She caught his eye, flicked a glance toward Pinkie, and said, “You mustn’t try and go back. It is always a mistake. Always.”
They pushed the room straight, then sat down and talked for a bit, mostly Barry answering Mrs. Butterfield’s questions about his home life and why he’d chucked his school, things like that. Pinkie said nothing but sat beside him on the sofa toying vaguely with his fingers and then leaning against his shoulder like a large dog. He only realised she had fallen asleep when he noticed how heavy her head had become.
“She seems to find the Harmony Sessions more and more tiring,” whispered Mrs. Butterfield, “especially the ones that don’t go very well. And seeing you again. No wonder she was a bit hysterical. I’ve never seen her like that before.”
Carefully Barry eased himself free and let Pinkie down onto the cushions. He rose and stood looking at her, a pasty, pudgy kid in glasses, nothing to notice. But everyone wanted to own her, to use her. She frowned in her sleep and gave a little shudder like the twitch of a sleeping dog. Something inside her dream had done that, but you’d never get there, never know what.
“I hope you’ll come again soon,” whispered Mrs. Butterfield. “On a day when she hasn’t had a session.”
“I thought I might take her for the odd walk. Must be good walks around here.”
“Oh, yes, that is a good idea.”
“Don’t come to the door. I’ll let myself out.”
“I might as well. We’re not going out again, so I’ll set the alarm now.”
“Alarm? Up here?”
“Oh, yes. We have to keep our treasure safe, don’t we?”
She hobbled with him down the corridor and smiled with extra sweetness as she said good-bye, but the latch clicked sharply as the door closed between them.
10
Mrs. Butterfield’s remark about treasure preyed on Barry’s mind. Of course, he had known Pinkie was important to the Foundation, but he hadn’t really thought what it actually meant when it came to getting her out. For a start the place was very well guarded. There was a high brick wall all around the grounds. Inside it, at night, roamed a savage-looking Alsatian named Norah. The building itself formed another ring of defences, with security catches on all the downstairs windows, and alarms on windows and doors. All the male staff members, who slept in the stable block, had to be out of the main building by half past eight in the evening, so that the alarms could be switched on. Barry had already begun to think about this last point because of the obstacle it put in the way of simply getting Pinkie out of the house and running off with her when everyone was asleep. (Running off? Oh? Nine miles to the nearest station—no car—couldn’t drive one anyway…) But he had simply assumed that all this was just a way of keeping out nuts and journalists and people like that. Now he discovered that there was yet another ring, inside the building, around Pinkie. It made him see that the whole system was there to guard her, like the princess in a fairy story, locked in the top-most room of the highest turret of the dragon-guarded castle. She was so precious to them. The whole thing depended on her. People didn’t come here because of Mr. Freeman, or his theories, or the gadgets in the Hall of Harmony. They came to see the Healer.
Barry was in the entrance hall, sorting the letters into the residents’ rack, when Sergeant Coyne put down the phone in the porter’s booth and came out.
“Okay, lad,” he whispered. “I’ll take over that. Sphere One wants a word with you.”
He didn’t take the letters at once but looked Barry over, picked a speck of something off his shoulder, walked around behind and tugged at his uniform collar, looked him over again.
“You’ll do,” he said. “Off you go, then.”
When Barry tapped at the door, there was a longish pause before Mr. Freeman called him in. No question of being asked to sit this time, not a Sphere Five talking to Sphere One, but Mr. Freeman looked friendly enough.
“You’re finding your feet with us, I hear,” he said. “Sergeant Coyne speaks well of you. I am not at all surprised.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“So does Mrs. Butterfield.”
Barry managed to suppress a grunt of surprise. Being reported on by Sergeant Coyne was one thing, but somebody who’d asked you to tea to talk to a kid who’d been your friend …”
“I want to make that point before I go on,” said Mr. Freeman. “I particularly don’t want you to feel that any blame attaches to you over what happened yesterday afternoon. As I say, Mrs. Butterfield tells me you handled the situation very well.”
He looked up inquiringly, but Barry said nothing. What was coming now? The sack? After only four days?
“Since Pinkie had specifically asked to see you, it seemed best to allow that to happen, but I must tell you that both Mrs. Butterfield and I were anxious about it. Pinkie, as you are of course aware, is central to the functioning of the Foundation. She is extremely precious to us. Anything likely to place an emotional strain on her is a cause for anxiety. Listen.”
He reached out and pressed a button on his cassette player, then turned full toward Barry and watched him with a cold, penetrating stare, neither friendly nor hostile, but more like a scientist watching a laboratory rat go through its maze. The tape made vague thumping sounds. A man’s voice gave a startled yell. Feet scuttered. Suddenly the room was filled with a strange, whooping cry, shrill and painful. There was pain actually in the noise, though Barry couldn’t tell whether the animal that made it was causing the pain or suffering it—hyena at the kill or monkey in a trap. Neither of those anyway. Too shrill.
Mr. Freeman reached out to turn the volume down, but the noise stopped short almost at once. Faint shuffling sounds followed, and then a man’s voice, still too loud, said, “Okay. You want to play a game?”
Mr. Freeman clicked the player off.
“You had the volume right up,” said Barry.
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t like that. She just got a bit wild when she saw me and started laughing.”
“It was like that, I’m afraid, Barry. Only you did not have ears to hear it at normal volume. You were pleased to see Pinkie again?”
“Course I was. I used to be fond of the kid. Don’t know why.”
“She has that effect upon those who need her.”
“Any case, I’d hardly got in the room. I …”
“Certainly, as I said earlier, it was not your fault. If it was anyone’s, it was ours, mine. We are putting a severe strain on Pinkie. It was a risk on my part taking you onto the staff, and it remains a risk keeping you here. If I thought you were likely to do anything, consciously or unconsciously, to exacerbate the strain on Pinkie, I would ask you to leave. But I would do so with very great reluctance because I am genuinely impressed with your personality. I believe that you may have a really worthwhile future with us, Barry. I would not be at all surprised to see you ascending quite rapidly through the spheres.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But you will understand why I have decided that it would be in everyone’s interest if for the time being you did not see Pinkie again.”
“But …”
“For the time being only. I recognize the strength of her feeling for you, and yours for her. I am genuinely sorry to have to take this line. But the work we are doing here is far too important—important for the whole of mankind, for all living creatures, indeed—for me to let such considerations interfere with it.”
There was a gleam in the gold eyes, a throb in the voice. He was really putting it over now, the way he did in the Harmony Sessions. Suddenly Barry saw that he wasn’t pushing out all this energy to impress one Sphere Five, a mere hail porter. He was telling himself that his work was that vital. If he was a fraud, then he was one of his own victims.
“Yes, I see,” said Barry. “But, er, I mean, how long’s the time being?”
&nbs
p; Mr. Freeman jerked himself out of his mild trance.
“The time being? Oh, a few weeks? It is a question of adjustment, and the energies that flow through this place are such that we all adjust very quickly to the great central harmony.”
“What’ll you say to Pinkie?”
Mr. Freeman smiled. He’d worked it out.
“That you’ve transferred to night porter duties,” he said.
“It would have been your turn before long, and I will ask Sergeant Coyne to adjust the roster so that the changeover happens at once. Mrs. Butterfield will explain to Pinkie that you are having to sleep while she’s awake. Suppose you do four weeks of the night shift. Then in a month’s time I may be in a position to decide whether the Harmonic Energy has done its work and you can safely see Pinkie again. I hope you agree to this scheme.”
Agree? What else could he do?
“I suppose Mrs., er, Freeman will be home by then,” he said.
“I doubt it. She is doing extremely useful work. And to be frank with you, Barry, I persuaded her to go to America for much the same reasons that I am asking you to go on night duty. She is an excellent woman, and I am fond of her. I would like to have her here. But her relationship with Pinkie—much more profound than yours, of course—also distorts the Harmony flow. I think you will understand.”
The stress on the word was very slight, the smile warm, the gaze friendly.
“Yes, sir,” said Barry.
“I think that’s all. Been having any more headaches?”
“Nothing to notice. Just being here’s a help.”
“So most of us find. But if you do have any trouble, be sure to let me know. I have some ability in focusing the Energy, and I will give you a personal session. I wouldn’t like you to suffer in silence because you felt I had forbidden you to attend a Harmony Session with Pinkie.”
“That’s all right, sir.”
“Thank you, Barry.”
11
Ears pricked, nose snuffing the faint remains of daytime odours, Bear prowled the empty rooms and long, blank corridors. Sometimes he turned out a light or shut a door so that he could stand at a window, face close to the pane, and, undistracted by reflection from inside the room, stare out at the dark. There were rainy and moonless nights when he could see nothing at all, but still he stood there half an hour on end. On nights of clear skies the grounds gradually took shape, but not their daytime shape. Now the shadows became caves of blackness beneath the cedar trees and the lime trees and along the banks of rhododendrons. Anything might be there, dangerous, deadly, in those caves.
Norah was there, somewhere, but he never saw her. He imagined her, often, prowling her rounds outside just as he did his inside, with the same pricked ears and sharpened senses. He felt more like her than any of the sleeping humans. But he never saw her, a wolf shape, lean and quick, slipping across a patch of moonlit lawn between shadow and shadow. At last, after long waiting, he would turn from the window and go on with his round, the conscientious hall porter.
On his third night he had found the door of Mr. Freeman’s office slightly ajar. It had been locked the two previous nights. He went in, turned on the lights, looked around. Nothing unusual, nothing special. His first thought was to leave things as they were and come back in the early hours of the morning to see if he could find anything useful. Something prickled at the back of his neck, a Bear feeling, a sense of distrust. He turned out the light, closed the door, and went up the back stairs toward Mr. Freeman’s private apartment. Before he got there, he met Mr. Freeman strolling towards him along the upper corridor. Mr. Freeman nodded as though he meant to pass by without speaking.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Barry. “You’ve left your office unlocked.”
“Have I now? That’s careless. Be a good chap and lock it for me. This key here. Leave the keys with Sergeant Coyne. I’ll pick them up in the morning.”
Barry did exactly what he was told, reasonably sure it was some sort of test. Mr. Freeman wasn’t careless. If he could set up a hidden mike in the nursery, he could see that his own office was electronically watched and guarded. How had he come to be walking along the corridor at that moment? Barry checked the office window but deliberately didn’t stare around for hidden cameras. As he closed the door, he saw that there was an electric contact low down on the jamb and another on the door itself.
It was after that episode that he began deliberately to let Bear come to the surface, to do the night rounds with him, for him. He wasn’t at all sure of his own motives for letting this happen. They seemed to change, the same way Bear seemed to change. There seemed to be several Bears, varying from the meaningless pet name Barry used for himself to an almost solid alternative person (creature?) who was waiting, more and more impatiently, to take him over. Somewhere halfway between these two came Superbear. The loner. The only one who knew. Knew what? Knew that the Foundation was a con. Bear against the Foundation. Bear against the system. Bear against the mighty intergalactic conspiracy. Conspiracy what for? If they’re all in it, where are the goodies, apart from old Bear and a few nuts like Mr. Stott? Conspiracy to conspire, that’s what. All the baddies—the politicians and the schoolmasters and the doctors who are too bloody indifferent to tell your mum about chocolate allergies—there they are, met for the great annual Conspirators’ Dance and Gala, when suddenly in their midst a silence falls! Who is it? What is it? Why, it’s Superbear with a great big B on his furry chest! Do they tremble and turn pale? Do they, hell! Their golden eyes gaze contemptuously. Voices like Sergeant Coyne’s whisper, “Get yourself out of that suit, lad, and put on your uniform and go and empty the wastepaper baskets in the sun lounge. And mind you don’t go outside or Norah will have your throat out!”
Superbear was an experiment, a way of coping with Bear, of getting control. It didn’t really work. Bear was more than that and different. He was like a scab you can’t help picking, a dream that returns and returns against your will, a cliff you keep going back to, to stand on the brink of the huge drop, sweat on your palms, wondering if you dare climb down. You’re going to have to, one day. So Barry let him out of his lair, partly for company on those lonely nights, partly in an attempt to learn about him and find ways of controlling him and dealing with him, partly because there was a strange, satisfying excitement about actually being Bear for a while, and partly because he would have got out anyway.
It wasn’t only the loneliness and the dark, and Norah out in the dark, that stirred Bear up. Stronger and stronger each day there was the frustration of being Barry, of having got this far quite easily and now being faced with a problem he couldn’t solve. He had actually settled down in his cubicle one afternoon and written out a list of things to think about:
1. Talking to Pinkie alone
2. Getting her out of the Foundation
3. Getting clear away
4. Finding somewhere to hide
5. Then what?
(1) and (2) he got nowhere with. (3) he had some ideas about—that was the easiest. (4) depended on Mr. Stott. (5) was a blank. He stared at the paper for a while, then went out for a ride on the Galaxy. On the downs above Harting he tore the paper into shreds and stuffed them down a rabbit hole. But he continued to fret obsessively at the problem during his hours of duty. More and more it was item 5 that bothered him. It wasn’t just the problem of how to hide, how to stay alive, after the escape, with half the police of England looking for them. He and Pinkie weren’t the only ones. There were Mum and Dad, for instance. What about them, having to cope with the police, for hours on end, and reporters on the doorstep, and not knowing what was going on and whether their son had done what the papers hinted?
Pinkie, too. Suppose it all happened, and then suppose they got caught—pretty well bound to—Barry would have to try and explain why he’d done it. Then it would all come out, what was happening at the Foundation, what was so special abou
t Pinkie. You had to say this for Mr. Freeman: In spite of needing to bring the cash customers in, he’d managed to see the place wasn’t besieged by reporters wanting to write sob stuff about Miracle Cures by Child Saint. Of course, the stories might have been Callous Fraud on Crippled Pensioner—he wouldn’t want that. But once Barry had turned Pinkie into a sensation by running off with her, what hope was there of keeping quiet any longer that she had this freak knack? Did she realise that? Did she realise anything? How could he go ahead without having a long talk with her first?
So it came back again to the same old cycle of problems without answers, a weary, boring trudge around and around, thinking the same thoughts over and over and getting nowhere new—rather like the rounds Barry did inside the Foundation, along the same unpeopled corridors, into the same silent half-lit rooms, checking the same doors, over and over. No wonder that he would find himself standing in the dark at some window, not knowing how long he had stood there staring out into the dark, sniffing the night air, being not Barry but Bear. Bear wasn’t troubled by thoughts. Bear just felt. When thought got you nowhere, it was better being Bear for a while.
One morning, after just such a night as this, Barry came late into the staff canteen for his breakfast and found Karen was there, only just starting on her cornflakes. He carried his tray over to sit with her.
“You’re a bit behindhand, aren’t you?” he said.
“What about you? I overslept, that’s all.”
“Hope I do. This night duty is getting to me, and then I had trouble with Norah.”
“Norah?”
“The guard dog. Couldn’t get her into her cage. She’s still got the idea I’m some kind of enemy. She’s thick.”
“Aren’t you scared of her?”
“A bit. Sergeant Coyne says she’s trained to knock you down and stand over you and bark till someone comes, but I’d be happier if I’d seen her doing it. To someone else. How are you keeping?”
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