I said, “Sigg is now going to ensure that we all get into Nodd’s control-room. Right, Mr Sigg?”
Sigg, sweating more than ever, signified assent. Magill asked, “What do we do when we get there, Commander?”
“Cause damage,” I said briefly. “And kill Nodd. We may not get out alive, any of us, but we were going to die anyway. Either by hand of Nodd, or by incoming ICBMs. Those of you who have families —”
I broke off sharp: suddenly, the massive rumble and the shaking had started again — Nodd was lifting back his dome, setting in motion the machinery that cleared away his launch pads for action. Time was now tending to rush for zero hour, at least in my mind; I tried to work out the zones, where the sun would be in its noon blaze, who was going to get the first of the all-out attacks, which of the world’s population centres would be the pioneer-victims of the instant cremation concentrate. In a hard voice I said, “Lead on, Mr Sigg, and make it fast,” and just as I said that Nodd manifested himself via his internal intercom network. His voice seemed to come at me from behind my head.
“You’re not so clever as you think, Commander Shaw.” There was a laugh; I swore luridly: closed-circuit TV again. I’d never given it a thought, but even if I had I reckon I would still have come in to get the Americans out. Nodd went on in some glee: “You will find all doors shut on you, Commander Shaw, and you’ll all stay there till I need you.”
The voice went off the air and I pushed through to the outer door, now closed. It was firmly locked; so were all the cell doors, so I couldn’t have used my descent hole again if I’d wanted to. I glared at Sigg. “How come?” I demanded.
“The doors can be shut electronically from the control-room.”
I looked at him sourly. “Your boss hasn’t taken you into consideration, has he?”
Sigg didn’t answer, but the fear was still in his eyes and there was a new look in addition, a look that said he was feeling sore with Nodd. I said, “It’s up to you to get us out if you don’t want to be aerosoled.”
He didn’t answer that either. I had to accept that in fact there was nothing the bastard could do to get us out. The time for bluff and blarney was well past; Nodd wouldn’t trust me any more now whatever yarn I might make Sigg spin on the internal pick-up. I prowled up and down in a fine state of seethe. Being pipped at the post was unpalatable to say the least, and this time it really seemed like checkmate. I couldn’t even blow the door lock by gunfire: there was no conventional lock and all the doors slotted into the concrete, all of them being sliders. Hopelessness began to settle in and I felt that my head must burst. I looked along the line of seamen: two of the younger ones were looking like death and in the eyes of a lad of no more than eighteen tears sparkled and there was a sob. Magill went over and slapped his face hard, then put an arm around his shoulder and talked to him like a father. I told Felicity to rest her aerosol arm: Sigg could do us no harm now. Sigg brought out a handkerchief and mopped his face, looking godalmighty relieved when Felicity put the tin down. The atmosphere grew stifling and hot: something seemed to have gone wrong with the forced-draught system. Maybe that was intentional, I thought, Nodd meant to suffocate us. Then I remembered he had had a need of us, or of me at any rate, when he went into his full attack. But maybe he had decided I wasn’t necessary after all. In the meantime the rumbles and the shakes had ceased: Nodd’s dome was wide open and I could imagine the busy scenes at the launch pads. If only I could call the USS Hampton Roads, I thought in terrible frustration, they could catch Nodd with his pants down … I sagged back against the wall near Felicity and felt her hand slide into mine.
She said. “You’re blaming yourself. God knows why. You did what was open to you.” I didn’t respond other than to return the squeeze of her hand. I realised I knew almost nothing of Felicity Mandrake. Had she, I wondered, parents alive? She was young: she was bound to have. A mother and father who would grieve and never be told the truth other than that their daughter had disappeared whilst on service overseas. There wasn’t a murmur out of her about herself. As for me, I knew now what I should have done: I should have left the American seamen until afterwards and I should have got Sigg to take me direct for the control-room or maybe that high catwalk that I’d found earlier and which, if I’d got there before the dome was opened, could have provided a first-class shooting gallery for rifle fire that might have picked out a vital spot and blown Nodd’s rockets and base to Kingdom Come … thinking bitter thoughts of might have been, I was interrupted once again by the godlike tones of Nodd through the invisible wires, Nodd announcing that the first of the countdowns that would lead in to zero hour had started earlier than expected.
“You will all be disarmed and handcuffed and brought to the control-room,” he said. “Be very careful, Commander Shaw, when the main door is opened.”
As Nodd went off the air. I lifted a fist and shook it at where the voice had seemed to come from: a childish gesture, no doubt, but one that very slightly relieved my feelings. I happened to be watching Sigg when, silently, the outer door opened, slotting hack into its wall recess. Outside was a double file of Nodd’s thugs, a line of men on each side of the door, all armed with pistols, Astras, similar to the one Nodd had used to fry Rackstall in his own melting juices. I reckoned each of those guns carried cartridges of UV concentrate. The man in charge spoke. He told us to lay our guns on the floor. I obeyed and all the others who had guns did likewise. We waited further orders. I looked at Sigg again. He was a happy man now, but he was one hundred per cent thug and bully. He made for out and safety, but before he went through the door he turned back and approached Felicity. He lifted a hand and took her sharply across the face with the back of it, then he knee’d her in the stomach, hard. She gave a cry and doubled up and Sigg hit her again, his face suffused with blood. She knocked into the aerosol, which rolled. It rolled towards me and I scooped it up and almost without thinking I aimed it at Sigg and pressed the button. For a second Sigg stood stock still and in that second went crimson dotted with tiny white pinheads of blisters. Then he began to thrash: arms and legs flailed, and he screamed. Then, still thrashing and flailing, he took off like a bullet, hurtling between the grim-faced lines of thugs, feet seeming hardly to touch ground. Beyond the lines he spun round, screaming like a lunatic, tearing at his face and neck and hair, fell in a heap on the ground and then bounced up and down like a cat in a fit, a totally incredible sight. I was appalled but at the same time rejoicing: Sigg, I reckoned, wouldn’t die, but he was getting some of his own medicine, and it was some sort of revenge on behalf of the poor broken wretches in that dungeon.
16
My guess had been a good one: some kind of super itching-powder, Nodded up, was what that aerosol contained. No spleen was vented upon us by the guards: Nodd had probably ordered them not to fire on us unless it became essential, and some of them were grinning at Sigg’s antics — I dare say Mr Sigg was a bastard to his underlings as well as to his victims. Anyway, Sigg was left to scream and bounce while we were all handcuffed and marched away past him. I saw that there was no crimson left now, his face was all joined-up blister and a good deal of blood. Farther along the passage we were passed by two men and a woman in white coats like medics, probably hastening Siggward with the antidote having heard the rumpus over the internal pick-up. I rather hoped that if death was to come to us that night, it would come before Sigg was fully mobile again.
Under our strong guard, we were marched into the control-room, which was a humming hive of industry and light, the many operators absorbed by their dials and gauges and switches and flickering rivers of screened red and green and blue light as before. Each operator wore headphones and the big TV screen showed the brilliantly-lit launch area below; at the top of the screen, in figures of brilliant green, the progress of the countdown was being displayed, the count changing each tenth of a second. Nodd in his command gallery looked most extraordinary: he was wearing a long jade-green garment that shimmered as if with fire and on
his huge head there rested, like a pea on a drum, a curiously shaped black cap with three high sides, one across the back and two at the sides joining to form an angle in front. He seemed to have gone Chinese, mandarin style, possibly in honour of his host country although I fancied the comrades in Peking, most of whom were ready to disown him anyway, might find political objections to his sense of class privilege. He saw us, gave an order, and Felicity and I were separated from the seamen and taken to the rostrum. Just as we got there the first countdown ended and off in a great sheet of blinding flame and much rolling steam and smoke went the advance guard of Nodd’s back-up satellites, the TV image being accompanied by a violent rocking of the control-room, a tremendous noise, and a blast of heat sucked in by the forced-draught fans. Nodd, I thought, must have immensely strong protection built around his nerve centre for us all not to be melted by the blast-off.
A smiling Nodd rubbed his hands together and the TV screen showed feverish activity below as the launch area was cleared before being prepared, said Nodd, for the next launch.
“You’d like to have an idea of the work-out,” Nodd stated.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “You’ve already given it to us in outline.”
Nodd shrugged. “As you wish, but you must remember you have a vital part to play yourself and there must be no mistakes unless you wish London and New York to burn.”
“London and New York?”
“Yes, along with the missile bases, they’ll take the first attacks at noon local time, when I shall transmit a go to my orbiting space vehicles. Very concentrated attacks in the central areas. Westminster, the City … Piccadilly, Regent Street, Regent’s Park, Hyde Park, St James’s. In New York, Central Park will burn and all Manhattan and New Jersey will rapidly become uninhabitable. The death roll will be high. After a few more demonstrations over the subsequent days, there can be only one outcome: surrender to my demands.”
Sourly I said, “And China? Your spies will have told you by this time, won’t they, that Peking doesn’t want you?”
Nodd looked angry and became voluble. “Remember this: China can be as susceptible as any other country. The sun shines everywhere without fear or favour, and Peking can burn as easily, as surely, as London and New York. So can the nuclear missile testing range at Lop Nor in Sinkiang-Uighur. I shall force the Chinese nation to be my allies — WUSWIPP’s allies.” He paused. “You alone — you and Miss Mandrake — can save the lives of people who do not need to die. WUSWIPP’s aims can be achieved by peaceful persuasion.”
He went on and on, standing before us in his fake mandarin’s outfit. A lot of it rolled over my head but once again I did begin to see a certain inevitability in a surrender by the West. If you can’t hit back, you can’t just sit tight and go on being burned by assisted natural forces. The sun was inexhaustible, at least for a few more million years, and Nodd seemed to have no worries about his chlorofluorocarbon supply. It was produced on site by his chemists and, naturally, there was full WUSWIPP backing for continuance of availability of all raw materials through their world-wide ramifications and their dedicated boffins. The one thing that could defeat Nodd and his devilish computers was the weather, and that only in patches:it was never overcast all over the world at once, and in fact the weather pattern over most of Britain and the state of New York was currently in Nodd’s terms excellent, and was going to remain so till well after his satellites had done their work — I heard the weather reports coming through myself, in English. The lows were almost non-existent, right off the relevant maps, and Nodd’s target areas were under lovely highs with no wind at all and next day would bring blue skies and sun.
I asked Nodd, “Have you broadcast warnings to London and New York?”
He smiled, and flicked over a switch on his master control panel, and a voice came through — several different voices cut in at intervals and I guessed I was being fed recordings of picked-up Western broadcasts, a sort of edited medley. The curious burn-ups that had been noted in various parts of the world were expected to intensify and could hit highly populated areas: London and New York were specifically mentioned though still nothing was said in so many words that it was known to be part of a carefully-planned operation against the world’s political set-up — frankly I had ceased to think of it as being simply anti-West; Nodd was anti everyone but WUSWIPP, and I reckon even WUSWIPP was just a leg-up for his personal ambitions. Anyway, it was obvious that Western authority was in one hell of a panic now and had not the faintest idea of how to minimise the expected casualties. In my view, and doubtless in authority’s view as well, there was only one way, and that was evacuation. And that, of course, was not on. You can’t move millions within hours, and the first hint that such was on the fringe of your mind would lead to frightening scenes of violence and frenzy as the mobs formed in the streets and fought for transport. As the recording went on and more voices came in, telephone voices between Downing Street and the White House, voices I recognised as Prime Minister and President in person, it began to emerge that trouble had already started on both sides of the Atlantic. Someone had blundered; someone, in fact, really had pulled out the wrong stops. Authority had shilly-shallied, had decided it must tell the people some of the facts so they couldn’t say afterwards they hadn’t had any warning at all, yet it had shied away from the full truth and any positive action. Result, mounting uncontrollable chaos. And that could only do one thing: escalate. Its escalation might play right into Nodd’s hands by forcing surrender before the UV hit, and once again that decision must be principally America’s in the absence of any far-flung chain of overseas British bases.
I saw Nodd’s eye on me, saw the exultancy lifting the dead flatness of his unpleasant face. Bitterly I said, “Christ, you’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you, you bastard!”
He knew what I meant, knew the way my mind had been working. I didn’t see that he really had any need of me or Felicity at all, he was fully capable of manipulating the world without our contribution. I said as much, but saw that he didn’t agree. He was absolutely obsessed by the thought that no one outside WUSWIPP was going to believe he could really carry out his threat.
I said, “You’ve demonstrated often enough, haven’t you?”
He returned to his earlier theme: the demonstrations had been small. After the first full-scale attack, yes, then they would believe.
“You’re not squeamish about killing, are you?” I asked sardonically.
Beneath the black hat, the eyes glittered. “I have no feelings about death, Commander Shaw, one way or the other. WUSWIPP is the important consideration.”
“Then why the insistence on forcing surrender before the big demonstration? Does it matter all that much to you?”
He answered with a curious solemnity. He said, “WUSWIPP is international you know that. Both Britain and America are important WUSWIPP areas. WUSWIPP tries not to kill its own.”
I said. “Yes, I follow.” And I reckon I did; burn up too many WUSWIPP stalwarts, and with them their special scientific knowhow, and the WUSWIPP high command was going to be displeased with Master Nodd? Only too bloody likely! This was not the first time Nodd had harped on his hope of enforcing WUSWIPP’s will by threat alone; and in Yamchow, Fuller-Platt had made the point that the Chinese Government had positively not wanted to go into all-out action. WUSWIPP itself might very well have concurred in this approach: Nodd was to be ready to back his threat, but was to hold off unless and until the point of inevitability was reached. That, of course, is how the best weapons work: so much the better for not being used at all. I could take Nodd’s point, all right; and certainly I had no wish to hear on the radio from the West that London was in the UV melting pot, or that Manhattan’s skyline had turned black with the skyscrapers spouting smoke. But an idea was forming in my mind since I didn’t want to see surrender either, and I still meant to get Nodd. This new idea, which had come to me as I noted our local zone time on the dial of one of Nodd’s battery of clocks, co
uld be made to fit into the Nodd pattern of heartfelt plea to the Western leaders. I glanced at Felicity, then at Nodd. I said, “All right, you win. In the interest of saving the non-WUSWIPP part of life. I’ll broadcast.”
“A wise decision. You shall tell them the whole truth, Commander Shaw.”
*
It was all set up for me, like it had been for Rackstall. Red light, green light: I was on the air. I took it slow; I knew it would not be possible for anyone to get a fix on Nodd’s base for the reasons he’d given me earlier, but I took it slow just the same, wishing to spin things out. I told my distant audience that Nodd was ready to go and that he had not exaggerated his claims; in my view he had to win because he had instant pin-point facilities for burn-up and was himself impregnable. I said I’d seen the lot for myself and was personally in no doubt at all that within hours there was going to be horror in the streets of London and New York. I said that at this very moment more space vehicles were being made ready tor launching from Nodd’s pads for back-up use in the future: the launches, I said, making something of a point of this, would continue for some while to the greater power and glory of Nodd. I said that in my considered opinion the target areas could have no possible defence and that over the next few days there would be more targets unless the British and American Governments considered coming to terms with WUSWIPP. I took some time over all this, with my eye on the clock that showed local time: down in the Gulf of Tongking the USS Hampton Roads, under cover of darkness, should be receiving reports and taking any orders from the Pentagon. Somehow I doubted if anything specific would come from the Pentagon, but I hoped that Commander Darrell aboard the Hampton Roads would hear me and would take the point I was trying to get across, which was that since Nodd was busily launching space vehicles his concrete dome cover would be currently lifted clear to take any missiles Darrell might care to blast off on his own responsibility. I wished Rackstall had been aboard that submarine: he’d have blasted off with pure joy! I couldn’t be sure about Darrell; he might not be aware that Washington had reacted, that the Pentagon might be about to send off Cruise Distant, and without that knowledge … well, it’s not every submarine CO who is prepared to risk starting world war on his own initiative, and that’s what it would appear to him as being. In case it was of assistance to Darrell in reaching a decision, I added a few more advices and to hell with Nodd and what he might do.
Sunstrike_The next gripping Commander Shaw thriller Page 19
