Not After Midnight & Other Stories

by Daphne Du Maurier

  The signal was rising and falling steadily now. Mac disconnected the electrodes and turned back to watch the screen. There was no break in the rhythm of the signal, as it moved up and down, up and down, like a heartbeat, like a pulse.

  'We've done it!' said Mac. 'Oh my God… we've done it!'

  We stood there, the three of us, watching the signal that never for one instant changed its pattern. It seemed to contain, in its confident movement, the whole of life.

  I don't know how long we stayed there-it could have been minutes, hours. At last Robbie said, "What about the child?'

  We had forgotten Niki, just as we had forgotten the quiet, peaceful body that had been Ken. She was still lying in her strange, cramped position, her head bowed to her knees. I went to the controls of Charon 1 to operate the voice, but Mac waved me aside.

  'Before we wake her, we'll see what she has to say,' he said.

  He put through the call signal very faintly, so as not to shock her to consciousness too soon. I followed with the voice, which repeated the final programme command.

  'Stay with Ken. Tell us what happens.'

  At first there was no response. Then slowly she uncoiled, her gestures odd, uncouth. Her arms fell to her side. She began to rock backwards and forwards as though following the motion on the screen. When she spoke her voice was sharp, pitched high.

  'He wants you to let him go,' she said, 'that's what he wants. Let go… let go… let go…' Still rocking she began to gasp for breath, and, lifting her arms, pummelled the air with her fists.

  'Let go… let go… let go… let go…'

  Robbie said urgently, 'Mac, you've got to wake her.'

  On the screen the rhythm of the signal had quickened. The child began to choke. Without waiting for Mac, I set the voice in motion.

  'This is Charon speaking… This is Charon speaking… Wake up, Niki.' The child shuddered, and the suffused colour drained from her face. Her breathing became normal. She opened her eyes. She stared at each of us in turn in her usual apathetic way, and proceeded to pick her nose.

  'I want to go to the toilet,' she said sullenly.

  Robbie led her from the room. The signal, which had increased its speed during the child's outburst, resumed its steady rise and fall.

  'Why did it alter speed?' I asked.

  'If you hadn't panicked and woken her up, we might have found out,' Mac said.

  His voice was harsh. quite unlike himself.

  'Mac,' I protested, 'that kid was choking to death.'

  'No,' he said, 'no, I don't think so.'

  He turned and faced me. 'Her movements simulated the shock of birth,' he said. 'Her gasp for air was the first breath of an infant, struggling for life. Ken, in coma, had gone back to that moment, and Niki was with him.'

  I knew by this time that almost anything was possible under hypnosis, but I wasn't convinced.

  'Mac,' I said, 'Niki's struggle came after Ken was dead, after the new signal appeared on Charon 3. Ken couldn't have gone back to the moment of birth-he was already dead, don't you see?'

  He did not answer at once. 'I just don't know,' he said at last. 'I think we shall have to put her under control again.'

  'No,' said Robbie. He had entered the lab while we were talking. 'That child has had enough. I've sent her home, and told her mother to put her to bed.'

  I had never heard him speak with authority before. He looked away from the lighted screen back to the still body on the table. 'Doesn't that go for the rest of us?' he said. 'Haven't we all had enough? You've proved your point, Mac. I'll celebrate with you tomorrow, but not tonight.'

  He was ready to break. So, I think, were we all. We had barely eaten through the day, and when Janus returned he set about getting us a meal. He had taken the news of Ken's death with his usual calm. The child, he told us, had fallen asleep the moment she was put to bed.

  So… it was all over. Reaction, exhaustion, numbness of feeling, all three set in, and I yearned, like Niki, for the total release of sleep.

  Before dragging myself to bed some impulse, stronger than the aching fatigue that overwhelmed me, urged me back to the control room. Everything was as we had left it. Ken's body lay on the table, covered with a blanket. The screen was lighted still, and the signal was pulsing steadily up and down. I waited a moment, then I bent to the tape-control, setting it to play back that last outburst from the child. I remembered the rocking head, the hands fighting to be free, and switched it on.

  'He wants you to let him go,' said the high-pitched voice, 'that's what he wants. Let go… let go… let go…' Then came the gasp for breath, and the words were repeated. let go… let go… let go… let go…'

  I switched it off. The words did not make sense. The signal was simply electrical energy, trapped at the actual moment of Ken's death. How could the child have translated this into a cry for freedom, unless…?

  I looked up. Mac was watching me from the doorway. The dog was with him.

  Cerberus is restless,' he said. 'He keeps padding backwards and forwards in my room. He won't let me sleep.'

  'Mac,' I said, 'I've played that recording again. There's something wrong.'

  He came and stood beside me. 'What do you mean, something wrong? The recording doesn't affect the issue. Look at the screen. The signal's steady. The experiment has been a hundred per cent successful. We've done what we set out to do. The energy is there.'

  'I know it's there,' I replied, 'but is that all?'

  I set the recording in motion once again. Together we listened to the child's gasp, and the words 'Let go… let go…'

  'Mac,' I said, 'when the child said that, Ken was already dead. Therefore, there could be no further communication between them.'

  'Well?'

  'How then, after death, can she still identify herself with his personality-a personality that says "Let go… let go…" unless

  'Unless what?'

  'Unless something has happened that we know to be impossible, and what we can see, imprisoned on the screen, is the essence of Ken himself?'

  He stared at me, unbelieving, and together we looked once more at the signal, which suddenly took on new meaning, new significance, and as it did so became the expression of our dawning sense of anguish and fear.

  'Mac,' I said, 'what have we done?'

  Mrs Janus telephoned in the morning to say that Niki had woken up and was acting strangely. She kept throwing herself backwards and forwards. Mrs Janus had tried to quieten her, but nothing she said did any good. No, she had no temperature, she was not feverish. It was this queer rocking movement all the time. She would not eat any breakfast, she would not speak. Could Mac put through the call signal? It might quieten her.

  Janus had answered the phone, and we were in the dining-room when he brought us his wife's message. Robbie got up and went to the telephone. He came back again almost immediately.

  'I'll go over,' he said. 'What happened yesterday-I should never have allowed it.'

  'You knew the risk,' answered Mac. 'We've all known the risk from the very start. You always assured me it would do no harm.'

  'I was wrong,' said Robbie. 'Oh, not about the experiment… God knows you've done what you wanted to do, and it didn't affect poor Ken one way or the other. He's out of it all now. But I was wrong to let that child become involved.'

  'We shouldn't have succeeded without her,' replied Mac. Robbie went out and we heard him start up the car. Mac and I walked along to the control room. Janus and Robbie had been there before us, and had taken Ken's body away. The room was stripped once more to the essentials of normal routine, with one exception. Charon 3, the storage unit, still functioned as it had done the previous day and through the night, the signal keeping up its steady rise and fall. I found myself glancing at it almost furtively, in the irrational hope that it would cease.

  Presently the telephone buzzed, and I answered it. It was Robbie.

  'I think we ought to get the child away,' he said at once. 'It looks like catatonic
schizophrenia, and whether she becomes violent or not Mrs J. can't cope with it. If Mac will say the word, I could take her up myself to the psychiatric ward at Guy's.'

  I beckoned to Mac, explaining the situation. He took the receiver from me.

  'Look, Robbie,' he said, 'I'm prepared to take the risk of putting Niki under control. It may work, or it may not.'

  The argument continued. I could tell from Mac's gesture of frustration that Robbie would not play. He was surely right. Some irreparable damage might have been done to the child's mind already. Yet, if Robbie did take her up to the hospital, what possible explanation could he give?

  Mac waved me over to replace him at the telephone.

  'Tell Robbie to stand by,' he said.

  I was his subordinate, and could not stop him. He went to the transmitter on Charon 2 and set the control. The call signal was in operation. I lifted the receiver and gave Robbie Mac's message. Then I waited.

  I heard Robbie shout to Mrs Janus, 'What's the matter?'- then the sound of the receiver being dropped.

  Nothing for a moment or two but distant voices, Mrs Janus, I think, pleading, and then an appeal to Robbie, 'Please, let her try…'

  Mac went over to Charon 1 and made some adjustments. Then he waved to me to bring the telephone as near to him as it would go, and reached out for the receiver.

  'Niki; he said, 'do you hear me? It's Mac.'

  I stood beside him, to catch the whisper from the receiver. 'Yes, Mac.'

  She sounded bewildered, even frightened.

  'Tell me what's wrong, Niki.'

  She began to whimper. 'I don't know. There's a clock ticking somewhere. I don't like it.'

  'Where's the clock, Niki?'

  She did not answer. Mac repeated his question. I could hear Robbie protest. He must have been standing beside her.

  'It's all round,' she said at last. 'It's ticking in my head. Penny doesn't like it either.'

  Penny. Who was Penny? Then I remembered. The dead twin.

  'Why doesn't Penny like it?'

  This was intolerable. Robbie was right. Mac should not put the child through this ordeal. I shook my head at him. He took no notice, but once again repeated his question. I could hear the child burst into tears.

  'Penny… is …' she sobbed, 'Penny… Ken.'

  Instantly Mac switched to the recorded voice of Charon 1 giving the order on yesterday's programme: 'Stay with Ken. Tell us what happens.'

  The child gave a piercing cry, and she must have fallen, because I heard Robbie and Mrs Janus exclaim and the telephone crash.

  Mac and I looked at the screen. The rhythm was getting faster, the signal moving in quick jerks. Robbie, at his end, picked up the receiver.

  'You'll kill her, Mac,' he called. 'For Christ's sake…' 'What's she doing?' asked Mac.

  'The same as yesterday,' called Robbie. 'Backwards, forwards, rocking all the time. She's suffocating. Wait…'

  Once again he must have let the receiver go. Mac switched back to the call signal. The pulsing on the screen was steadying. Then, after a long interval, Robbie's voice came through again.

  'She wants to speak,' he said.

  There was a pause. The child's voice, expressionless and dull, said, 'Let them go.'

  'Are you all right now, Niki?' asked Mac.

  'Let them go,' she repeated.

  Mac deliberately hung up. Together we watched the signal resume its normal speed.

  'Well?' I said. 'What does it prove?'

  He looked suddenly old, and immeasurably tired, but there was an expression in his eyes that I had never seen before; a curious, baffled incredulity. It was as though everything he possessed, senses, body, brain, protested and denied the thoughts within.

  'It could mean you were right,' he said. 'It could mean survival of intelligence after the body's death. It could mean we've broken through.'

  The thought, staggering in its implications, turned us both dumb. Mac recovered first. He went and stood beside Charon 3, his gaze fixed upon the picture.

  'You saw it change when the child was speaking,' he said. But Niki by herself could not have caused the variation. The power came from Ken's Force Six, and from the dead twin's too. The power is capable of transmission through Niki, but through no one else. Don't you see…' He broke off, and swung round to face me, a new excitement dawning. 'Niki is the only link. We must get her here, programme Charon, and put further questions to her. If we really have got intelligence plus power under control…'

  'Mac,' I interrupted, 'do you want to kill that child, or, worse, condemn her to a mental institution?'

  In desperation he looked once more towards the screen. 'I've got to know, Steve,' he said. I’ve got to find out. If intelligence survives, if Force Six can triumph over matter, then it's not just one man who has beaten death but all mankind from the beginning of time. Immortality in some form or other becomes a certainty, the whole meaning of life on earth is changed.'

  Yes, I thought, changed forever. The fusion of science and religion in a partnership at first joyous, then the inevitable disenchantment, the scientist realising, and the priest with him that, with eternity assured, the human being on earth is more easily expendable. Dispatch the maimed, the old, the weak, destroy the very world itself, for what is the point of life if the promise of fulfilment lies elsewhere?

  'Mac,' I said, 'you heard what the child said. The words were, "Let them go".'

  The telephone rang again. This time it was not Robbie but Janus, from our own extension in the hall. He apologised for disturbing us, but two gentlemen had arrived from the Ministry. He had told them we were in conference, but they said the business was urgent. They had asked to see Mr MacLean at once.

  I went into the bar, and the official I had seen in London was standing there with a companion. This first chap expressed apologies, and said the fact was that my predecessor at Saxmere had been to see them, and admitted that his reason for leaving was because he was doubtful of the work MacLean had in progress. There was some experiment going on of which he did not think the Ministry was aware. They wished to speak to MacLean at once.

  'He will be with you shortly,' I said. 'In the meantime, if there is anything you want to know, I can brief you.'

  They exchanged glances, and then the second chap spoke. 'You're working on vibrations, aren't you,' he asked, 'and their relation to blast? That was what you said in London.'

  'We are,' I replied, 'and we have had some success. But, as I warned you, there is still a lot to do.'

  'We're here,' he said, 'to be shown what you've achieved.'

  'I'm sorry,' I answered, 'the work has been held up since I returned. We've suffered an unfortunate loss on the staff. Nothing to do with the experiment, or the research connected with it. Young Ken Ryan died yesterday from leukaemia.'

  Once again there was the swift exchange of glances.

  'We heard he was not well,' said the first man. 'Your predecessor told us. In fact, we were given to understand that the experiment in progress was, without the Ministry being informed, connected with this boy's illness.'

  'You've been misinformed,' I said. 'His illness had nothing to do with the experiment. The doctor will be back shortly; he can give you the medical details.'

  'We should like to see MacLean.' persisted the second chap, 'and we should like to see the electronics department.'

  I went back to the control room. I knew that nothing I had said would prevent them from having their way. We were for it.

  MacLean was standing by Charon 2 doing something to the controls. I looked quickly from him to Charon 3 alongside. The screen was still glowing, but the signal had vanished. I did not say anything, I just stared at him.

  'Yes,' he said, 'it's dismantled. I've disconnected everything. The force is lost.'

  My instantaneous feeling of relief turned to compassion, compassion for the man whose work for months, for years, had gone within five minutes. Destroyed by his own act.

  'It isn't finished,'
he said, meeting my eyes. 'It's only begun. Oh, one part of it is over. Charon 3 is useless now, and what happened will only be known to the three of us-for Robbie must share our knowledge. We were on the verge of a discovery that no one living would believe. But only on the verge. It could well be that both of us were wrong, that what the child told us last night, and again this morning, was simply some distortion of her unconscious mind-I don't know. I just don't know… But, because of what she said, I've released the energy. The child is free. Ken is free. He's gone. Where, to what ultimate destination, we shall probably never know. But and this includes you, Steve, and Robbie, if he will join us-I am prepared to work to the end of my days to find out.'

  Then I told him what the officials from the Ministry had said. He shrugged his shoulders.

  'I'll tell them all our experiments have failed,' he said, 'that I want to pack in the job. Henceforth, Steve, we'll be on our own. It's strange-somehow I feel nearer to Ken now than I ever did before. Not only Ken, but everyone who has gone before.' He paused, and turned away. 'The child will be all right,' he said. 'Go to her, will you, and send Robbie to me? I'll deal with those sleuths from the Ministry.'

  I slipped out of the door at the back and started walking across the marsh towards the coastguard cottages. Cerberus came with me. He was no longer panting, restless, as he had been the night before, but bounded ahead in tearing spirits, returning now and again to make sure that I was following him.

  It seemed to me that I had no feeling left, either for what had happened or for what was yet to come. Mac had destroyed, with his own hands, the single thread of evidence that had brought us, through the whole of yesterday, to this morning's dawn. The ultimate dream of every scientist, to give the first answer to the meaning of death, had belonged to us for a brief few hours. We had captured the energy, the energy had ignited the spark, and from that point on there had appeared to loom world after world of discovery.

  Now… now, my faith was waning. Perhaps we had been wrong, tricked by our own emotions and the suffering of a frightened, backward child. The ultimate questions would never receive their answer, either from us or from anyone.