Snow White and the Giants

by J. T. McIntosh

  Miranda was standing quite still. "You're immune, Val," she whispered. "You were the first neutral. Only your life had no effect, because you never had children. But after what I told you . . . "

  I understood now. I understood what had changed, and why.

  Jota was an irrelevance anyway. In the first run of these few days, he had died; in the second, he still died. So he was unimportant. He was a red herring.

  I was different. In the first fire, I hadn't died, evidently (or I'd never have become the scapegoat). In the fire altered by the intervention of the giants, I was certain I wasn't going to die either. But one thing differed: but for Miranda, I'd never have had children. Now (I trusted her -- on the whole I trusted her) I certainly would.

  And Greg became impotent.

  Yet not, perhaps, entirely impotent, in all senses.

  His attention was all on me now. "You," he muttered. "It must be you. By intervening, we mixed you up in this thing in a way you never were before. Before we took a hand, you and Sheila and Dina stayed at home and never knew a thing was happening until it was over. Your curtains were drawn, nobody phoned you, the lights didn't fail, you heard no noise. You went to bed and slept, the three of you, and it wasn't until the next day that you discovered Shuteley had deen burned to the ground. But we intervened, and . . . "

  "And Jota still died," I said. "That was what you, Greg, wanted -- until a little while ago. When you lost your precious Gift you realized that somehow what was happening here tonight had snuffed the Gift out. It never developed. It was beaten here . . . or else, who knows, the elements that enabled it to be beaten between your time and mine were brought together."

  "Yes," Miranda murmured.

  "And you changed your mind completely," I said to Greg. "Miranda was here to save Jota, you to make sure he stayed dead -- because both of you believed that that would weaken the Gift in your time. A little while ago, when you found you'd lost it, you decided, and perhaps you were right, that Jota had to be saved. Save him, and maybe you saved the Gift after all. So you came back for him. But you're too late, Greg -- I killed Jota."

  He leaped at me.

  I was on the ground. The advantage wasn't all with Greg; already on the ground, I could move faster there than he could. He landed heavily where I had recently been. Knowing I was not involved in a cheerful, sporting contest, I kicked him in the kidney as I got up. After that, his movements were slower. I also managed to hit him in the groin before he got his bearings.

  Yet when he was up, hurt badly and slowed down, I was instantly in trouble. Miranda tried to help, and was canceled out in two seconds. A single backhand swipe that caught her on the shoulder, with most of Greg's 250 pounds behind it, finished her interest in the contest at the moment it began.

  Greg had not taken time to take off his suit. The fact, on the whole, favored me. The plastic afforded him some protection, and he was hard to grasp properly. But the heat his efforts generated was trapped in the suit. I also guessed that the air supply from the tank at the back was constant, not enough to sustain continued desperate activity.

  Coming to the same conclusion as me, Greg tried to win grace to remove his suit. And I kept at him so that he couldn't. Soon he was gasping like a grassed fish.

  He hit me once, and although it was only a glancing blow on my right breast, the pain and numbness that went through me showed me my only chance was either to hit Greg without being hit myself, or to fight him as I had fought Jota.

  Using his weight, I brought off a knee-drop which hurt him badly. Nevertheless, it was perhaps a mistake, for he got up so mad that I knew I was engaged in not much less than a fight to the death, perhaps nothing less at all.

  He couldn't get his suit off. Every time he tried, I hit him or butted him or threw him.

  My tactics paid off, for when suddenly he caught me a stinging blow on the side of the head and I reeled, defenseless for a moment, he chose to use the moment gained to get the suit off rather than to follow up his advantage. And that was a life for me.

  By the time he had stripped to his briefs I was able to go on.

  The trend of the struggle changed. While he'd been wearing his suit there had been no point in trying to throw him through the stasis wall. Now there was.

  I was deliberately trying to do what I had done quite accidentally in Jota's case -- burn Greg to death. The blaze outside our bubble of coolness was dying now, and yet the embers were so hot that if Greg rolled out into them, he'd die as surely as Jota had.

  Unlike Jota, however, Greg knew what would happen. And he was trying to do the same to me.

  He threw me once, by brute strength, and then launched himself at me, intending to wind me with his weight. I rolled partly clear, but he grabbed me and held me. He was on top, and I could do nothing about his weight. He started to swing at my head a blow which would have ended my interest in the fight.

  Then he fell on top of me, limp.

  I extricated myself. Dina was standing over us. She had picked up a stone and hit Greg with it.

  "Have I killed him?" she asked anxiously.

  "I don't care if you have," I gasped.

  "I didn't mean to kill him. But if I didn't knock him out, he'd have taken the stone from me. So I had to hit pretty hard."

  "You haven't killed him, Dina," I said, moving from Greg to Miranda, who was dazedly picking herself up. I offered her a hand, but she shook her head and sat down again, taking a breather. Greg had been pretty rough with her that night.

  I turned back to Dina, who was a singularly attractive stranger. She wore a crisp white blouse which in the middle of all this was spotless, a short black skirt with a wide belt, nylons and stiletto shoes. She must have been fully protected from the beginning.

  I asked her what had happened.

  "I was watching television with Barbara and Gil," she said. "We heard shouting first. Then the television suddenly went off. And there was a glow at the window. The next thing, there was a glow at the other window. Gil shouted: 'Get Garry and we'll go to the cellar.' "

  So that was how it had happened . . . Before the giants intervened, when Barbara and Gil were alone in the house with Garry, Gil's first reaction had been to seek refuge in the cellar. A very reasonable idea, really . . . the trouble was, he thought the fire that apparently surrounded them was an ordinary fire, and it wasn't. In an ordinary fire, the cellar of Gil's house would have been a perfect funkhole. But in the fire that was to come, any cellar would become an oven, and anyone within would be baked slowly and very painfully to death.

  They had just reached the cellar when two big youths in plastic suits appeared and practically dragged them back into the hall of the house. Barbara, frightened, did exactly as she was told; Dina, curious, was glad to get out of the dingy cellar and have a chance of seeing what was happening; Gll, dazed, had to be shouted at before anything registered; and Garry slept peacefully through the whole thing.

  There had been a curious wait while people screamed outside, while crowds ran past the house, while the red glow became bright enough to replace the lights which had gone out. The youths in plastic suits didn't speak, didn't answer Barbara's hysterical questions. Yet they had a comforting air of knowing exactly what they were doing.

  Unhurriedly they unwrapped a bundle and made Gil, Barbara, Dina and Garry put on fire-suits -- the simpler version I had seen. And still they all waited.

  Then, quite suddenly, it was time to move. The giants gave the baby to Barbara, opened the door, and they moved out.

  It was indescribable -- at any rate, Dina entirely failed to describe it.

  They walked along a street of fire. No one saw them because nobody not wearing a suit could be there to see them. They felt no heat, breathed easily and their eyes did not smart.

  They had, after all, only a few hundred yards to go. Before they realized it, they were in an area of comparative silence, completely calm, and cool, fresh air.

  The suits were at once taken from them. They w
ould be used again and again that night.

  There were others in the stasis, many others -- frightened, bewildered people. More were brought in every moment, in plastic suits which were removed as they arrived.

  Beyond this point Dina knew little or nothing more, because then Miranda had appeared and taken her aside.

  "She gave me a pill," said Dina. "And I fell asleep."

  I looked past her at Miranda. That the giants had powers that were remarkable to us was undeniable: that these powers were, after all, limited was equally clear.

  I could understand that Miranda's powers had been able to make of Dina a whole person for the first time in her life. But that this could be achieved merely by giving her a pill I could not believe.

  Unseen by Dina, Miranda made a gesture. Its meaning was plain: she was telling me not to pursue this.

  Maybe she was right. I knew all I had to know.

  Looking at Dina, I marveled. She didn't have any words she hadn't had before; she didn't have any experience she had before.

  But . . . Dina was normal. She couldn't have explained things as she had, understanding in retrospect, unless she'd become something much nearer an ordinary seventeen-year-old than she'd ever been.

  Dina had never before told me a long and fairly complicated story which I could understand. "She made me," referring to Sheila, was about the most I could expect.

  "I'm grateful," I said to Miranda, and I meant it.

  Feeling better, Miranda stood up. There was pain in her face, but only physical pain, and that was nothing. She glowed with happiness, relief, satisfaction.

  "Success by mistake," she said. "It often happens. History is like that. We made dozens of mistakes and got the right answer. You matter, Val, not Jota. Greg . . . "

  She shrugged, looking down at him. "I can handle him now."

  "I wouldn't be too sure," I said.

  She was completely confident. "He knows now. He'll be a disgruntled, dazed child when he comes round. He won't give me any trouble. But now we have two suits -- three suits. Val, take Dina and get out now. Greg and I will be all right We'll be snapped back with the stasis."

  She smiled. "And have many, many children. You and Sheila -- and Dina. She may be involved, too. She may even be the one that matters . . . no, it must be you. Yet Dina, too, didn't have children before, presumably, and will now -- "

  For Miranda it was over. Mission accomplished. She hadn't failed after all, although, as she'd admitted, she had suceeedded through luck and not much else.

  But for me it wasn't over. I had still failed. I'd still get the lion's share of the blame for the Great Fire of Shuteley. I'd still deserve a lot of it. The word "mathe:r would still go into the language.

  The kids Miranda wanted Sheila and me to have would grow up in an atmosphere of scorn. "Your old man's a murderer . . . " They'd be chased out of their playground at the break as Jota had once been chased. And not just once. And some teachers would turn a blind eye.

  "No" I said.

  "What do you mean, no?"

  "I'm not going to face a future like that. I'm not going to have kids to be picked on by the whole world."

  The happiness died out of Miranda's face, to be replaced by an anxious look.

  "Val, you must . . . My world needs you and what you can do for it."

  "Your world," I said grimly, "is, less to me than the destruction of Shuteley was to you. Far, far less."

  Dina was looking from Miranda to me, and back again, comprehending very little of what was happening, and yet comprehending surprisingly much.

  "I mean a lot to you," I said. "You know it."

  "More than you know."

  "I've got a price."

  "A price?"

  "Trinity Hall," I said.

  She didn't understand.

  "You told me yourself," I said. "If it weren't for the Trinity Hall bit of the disaster, I'd have a chance. My kids would have a chance. Without Trinity Hall, the death toll in this terrible fire would be astonishingly light. The fire safety arrangements, if not fire prevention, would come out of it rather well. It's facts that count after anything like this. Without the Trinity Hall tragedy it would be a shocking fire, sure, nobody would get any credit, but I wouldn't be thrown to the lions. A few score people would have died in a fire that might have killed thousands. On the whole, I wouldn't have done too badly. I might even keep my job."

  "That's all you're thinking of--yourself?" Miranda said. "For all you've said, the fire is no more than a setback to yourself?"

  I laughed without humor. "Myself, Sheila, Dina, our kids, and far more. The two hundred who were burned to death in Trinity Hall. If they're not saved . . . I don't want to be saved either."

  "You're bluffing. You won't stay here to die."

  "I will," I said quietly. "I can't speak for Dina. She can make up her own mind."

  Dina said: "Val's all I have. I think I understand what this is about. There are two hundred people you could save -- "

  "I can't," Miranda insisted.

  "Val thinks you can . . . I haven't had much of a life. My memories are hazy -- but I know Val's always done all he should for me, and maybe more. I'm grateful, too, for what you've done for me. I could have a wonderful life now. But it would be spoiled if I backed down here. This wasn't my idea . . . I'd never have thought of it and I wouldn't have done anything if I had. Now -- if I saved myself, I'd be trading two hundred lives for mine."

  "That's nonsense," Miranda said sharply. "Val, you know you don't die. The river of time -- "

  "I'm sick to the back teeth of the river of time. I wanted explanations. Now I've had enough. Unless you save the kids and old folk in Trinity Hall, I'm staying here."

  "In a suit," said Miranda. "There are suits here. You're bluffing. You'll put them on, stay here and . . . "

  She stopped as I picked up the three suits and walked to the wall of the stasis. She didn't protest. She still thought I was bluffing.

  But when I threw the first one through, she screamed.

  The plastic was fireproof, but the breathing abparatus was not. And the suit was not sealed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Miranda pulled urgently at me. "Val, wait," she begged. "You don't understand -- if you destroy the suits, you destroy all chance of getting what you want. Even if I did try to get something done about Trinity Hall . . . To do that I'd have to get back to the copse and speak to . . . to the people in charge. I couldn't leave here without a suit. So if you -- "

  I threw a second suit at the invisible wall. It passed limply through and flared only slightly, because the material wouldn't burn. But then the heat got at the oxygen in the breathing apparatus, and there was a minor explosion.

  I moved back from the stasis wall with Miranda. "Now we're back where we started," I said. "There's one suit. Dina and I can't both get out. You want to save us. If what you say is true, you have to save us. And the only way you can do that is save the people in Trinity Hall."

  "They'll never agree," she said.

  "But you have agreed. You're going to try."

  "All right," she said quietly. "I'll try."

  There was sudden frantic urgency after the long hours of inaction. In the army, you hurry up and wait. Or, sometimes, Wait and hurry up.

  I didn't know what time dawn was, but it must be very soon now.

  While there had been nothing we could do, time had not mattered much. But suddenly it was of vital importance. Miranda tugged at the remaining fire-suit, fumbling in her haste. When she had it on, she didn't waste time in talk. She almost ran through the stasis wall.

  "I don't suppose you can explain this to me, Val?" said Dina.

  "I don't suppose I can."

  "But you meant all that about Trinity Hall? Two hundred people are dying there, and she can save them?"

  Dina had been sound asleep for hours. Her misconception of the situation was understandable. She didn't know enough, understand enough, to realize that what I was demanding of
Miranda was a change of history, an alteration in what had already happened. Dina took it for granted that if two hundred people could be saved, they must still be alive.

  "Yes," I said.

  Greg had not moved. I took a cursory glance at him; he was breathing, and the injury on his head was merely a bruise, though a large one. He would recover all right. If he took his time about doing it, so much the better. Miranda believed that now she could handle him easily. I wasn't so sure.