, “I fell among thieves. But I’ll let you pass by on the other side.”
He walked away.
“Now–now just a second!” the portly man gasped, and came hurrying after. “I didn’t mean to–!”
“But you did,” the stranger said, and with a burst of angry energy hauled wide the heavy door and slammed it behind him with a crash that almost deafened the Pharisee.
–Thieves? True enough.
Three of them, while he had been hiding from pursuers barely less friendly. He had heard whispered words–“Look, he has his arm in a sling!”–and imagining sympathy had let them come up to him, and when they set about him it was impossible to fight back. They took his jacket containing his billfold, gagged him, tied his hands to his ankles with the sling, left him in the cold and wet to work free if he could.
It had taken time. It had been managed.
And, moneyless, he had gone exploring. Strange to this city, having visited it before but only on the luxury level, he had walked mile after freezing mile, staring in dismay–at lines of grey-faced housewives waiting for loaves a penny cheaper here than across the street; at children hobbling bandy-legged with rickets out of snow-white school playgrounds; at others who had scratched their scalps raw for the lice that infested them; at able-bodied men in groups of six or eight at street-corners, hands deep in pockets, shoulders hunched, coatless and down-at-heel, while sleet and scraps of litter blew around their legs.
At a Rolls-Royce whose indecent half-nude mascot had been replaced by a crucifix.
He had slept where tiredness overcame him, under the arches of an incomplete elevated road; it carried no traffic, so he was quiet there. On either side houses stood vacant, windows smashed and doors nailed or padlocked, signs warning that they were patrolled by guard-dogs. Curiously, he had not been cold, though his only covering had been a couple of sacks. But he ought to have eaten something. He could feel that he ought. That was a novel sensation, known as hunger. In thirty-four years he had scarcely missed a meal; there was always food in his world, at fixed times. Now, he realised, he was burning vast amounts of energy to keep warm. His muscles, his very bones were complaining, and he had had to draw his belt in a full inch.
Around the side of the church a sign said refuge and pointed down a flight of icy steps to the crypt. He descended, found a door, on pushing it open was assailed by the smell of old clothes, steaming tea, stale
bread. In a dour line fifty men and women as shabby as himself and even grimier were awaiting sweet tea in enamel mugs, bread-rolls smeared with margarine, and the chance to sit down on benches already fully occupied, so that a young man in a black front and clerical collar was walking around saying, “If you’ve finished, would you make room for others, please?”
A man responded, near the door, letting fall a copy of The Right Way, the monthly journal published by the Campaign Against Moral Pollution. It must have passed through several hands, being torn and tea-stained. Seeing it would be long before he reached the head of the line, the new arrival picked it up and glanced through it. He had seen it before. Lady Washgrave had sent a copy to his home in California. The main feature was an article by the Right Honourable Henry Charkall-Phelps, PC, MP, fulminating against the decline in educational standards he claimed had overtaken Britain.
A paragraph containing a name leapt to his eye.
We would do better to copy the example of the government of Greece, cradle of Western culture. A godless and immoral corrupter of the young, like that so-called “teacher” Malcolm Fry whose foul influence fortunately came to light thanks to the selfless dedication of members of our Campaign …
“So if you wouldn’t mind moving on–? Hey, I say! I didn’t mean you, I meant people who’ve already been served!”
But the door was swinging shut.
It was seldom that Billy Cohen felt the need to patronise a gay club or gay bar. There were few of them left in London anyway; the palmy days of ten years ago when he had finally come to terms with his own nature and decided not to be ashamed of his inclinations had faded into wistful memory under the battering of the Puritan backlash. No question of legislation was involved–that remained theoretically very liberal. Just as passing laws had not stopped people drinking under Prohibition, though, it had not affected the fury of the bigots who, perhaps, were afraid of admitting to the same impulse in themselves. Bands of vigilantes patrolled Hampstead Heath and Wimbledon Common with dogs and water-pistols full of indelible dye; sometimes a young man was found dead with a cross carved on his forehead, though admittedly that had only happened three times in the three years since he moved to Britain permanently, thinking it less risky than New York on the basis of half a dozen short visits.
