by Fred Hoyle
The woman looked up at him with a smile, and it was Cathy’s smile.
‘I want you to take me away from here. I want you to take me back home.’
‘That won’t be very difficult. But why?’
‘Because for a very long time I have been in unpleasant places. There is something I am hungry for.’
Conway also found himself smiling.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Grass.’
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The idea of saying anything to anybody, even if he could have got away with it, now 'left Conway’s mind. He booked a couple of seats on the transatlantic ferry, rang his friend and thanked him for the apartment, rang the hospital and told them that his wife seemed to be all right, but that she had expressed a wish to go home, and slammed the receiver back in its bed, thinking that this seemed to be his fate - master telephonist, first class.
They arrived at the airport with three-quarters of an hour to wait. As they walked up and down the vast concourse, Conway idly noticed some lout of a fellow eyeing his companion in a speculative manner. A moment later the woman noticed it. What followed was spectacular and terrifying. The man let out a loud high-pitched moan, fell to the ground, rolled over and over, his hands and feet thrashing the air, as if he were engaged in mortal combat. Then he lay on his back, looked up at the ceiling and screamed long and piercingly. In numbed shock Conway looked down at the woman. Her lips were parted and the corners of her mouth quivered in the way that Cathy’s always did when she felt that she had paid someone out, and he remembered that Cathy had always detested people staring at her. He grabbed the woman by the arm and steered her away from the scene.
‘For God’s sake stop it. If they once realize you’re doing it there’ll be hell to pay.’
The screaming stopped and several policemen rushed towards the man. They got him to his feet and led him away.
‘Don’t you think I can look after myself?’
‘Look, if once they know about you, if they suspected you’d done it, people would get scared. Those men with guns would start shooting. They mightn’t know what they were shooting at, they mightn’t even be able to see you, but an odd bullet fired at random might hit you.’
‘You do love your wife, don’t you? Well perhaps that is only fair, for that was your wife directing me now. You wondered where she was.’
Nobody seemed to suspect that they’d had anything to
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do with the incident, and of course it woidd have been
astonishing if there had been suspicions.
Cocktails were served once they were airborne. He noticed that the woman chose Cathy’s favourite drink — a pink slayer - and did what she always did on any air trip that lasted for more than an hour, she fell asleep. Within five minutes her head had come to rest on Conway’s shoulder, and her hair was beginning to tickle his face. It was from that moment that he began to think of her as his wife again.
He wondered what the other passengers would do if they were aware of the true situation. He wondered about his neighbour across the aisle, a man entirely anonymous in all his outward characteristics except that he carried a very large brief-case out of which he had taken a thick wad of papers, what would he think? What would the three men playing cards, talking about women, think? What would they do if they knew that Cathy could walk into the crew’s quarters and, within seconds, make them send the plane in a screaming dive at 1,500 miles per hour down into the waters of the Atlantic. He knew there would be complete panic throughout the whole length of the plane, and the thought rather amused him.
They hired a car at London Airport and reached Alder- bourne by the early afternoon. When they left the city streets Cathy began to grow excited. At the sight of the first green fields she gripped his arm tightly. This w.as the first inclination she’d shown to touch him. His house was built at an extreme end of the village, looking out over the Downs. She ran to the end of the garden, and when he came up to her she said, ‘Can we walk out on that ?’
He got out of the car and drove to a 'high point from which they could walk for miles. They started off, and every now and then Cathy would drop to her knees and begin examining the soft grass on which they were walking. He realized that it was the sort of thing that the old Cathy would have done if it had ever occurred to her. But it was quite certainly the new Cathy to whom it had occurred.
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‘Why do you do that?’
‘Because we love grass. There is a great deal of it on our planet. We look after it very carefully’
The wind blew in her hair as they walked on, and she held on to his arm.
‘How much of your planet did our men see?’
‘They saw the great grasslands and the seas of course. We could not stop them seeing that. But almost everything else we hid.’
‘How ? How did you hide them ?’
‘By making them not see. There were two of them that did get near something, so instead of allowing them to go on we just sent them round and round in little circles.’
She chuckled at the thought and there were little red patches in her cheeks.
‘Once, by a mistake, we did allow them to see a little. But only once, for they behaved like beasts. Their only thought was to destroy what they could not understand.’
She stopped and sat down and motioned him to come down beside her.
‘It is funny that you are not at all like that. That is the thing that makes me most curious of all. Why are you so different?’
‘I suppose because our means of communication one to another aren’t too good. You’ve already found out that talking isn’t a very good way. We start out by being pretty similar at birth, but then we seem to separate, and the gap between one person and another gets wider and wider.’
‘It must be something like that,’ she nodded.
‘It is strange the difference between the wild frightened man that I came to the Earth inside and the girl who came to see him.’
‘You mean Cathy,’ he said quickly.
‘Yes, the girl who is the other part of me. She was completely placid, as if it made no difference at all to her.’
‘You mean she made no resistance ?’
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‘None at all. It was almost as if it was a relief to her to have
somebody to do the thinking for her.’
Conway laughed, and there was genuine mirth in it, for that was exactly what he himself had been doing for the last eleven years. Except that now something was doing it much more efficiently than he’d been able to do. The new Cathy looked round the landscape, she pointed at the trees.
‘Those are very funny things. They’re rather nice.’
Without realizing what he was doing Conway ruffled her hair. She looked at him curiously.
‘That also is strange. We would never touch each other. But here with you I am happy.’
He kissed her and the warmth of her response convinced him that nothing which the original Cathy valued had indeed been lost. She moved a little away from him and he saw that her eyes were dancing.
‘Very happy.’
She began to undo the buttons of his shirt, so he drew a deep breath and decided to stop thinking about the problem.
On the way back she linked her arm with his and began to sing. This was new, for although the original Cathy had a pleasant voice she had never used it, except when riie thought she was alone. The songs were familiar ones, but in some way the new Cathy managed to give them an unusual twist. He couldn’t say exactly how it was done but there it was.
In the evening they made drinks, at least he did, while
she watched and asked questions about it. They had dinner delivered at the door - the invaluable telephone again - which saved a lot of time and effort.
Afterwards Cathy said, ‘Now show me w
hat is going on. You must remember that I am here to learn.’
‘How can I show you what’s going on ?’
‘Don’t be stupid. You spend all your time sending pictures around.’
He realized that she meant the television. They switched 176
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it on and were instantly swept into a shatteringly different world. Gone was the innocent contemplation of the grass, the trees, and of his shirt buttons, and they were watching earnest commentators talking about the world situation.
Conway was shocked to find out how far the situation had worsened during the past two days. Since the landing he hadn’ t seen a paper or heard a news transmission, and he hadn’t realized how strongly the tension had risen, like putting the bulb of a mercury thermometer into a bunsen flame. Much of it he had of course seen many times before, but there were ominous undercurrents that were new.
Cathy seemed to grasp the issues very quickly. She watched, fascinated, as the news bulletins came in from the major capitals of the world. Conway was amazed to find her smiling at the translation of a thunderous speech which Kaluga had delivered to the Supreme Soviet. She wasn’t laughing audibly but Conway had the feeling that laughter was welling deep inside her. He tried to analyse it. It was just what the original Cathy would ‘have done if she’d understood what was going on. And the new Cathy seemed to find it just as amusing - damn it, both of them were hugging their sides. At length she motioned for him to switch off the hellish device. She was sitting on cushions on the floor, her back propped against a chair. She leant her head back, ran her hands backwards and forwards through her hair, massaging her scalp.
‘Tomorrow you will take me to London. Then I will show you something 'that will surprise you very greatly. And it will teach these foolish people the lesson of their lives.’
She stretched herself very lazily and added, ‘And now I think we will go to bed.’
Chapter Fourteen
War
While Conway and his new-found wife thus disported (hem- selves, the world went about its serious business. Long important messages flashed importantly backwards and forwards from continent to continent, lines were kept clear for them. But at a lower level, at the level of a million or more business enterprises, the traffic in communication was choked far beyond the overflowing point. It was obvious to everybody that in the last few hours they had moved significantly closer to war. And everybody wanted to know just how they would stand if the worst was to come to the worst. The real answer of course was that they wouldn’t stand at all, but everybody behaved as if they were faced by a serious but manageable crisis.
The actual situation was that officials in Washington and in Paris were pretty sure there wouldn’ t be a war. It was true that the psychologists had predicted that if ever it were to happen, this was the way it would start. It wouldn’t be a slowly developing tension building up over many months. That gave both sides plenty of time to decide in their own minds that there wouldn’t be a war. The danger was a sudden psychological feed-back that developed to the instability point, as this looked as if it might do.
Even so officials were confident. Their only problem was to allow the tension to develop a little more but still within controllable limits. The point of course was that the Russians were mad, and perhaps justifiably mad, so that some very big concessions would have to be made. Probably the Russians would have to be given parity in South America. And for this their own public had to be prepared. They
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would swallow it once they were convinced that only by
making crucial concessions could war be avoided. This all added up to the obvious point that the crisis must be allowed to develop a little further. And so it went on throughout the night.
Conway awoke. Cathy’s hair was tickling his face unbearably. Her voice whispered, ‘Time to be moving. We’re due in London today. Remember ?’
It was a new development for Cathy to want to be abroad early in the morning. He climbed out of bed feeling that this was one of the days when he would have liked to go on sleeping for ever. Sunshine was streaming in at the window. Obviously it was going to be a marvellous day.
They made breakfast together. Cathy seemed to relax into her old self.
‘Were you worried the other night ?’
‘I should bloody well think I was,’ Conway spluttered. Then, catching her eye, he smiled, ‘Now that things are straightening themselves out, couldn’t you try and explain what happened ?’
Cathy buttered another piece of toast.
‘Mm. I never told you how funny you looked, did I ?’
‘It didn’t feel funny.’
She smiled, and he had a feeling that the original Cathy was feeling very pleased with herself.
‘What did it look like ?’
‘Well, you looked up at the door in a very startled way. Then you made a huge leap backwards and banged your head against the wall and fell down on the ground.’
‘And you don’t know what it was that I saw?’
‘How should I ?’
This at least made a bit of rational sense, how should she?
‘I saw the bastard who kicked me in a fight once.’
‘Of course, it had to be something that really happened, but I had no means of knowing about it. All I did was to make you frightened.’
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‘And it was the same with the man at the airport?’
‘Yes. I tried to guess what it was that he was seeing, but I couldn’t. Did you have any idea?’
‘It looked as if he was fighting with an anaconda.’ ‘What’s that?’
He realized that the original Cathy certainly wouldn’t know what an anaconda was. ‘It’s a sort of big snake. If squeezes you instead of poisoning you. It kills you by suffocating you. Squeezes the breath out of your body.’
‘Well, he seemed to have plenty of breath in his body, didn’t he ? I don’t think that can be right.’
The course of the conversation convinced Conway of what he knew already, that some new and formidable power - which he hoped he would soon begin to understand - had allied itself with the original Cathy. The alliance apparently suited them both. The new creature, whatever it was, had acquired the full logical control, but the original Cathy was dictating all the emotional responses. He could understand that this would suit the original Cathy down to the ground, but he couldn’t understand why the new creature was so ready to fall in with Cathy’s old happy-go-lucky ways.
‘Do you intend to go sleeping around with other men?’ ‘Why ever should I? You seem entirely satisfactory. Remember I have some idea of what a lot of men are like. I came here inside one of them, didn’t I ?’
The absurdity of the final inconsequential question, Cathy’s old habit, disarmed him again. ‘You used to, my wife used to ...’ His voice trailed away as he saw that she understood what he meant.
‘Oh, it is obvious, isn’t it? She couldn’t stay with you, otherwise you would soon have come to despise her for her stupidity. It was the only way she could hold you, by constantly going around with other men and making you jealous.’
Then she looked at him with a broad smile and added, ‘But I am not stupid. Besides, I could stop you going away even if you wanted to go.’
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She -looked very demure, and he knew that this was the old Cathy showing through. Instead of being appalled he began to laugh. It was as if Cathy had suddenly become a consummate actress, as if she were playing a new role, determined not to reveal by the slightest aside that she had ever been anything different. ‘Look, let’s put our cards on the table. I know it’s you, Cathy, an awful lot of this - not everything but a lot - so why not admit it?’
It was her turn to laugh. ‘Why do you go on tormenting yourself? Why don’t you start -from those things that you know for sure? You know that there can’t have been a sin
gle atom changed in here.’
She pointed at her head and went on, ‘Nothing that has happened can violate what you know about physics. I am as your wife. I’m a single physical whole, more or less exactly the same as I was a week ago. I’m not two bodies pushed together.’
‘But there must be something else?’
‘Yes, of course there is something else. There is always something else. There is something else inside you, although you don’t realize it. When I have got the right words to say I will tell you about it.’
‘You mean you can put it into rational terms?’
‘You’re talking like an idiot. Everything can be put in rational terms. But we ought to be making a move. I want to get into London by the middle morning.’
‘Am I allowed to ask why? I always seem to be asking why.’
‘Oh, yes. Just because I want to be back again by the afternoon. It looks as though it’s going to be a beautiful day.’
Cathy was ready to leave in about a third of the time she usually took. Instead of drifting about rather vaguely from room to room she seemed to know just what she was doing. Conway got out the car and soon they were on the road, rolling along the Downs, to which 'he kept until they reached Reading.
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He managed to park in the region of Knightsbridge, and they took a taxi towards the centre. He asked Cathy where she wanted to be. ‘Oh, anywhere near Trafalgar Square.’
Conway told the driver to set them down just outside its exit into the Mall. He started to ask Cathy what they were to do next, but his voice was drowned out by the thunder of the loudspeaker system. It was mounted high up all around the Square, and the volume was prodigious, it had to be in order to drown the noise of the traffic. It had the sort of volume associated with the peal of church bells when you were standing close by, except that instead of sending out a joyous carillon they were announcing the latest news bulletin. The latest news carried by the international ticker-tape was not good.
Eventually the uproar died down. He saw the crowds looking upwards for a while to the point where the speakers had hurled down their message. Although he’d seen it thousands of times before it struck him how silly they all looked. Suddenly they seeemed to jerk themselves back to their own thoughts and went about their business.
