The Egg-Shaped Thing

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  He handed me the glass. “I don’t think so, but they’re certainly entitled to an explanation. Of course, they want to know what happened for lots of reasons.”

  “Reasons! I wish I knew them!”

  He looked at me searchingly. “I won’t ask you what’s going on. I’m not sure I want to know. Not until I’ve flown that heap back to calmer parts, anyway. My co-pilot is in pretty bad shape. He shouldn’t really be flying; his nerves are all to pieces. But I’m okay and he’ll just come for the ride, more or less.”

  “I won’t keep you, but I’d like to ask you to arrange a couple of things…Can you fix me up with a jeep?”

  “I’ll try. The one Philbar used was sent over by the Atomic Energy Authority. They don’t have much transport here, but I expect they’ll find you something.”

  “And I’d like to use your phone. Long distance.”

  “Help yourself. I’ll rummage around for a jalopy. I hope you’re not going to try to go up that pass…oh, I suppose you may have to. But for Christ sake be careful.”

  I said: “I’ll be all right. I don’t think what happened to Tesh and Flaske was any ordinary accident.”

  He glanced at me — a pretty scared look too, I thought. “I don’t think so either. This is a pretty rum place. I’ll be glad to get away. Sooner the better. But I’ll make sure you get fixed up first.”

  He went out into the sunshine. It was a perfect afternoon.

  My phone call was a washout: no reply from the flat. I badly needed to talk to Nicola and couldn’t understand why she hadn’t waited in, felt angry with her. I gave up when Duquay reappeared.

  “The jeep’s okay, but you’ll have to sign thousands of documents. They’re getting them ready for you in the office. No luck with your call, uh?”

  “No luck for anybody with anything.”

  “Too true. We’re getting up and out of it. Perhaps I’ll see you in London one day. These people here want to know who you are. Do you have any official badge, or anything? I mean, I haven’t the slightest idea whether you’re security or what.”

  I said: “I think I can square the O.C. on that.”

  One of the Valetta’s engines started up. Duquay glanced through the window. “Got him on the starting drill, but it’s all he’s fit for, poor bugger. It wasn’t the cliff hazard, of course. It was that awful glowing effect. No one likes things that just don’t have a reason. Then the jeep accident on top of it all.”

  I said: “I think he has a lot of guts. I’m not surprised he’s shaken up. I would be, but I’ve got too much to do.”

  Duquay held out his hand awkwardly. “Yes…well…I’m for home. Good luck. I’ve asked these people here to fix you up with anything you want. Meals, or anything. They’re a good bunch. Make use of them.”

  “Thanks.”

  I watched the take-off, then found the office. In point of fact the clerk asked no questions, just handed me the forms and I signed them. No doubt Duquay had said whatever was necessary. But the events of the day had taken their toll of morale. No one said very much to me and I was glad to get away.

  I didn’t go cross-country where the bikes had been, but took the road, which traced an uncertain path through the valley and was bordered all the way by the jagged dry-stone walls indigenous to the area. Along here, you had to keep stopping to open, then close, the cattle gates. I think there were four in all. Every time I got to one of these gates I gazed up at the zigzag road, trying to see where the other jeep had crashed.

  At last I reached the fork in the lane. I took the left prong which led to the bottom of the zigzag. The police were still on the job.

  I asked: “Okay to go up?”

  “Yes. We don’t advise it, but we won’t stop you. Be careful at the fourth hairpin. That’s where they went over and the edge has crumbled a bit. We’ve put down some markers to show where it’s still safe to drive.”

  I couldn’t look at the wreckage for more than a second. I suppose it was conceivable that the scrunched mass of metal lying half cratered near the stream had once been a vehicle.

  I asked: “Were there any other cars involved?”

  “Not that we know of. No one seems to have seen the accident. You didn’t I suppose?”

  This was a question I was by no means sure how to answer. The jeep had fallen from the fourth hairpin — the exact spot I had seen a fireballed motor car plunge, watching from my viewpoint in the Establishment along the valley.

  But the incident I saw had involved a chaotic traffic jam of panicky drivers trying to get clear of the Pulse.

  And, by the abnormal standards of Space/Time that in some respects I had been forced to accept as real, the accident I saw was six years back.

  The officer was saying: “It’s a treacherous place, all right!”

  “You’ve had other accidents, then?”

  “Several. But we can’t seem to persuade K.L.K. to build a decent road. Can’t blame them, I suppose. It would cost a lot of money. Please watch it on those bends. We don’t want another of these.”

  “Me likewise.”

  But it was quite easy to get up the zigzag. I was convinced they hadn’t just fallen off.

  *

  At the time of its construction, the K.L.K. laboratory, hacked half out of the cliff itself and then built up with local stone into one in-blending unit, had caused a mild architectural stir. For being perched on the seam between Cumberland and Westmorland it had necessarily to satisfy two planning committees — and had done so impeccably, by contriving to look dark on the Moorbridge side and light on the face which was visible from Ullswater.

  I was not in the mood to appreciate such niceties, however, as I swung the jeep into the car park and peered through the big windows of the lab, looking for trouble and feeling like giving vent to a fury I had choked for too long.

  I had worked out by this time that had I maintained a sanguine attitude throughout the last two years, instead of languishing finally on the couch of a nervous collapse, the death of Tesh Philbar and Dr Flaske might have been avoided.

  As I had anticipated, there was no sign of Structure One, nor of the scientists whose diseased minds had succeeded in prising it out of a dented Space/Time to be formalized, trapped and expressed in a copper shell in order to pervert the order of things and thus prove the ruthless supremacy of technological homicide. Only one car shared the gravel car park. A sports car. A brash status symbol. A car I had seen outside the Stook only — incredibly — last Wednesday.

  Now, as I trod scrunching gravel underfoot and approached the main entrance, the lab was officially deserted for the weekend.

  After entering the building I thought at first that no one was around at all. And although I knew for certain that the car I had seen belonged to Guy Endleby, I thought it possible that he had gone with Davvitt…wherever Davvitt had gone.

  The hall, with its high-finish plastic floor, was like the foyer of one of those health clinics for vegetarians, right down to the flower arrangement by the veneer staircase and the stifling air of hygiene. I have nothing against vegetarians; I had a pretty good case, by now, against those who concealed their super-aggression by posing against the same kind of background.

  I tried a few of the prim little offices.

  Nothing. Only a monstrously beautiful view visible through spotless windows. I was beginning to hate the sly perfection of the countryside. It concealed too many horrors. Even that filthy mist had cleared. I could see Brundash’s establishment bathed in the late afternoon sunshine. From here it just looked deserted. Only those three horrific trees stood out clearly against the rest and by their starkness milestoned the significance of Moorbridge.

  So I went the other side of the veneer staircase and slid back the door of the lab which was adjacent to the car park.

  This was a day for anger.

  Arrayed on benches was a profusion of electronic gear which quite clearly owed itself to my own design. Yet I’d never built a single item of this stuff; and
if it had been paid for instead of carbon-copied, Sceptre Electronics would never have had it so good. As it was, not one of these units — or rather, their legitimate forebears — had reached the order books. I had developed a complete scheme of integrated hyper-speed counting. Relying on development capital, I had held it back rather than release it unit by unit. Eventually my top design engineer had bid me an oyster-like adieu and joined K.L.K. Here was why.

  I spent a few minutes in that lavishly-equipped place, marvelling at the small changes in appearance of stuff which — so mysteriously — my lawyer had failed to patent in time.

  Here, the Sceptre Y4a Dekatron…unique at the time because of the high-frequency transistor developed at my own lab — a room one-tenth the size of this with a permanent smell of firedamp and a built-in tendency to black out because of the ancient electrical wiring. Flaske was dead and wouldn’t be needing one of my Dekatrons now…

  Ironically, that transistor, which would operate in a frequency range formerly beyond the reach of the semi-conductors, had been the result of a mistake. It was an error which now enabled K.L.K. to show shareholders such proud evidence of a glamorous advance in technology in the only form financiers could grasp.

  Here, the control system for the whole scheme. Insultingly, even the layout was the same…They must have been very sure my mental condition would deteriorate to zero volts. For this was straight stealing.

  I hoofed it out of there and penetrated the building at a furious stride. I’m afraid my mind was not at that point on the tragedy that had just occurred but on the travesty of business acumen manifested by me in the days of Sceptre. I had been cheated by Helen and cheated by my chief engineer — both of whom had eased their way into my mind like the feelers of the mechanical toy we played with as a joke in the old days, and which groped its way around the lab floor with a sinister talent only outfelt by those who searched for the weak spot in my personality. Respectively, they had infiltrated through my emotions and my intellect, as they had my bedroom and my golf club — bringing me down, I knew, principally because my outstanding gift was vanity whereas theirs was avarice…

  I found a series of signboards announcing ‘Linear Accelerator: No. 2 Lab’ and followed these…

  Infatuated with my organizational prowess, I had zoomed into a way of life for which I was in fact grotesquely unsuited. Suddenly everything was Conferences, lightning flips to Munich and to New York and to the leather-padded lairs of business tycoons who were really only moneylenders with better suits. Proudly I had announced the forthcoming development on that fortuitous transistor, veiling the fact that we had really been trying to produce a non-physical vibrator to replace quartz, but never mind! Helen had been a tremendous boon to my inflamed, swollen ego — she was not far short of being a top model and had — in Tesh’s vocabulary of the time — a disease he called D.O.B.J.S…or ‘Delusions of Being Jean Shrimpton’. Lapping it up, I had paraded her all over town, accepting my place with her on the tuffet but not getting a permanent share in the curds and whey.

  At the appropriate moment, when my hypermania had reached its resounding peak and I was getting called by name by the head porters all the way down Park Lane, Guy Endleby had moved in with the sure timing of a compulsive opportunist, noting that the bedroom at my then flat was getting torn to ribbons so many times per month by all the impetuous hell of a loveless affair that he offered Helen his instead. A change of locale was convenient for her if only because the repair men needed access to my bedroom whereas his was still in one solid piece. My only consolation at the time — perhaps the one thing that stopped me falling apart altogether — was that Helen was only interested in a geographical change so she could get some peace. Thus Guy got nowhere with this particular enterprise and Helen bodily — if not quite soulfully — remained my property to the bitter end.

  Stilly for all Guy’s catastrophic sensual disappointment, she gave him access to my laboratory when he really needed it. Presumably he got going with a great deal of microfilm to back up the hard labour he had put in lunching my bewildered chief engineer (who realized the sweet smell of success was exuding from somewhere, but couldn’t make up his mind from which direction) and the even more tireless devotion to duty at the offices of the man who happened to be my lawyer — as well as his.

  Big plaque: ‘LINEAR ACCELERATOR, DANGER!’ — plus that charming little symbol internationally recognized as meaning ‘radiation hazard’.

  I was so immersed in my thoughts I practically forgot where I was.

  Then I heard a voice I recognized and the jolt that brought me back to earth was almost as good as a Pulse from the egg.

  I felt ready for Guy.

  *

  Ironic to the last, Guy policed me with his open palms in the air and said: “It’s no good…If you want to quarrel with me go ahead and quarrel, but I can tell you nothing. Something went wrong. That’s all I know.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “I was on the phone. There’s no one else here. If you want to know how Tesh and that other fellow got killed I can’t tell you that either. Helpful, aren’t I?”

  “I presume,” I said, “you must be helping somebody.”

  Again, the gesture. “Those blokes are highly qualified physicists. They’re in a lot of trouble — they say because of you. I gave them every company facility on earth — often at great personal risk to myself. They came here and they thought they could do something with this machine.” He pointed through the glass panel into the No. 2 Lab next door. “It didn’t work. Okay? Useless.” He lit cigarettes for the two of us, threw me one of those executive looks. “You probably think I know what’s going on. I haven’t the remotest idea what’s going on.”

  “But,” I said, “you must have a good idea of how my company got busted up.”

  “Oh, that! Yes…I had a hand in it. You’ll probably land me in court, one of these days. Believe it or not though, I’m an innocent party. They told me you were merely producing stuff developed by our own organization.”

  “Wouldn’t you have known?”

  “How? K.L.K. is a worldwide organization. Our biggest factory is in Switzerland. And if Dick Davvitt comes along to me and says you’ve been pinching secrets out of hand I have to weigh his reputation against yours. Any questions? You were haring around with Helen and playing electronics in what small amount of spare time she left you. Helen must have hated you more than even she realized. Anyway, she didn’t exactly argue with the case I put up. And she knew you were interfering with us, Moorbridgewise.”

  “She knew?"

  Guy got up lithely, went across to a filing cabinet, spoke while he stooped without looking at me. “Among other things she handed me your diary. Didn’t you miss it? — Well, never mind. Very cryptic, your diary…Ah yes, here it is.”

  He slammed the drawer of the cabinet and brought the embarrassing little bit of tawdry evidence across, slapped it down on the desk. “Take a look. Under April twenty-first.”

  I did.

  APRIL 21, 1959

  Visited London Airport, don’t know why. Just for kicks. Just to escape.

  Odd incident. Couldn’t remember what time I got there but I couldn’t have been hanging around more than a couple of hours.

  But bloody-minded parking attendant charged me for eleven hours! Do these people fake their time-clock for profit or what? Bloke got most unpleasant but I was the one who came off worst with a sick headache and a hell of a row (again!) w. Helen.

  Keep smelling an awful stench everywhere. Helen says she can’t smell it. What does she need? A check-up with E.N.T.?

  I said quietly: “You’re saying I came to Moorbridge then? — without knowing?”

  “Or else you didn’t want anyone else to know.”

  “Then why would I give that much away in my diary?”

  “True. Helen thought you were nuts, anyway.”

  “She said this?”

  “Yes, James. You won’t give her credit for
it, but she was actually very scared for you.”

  “And afraid of me?”

  “She thought you were split.”

  “I was. Hardly in the usual way.”

  “Is there a usual way? Helen gave you a long time to get well. She put up with a hell of a lot in my opinion and wouldn’t sleep with me. I was furious.”

  “I bet.”

  He shrugged. “She was bound to make the break in the end, so why not with me?”

  “Perhaps she didn’t like you. Perhaps she sensed that you were assuming a lot of things without bothering to check up on the people who were pushing you into it.”

  “Whatever makes you think you were more convincing than the qualified men you were hounding?”

  “You could have cross-checked with Tesh about who was hounding who.”

  “You’re joking!” He got to his feet, savouring the moment. “Don’t you know what Tesh was doing all that time? — he pursued Helen endlessly! It was all round K.L.K., but of course you avoided us all like the plague and you just picked on me because I was the convenient scapegoat. Can you honestly say that the flat you have so recently occupied isn’t the lair of a man with a vanity of almost obscene dimensions?”

  I felt the time had come to stop making allowances for my enemies. I guessed Daphne had finally quit on Guy and I resolved to check that too. But I’d recovered by this time sufficient faith in myself to stick by what I believed, instead of what Guy Endleby — together with all his miserable works — wanted me to believe.

  This, then, was how he operated. Wait until a man is burned to death and then get down to the serious business of libel.

  God knows how much of what he said, that let Helen off the hook, was true. For her sake I hoped most of it was. I was quite prepared to believe she was frightened. Knowing her I could believe that she would swallow a story against me only if it bore on the topic of my mental state, for it had been she who persuaded me to go to a psychiatrist.

  But for the first time, as I stood there, quite coldly, face to face with Guy at last, I accepted finally that there were people who were not just mad but plain evil. Up till that point I had always found some guilt-ridden patch of my own to explain away their conduct.