Orbitsville Trilogy

by Bob Shaw

  The guess was proved wrong even before he had joined the knot of drivers who were standing by the lead vehicle. They were looking down at what seemed to be a luminous green tape which lay across the road and stretched off into the darkly mysterious grasslands on either side. As Nicklin approached the group he realised that the glowing strip was insubstantial. The surface of the road was giving off the green light, in a band about eight centimetres wide, but there was no evidence of any special pigment having been applied. It was as if the molecules of the rock-hard material had been agitated.

  "That can't be a traffic marking." The speaker was a man whose name Nicklin had not yet memorised. "Not away out here, at the ass-end of nowhere."

  "Specially as it goes all that way off the road," a tall woman said. The others in the group turned their heads from side to side, their eyes following the glowing strip until it faded into the distance.

  "Perhaps it's a boundary … some kind of county line," put in Nibs Affleck. He had not been on a driving stint, but was among several people who had been resting and were now joining the company, holding coats around themselves to ward off the cold. Nicklin found himself scanning the dimly seen figures in search of Danea.

  "That's not too likely, Nibs," the first speaker said. "Boundaries went out with the ark."

  "Whatever it is, it has killed off the grass." The tall woman had switched on a flashlamp and was aiming it at the ground where the green strip angled away from the road. All vegetation rooted within the edges of the strip had turned white or pale gold, and was very obviously dead.

  Nicklin conjured up an absurd picture of a little man pushing a sports field marker – one that was filled with powerful weedkiller instead of white paint – all the way around the interior of Orbitsville. A kind of Johnny Appleseed in reverse. Interested in having a closer look at the phenomenon, he stepped across the line and was startled to feel himself passing through a plane of spongy resistance. The effect was mild, rather like a momentary conflict of small magnets, but it produced an odd and slightly queasy sensation as it slid through his body. He moved back and forth several times, confirming that the intimate disturbance was real, and that it was limited to a plane which rose vertically from the glowing strip. Others noticed what he was doing and began similar experiments, some of them murmuring with surprise.

  "Hey, Jim!" The tall .woman with the flashlight – he had seen her with Danea and now remembered her name as Christine McGivern – was standing near him. She was beckoning for him to draw even closer, and as he did so he was aware that she was straddling the green line and slowly moving her hips from side to side.

  "This is fun," she whispered. "You can feel it touching you up."

  "It's an ill wind," Nicklin muttered, trying to match Christine's disconcerting smile. He looked away from her and was relieved to see Corey Montane approaching the group. Montane had wrapped himself in a striped raincloak and his black hair was tousled, but neatly so, like that of an actor portraying a man freshly roused from his bed. Several men moved towards him to explain what had been found, and Nicklin hastily joined them.

  "Would someone kindly fetch a spade?" Montane said, after examining the green strip. A short-handled emergency spade was handed to him almost immediately. He took it and made to lift some earth which was crossed by the luminosity, but red-nosed Nibs Affleck took the implement from him, with gentle insistence, and began to dig at a furious rate. Spectators shuffled back as their feet were bombarded with flying dirt, and within seconds Affleck had created a sizable hole.

  "Thank you, Nibs," Montane said. "I think that's enough."

  Affleck, who apparently had been prepared to dig until he collapsed, reluctantly moved away from the excavation. Nicklin, still trying to recover his equilibrium after the little encounter with Christine, was able to see into the hole and at once understood why Montane had wanted it dug.

  The lime-green strip had not been broken by the digging. It now followed the precise contours of the excavation, glowing on the surface of the raw earth as though projected by a powerful optical device. It's a cross-section through that weird rubbery field, Nicklin thought. An effect that shows at the ground-air interface. I wonder if the field goes right down to the Orbitsville shell.

  "This thing … this manifestation … must extend all the way down to the shell," Montane proclaimed without hesitation or signs of doubt, raising his voice for the benefit of individuals who were belatedly emerging from their campers to join the group. "My friends, this is a portent! We have been given yet another sign that Orbitsville is entering its final hour. The Devil's trap is closing!"

  "Lord save us!" somebody cried out among the exclamations of alarm which arose from the assembly.

  Montane seized on the emotional flux of the moment. "It is still within His power to do exactly that. Although the hour is perilously late, although we stand on the very brink of the abyss, God's mercy is infinite – and we may yet be saved. Let us bow our heads and pray to Him." Montane raised his hands, palms facing downwards, and those around him lowered their heads.

  Nimble footwork, Corey, Nicklin thought, marvelling at the speed with which the preacher had reacted to and made use of the situation. Any old portent in a storm! While Montane was leading his followers in the improvised prayers, Nicklin renewed his search for Danea and was disappointed not to see her. The thought of Danea reminded him of her friend Christine, who was now standing chastely with the rest of the group. Suddenly he understood why he had been so taken aback by her conversational gambit, which had been somewhat indelicate to say the least of it. The conspiratorial whisper and the use of his first name had linked them together as a pair of freewheelers surrounded by prudes – but what had led her to that presumption about him, a man she had hardly even seen before?

  The only explanation he could come up with was that Danea had been talking freely to Christine about matters which he regarded as private. Indeed, the word private came nowhere near to expressing his feelings – sacred would have been more appropriate. The notion of Danea and her friend giggling over confidences, especially if graphic sexual details were involved, brought a warm tingling to Nicklin's face.

  Was it possible? Was it possible?

  Standing there – in the complex patterns of light and darkness created by the enigmatic green-glowing strip, the ribbed Orbitsville sky, and the splashes of brilliance from vehicle headlamps – Nicklin felt totally alone, isolated from the group of strangers he had planned to espouse.

  He turned away, walked slowly to his camper and climbed into the driving cabin. Sitting hunched over the wheel, he told himself he was thinking like a hypersensitive adolescent. It was all too easy for an introspective dreamer such as he to build fantasies based on nothing more than a misinterpreted word. All he needed was a little time alone with Danea. One smile from her, one sympathetic glance from those heavy-lidded eyes was all it would take to put everything in his universe to rights. But why had he seen so little of her since joining the mission? Why had she become so damned elusive?

  A short time later the caravan was on the move again, and as Nicklin's vehicle crossed the lime-green strip he felt its magnetic pulse motor falter for just an instant. The power loss was so slight and so fleeting that only one attuned to such things by many years of experience would have noticed it.

  Nicklin flicked his gaze over the dashboard instruments, frowning, then allowed his thoughts to drift back to problems which seemed infinitely more serious.

  CHAPTER 8

  Corey Montane was shivering with the cold by the time he got back to his own vehicle. When going out into the night he had put a raincape on over his pyjamas, expecting to be away from his bed for only a few minutes while the details of some mechanical problem were explained to him. He had not anticipated being shown new proof that the Devil was actively going about his evil work. The subsequent prayers for salvation had taken a considerable time, and during them the chill of the clear night air had seeped a long way into Montane'
s body. He felt as if his internal organs had grown cold and had slowed down in their various activities.

  "Good night," he said to Gerl Kingsley, the hulking ex-farmer who was driving dead dog for him. "I'll see you when four o'clock comes round."

  "Corey, why not let me handle the next shift as well?" Kingsley said, opening the camper's mid-section door for Montane. "You look real done out."

  "Nice of you to say so!"

  "I didn't mean to–" Kingsley slapped himself lightly on the forehead for lacking diplomacy. "What I meant to say was you're bound to be tired, and I'm as chirpy as a barrel of budgies. I could easy go on till eight or even tomorrow noon."

  Montane smiled. "We all take our due turn."

  "Yeah, but I won't sleep anyway. I got more energy than I know what to do with."

  Looking up at the hugely indomitable man, Montane could easily accept the statement. It was one of his precepts that he did his share of all tasks, including the most menial, and it brought an ample reward in the form of devotion – such as Kingsley was showing at that moment – but he was tired and he had much to think about.

  "Perhaps I could stand in for you sometime," he conceded reluctantly and in seconds Kingsley had bundled him, with a kind of respectful roughness, into the camper's warm interior. He locked the door, slipped out of his cape and steadied himself against the silver coffin as the vehicle began to move.

  "I'm sorry about all this, Milly," he said, addressing his wife. "Satan never sleeps – so he's bound to disturb us during the night every now and then."

  He tilted his head, waiting to see if Milly would reply, but there was no response from within the coffin and he went to his bed. Switching off the light, he made himself comfortable beneath the covers and turned his thoughts to the phenomenon of the glowing green line. His instinctive awareness of the Devil and all his moves told him the line was an evil manifestation, but it was hard to guess its exact purpose. It had to be an indication that the Orbitsville trap was closing, but what could be the function of a weak, spongy force field which produced green luminosity where earth and air met?

  Montane craved to know how far the line extended around the shell. Were there others? Were they straight or curved, and did they form patterns? He could get some of the answers when the caravan reached the next town, now that new antennae were being run out into space to permit the re-establishment of radio and television communication between the portals. But having to wait a day was an annoyance, especially as the Evil One had chosen to increase the tempo of events.

  Not for the first time, Montane found himself wishing he could understand why the transmission of signals on radio frequencies had always been impossible within the vast hollow sphere that was Orbitsville. The early explorers had noticed the effect within minutes of their arrival, but two centuries of subsequent research had failed to explain why the lower part of the electromagnetic spectrum was completely blanked out. Montane knew in his heart that it was more of the Evil One's scheming – perhaps intended to prevent Orbitsville's diverse inhabitants from forming a global society – but why? How, precisely, did the Devil benefit?

  The question had troubled Montane for years, and it was the lack of any plausible answer which had discouraged him from bringing the subject into his preaching. It was not the only hidden card in the Devil's hand, and no doubt it would be played when the time was exactly right.

  Besides, there were more immediate problems to be dealt with – including that of Jim Nicklin. Montane shifted uneasily in the bed, goaded by his conscience. Nicklin was a decent young man – intelligent yet naive, complicated yet unworldly – and what was being done to him was an undoubted sin. Danea Farthing had hooked and landed him like a skilled angler bringing in a salmon, but the sin was not really hers. She was only Montane's agent, and he in turn was acting on behalf of God. These were dire times, and no individual sacrifice was too great if it helped bring about the salvation of the human race.

  Montane's problem was that, after all the philosophical arguments had been advanced and all the profound words spoken, an innocent man had – pursuing the angling metaphor – to be gutted like a fish.

  And he, Corey Montane, was the one who would ultimately have to face up to those puzzled blue eyes. What would he say to Nicklin? What justification could he give? The Lord has made me a fisher of men? I was only obeying orders?

  Montane twisted again beneath the covers, searching for the elusive position of comfort which might enable him to slip away into impartial sleep. He could only hope that the essential softness he had identified in Nicklin would lead to the forthcoming ordeal being a brief one. Nicklin was not the type of man to become violent, even on realising that he had just been fleeced of everything he owned. In all probability he would, after a short confrontation, wander off back to Orangefield as a sadder and wiser man, and endeavour to pick up the threads of his old life. Montane punched his pillow, trying to beat it into submission.

  "Why are you torturing yourself over this thing?" Milly's voice, reaching him from the interior of the coffin, was compassionate, brimming with sympathy. "You know very well that you had no choice in the matter."

  Montane gazed in the direction of the oblong casket, the dull sheen of which was discernible even in the near-darkness. "Yes, but will Jim Nicklin see it like that?"

  "Darling, you did what you had to do."

  "It's just that I feel so guilty," Montane replied, taking a deep, quavering breath. "And what makes it far worse is knowing in advance that young Nicklin will be so easy to deal with and get rid of. I'd feel better if I had to face some hard case who'd raise hell and start throwing things around."

  "If Jim Nicklin was a hard case his money would still be in his own bank – not yours."

  "I know that, I know that!" Montane realised he was beginning to sound irritable. "I'm sorry, Milly – it's just that things are … We're going to have to move to Beachhead and stay there, you know. Life's been too much of a holiday for us – cruising around the countryside – and there just isn't enough money in that. Neither of us likes living in a big city. In fact, we hate it. Things won't be easy for us."

  "God didn't say things would be easy." His wife's voice now contained a hint of admonition, of the corrective forcefulness he so badly needed. "You've never had the future of mankind riding on your shoulders before."

  "I … I suppose you're right, Milly – as always. Thank you." Montane closed his eyes, and within a very short time had drifted away into peaceful estuaries of sleep.

  CHAPTER 9

  When Nicklin squeezed into his bunk, shortly after the changeover at four, he did so with no expectations of sleep. Even had he been in the right frame of mind the conditions in the camper would not have been conducive to proper rest. All his life he had been accustomed to a spacious and comfortable bed in a room all to himself. He had surrendered those prerequisites of civilised existence for the privilege of lying down with Danea, the two of them nested like spoons, and holding her in his arms the whole night through. The contrast between that deferred bliss and what he had to put up with in the meantime was almost too great to contemplate.

  Henty, the man due to take over the driving, had done a lot of resentful mumbling while getting ready, as though Nicklin had been in charge of the rota and had marked him down for the worst shift out of personal spite. The six other men had been disturbed to varying degrees by Henty's griping, and were making restless sounds and movements as the vehicle got back on the road. Seen in the patchy dimness, the twinned rows of double-decker bunks more than ever resembled the interior of a submarine, and Nicklin began to feel claustrophobic. To make matters worse, Henty – isolated in the separate driving cabin up front – seemed to be working off his bad temper by steering with unnecessary roughness.

  All things considered, Nicklin's prospects of sleep were very poor, but in a remarkably short time he had entered the world of the dream.

  The setting was in sunlit open air, and featured a small rounded
hill whose slopes had been fashioned into a beautiful alpine garden. It was obvious that a great deal of loving and painstaking work had been poured into the construction of the garden. The rocky banks, underpinning for shoals of blossoms, contrived to look natural while at the same time their symmetry betrayed the handiwork of a master architect. Paths of meticulously fitted stone wound their way around the hill, beneath small archways and past numerous sculpted benches.

  Apart from Nicklin himself, there were two characters in the dream. One was his mother, who in reality had died when he was seven; the other was the terrifying figure of a fox who walked upright on his hind legs and was as tall as a man. The fox wore antique clothing – a shabby frocked coat, a winged collar and a greasy cravat secured by a horseshoe pin – and for some reason Mrs Nicklin was blind to the fact that he was not another human being.

  She was laughing with him, treating him like a close member of the family. Nicklin was a small boy cowering behind his mother's skirts, appalled by her inability to notice the fox's pointed yellow teeth, his Disney-animal nose – like a shiny black olive standing upright on the end of his snout, and his red-brown coloration, the essence of all that was fox.

  For his part, the fox was playing up to Mrs Nicklin. He was grinning, nudging, telling little jokes, and every now and again his red-veined eyes glanced appreciatively and knowingly at little Jim. Isn't this the best laugh ever? the eyes seemed to gloat. Your mother doesn't know I'm a fox. And – best of all – she doesn't know I'm going to eat you up!

  Little Jim's fear increased as he heard the fox proposing that it should take him for a walk through the alpine garden. There were many secluded corners in the garden, places where a fox could kill and devour a small boy without being disturbed in its work. And his fear became pure terror when he heard his mother welcoming the suggestion because she needed time to go shopping.