The Power

by Ian Watson

  “But it’s school tomorrow,” she reminded him.

  “Ho, ho. How do you get to Churtington with roadblocks in the way?”

  “Go round by Thrushby, or further.”

  “Talk sense, Jen. It’s not very wise to distance yourself from your home base. With these Emergency Powers likely to be law by tomorrow I bet there’ll be petrol rationing, and teachers won’t be a priority. Maybe the government’ll shut the pumps.”

  “No, that’s in the second of the emergency bills.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “Don’t tell us they’re shovin’ them bills through already!”

  “It was on the news, Jack.”

  “The Yanks have obviously jumped the gun,” said Gareth. “Act first, change the law the day after. We should top up our tanks at the garage.”

  “Join every queue we can tag on to, along wiv the other feuls? Ye’d have thowt as we could behave better warsels.”

  “Very laudable sentiment, Jack,” began Gareth, “but –”

  “Could we please have a minute of silence for Mal?” asked Nell. “And to get our heads straight?”

  “Good idea!” seconded Mitzi. “I went to the Quakers a few times when I was a kid. Mum and Dad thought they were getting rid of me to the Baptists, but they never went themselves so what did they know? I always liked the silences. The peace. Wasn’t much of that at home.”

  “Yor right,” said Jack. “We should show wor respect. Whisht, everyone.”

  But of course, through in the kitchen the radio was still on. Desert Island Discs, by now. The guest on the show seemed to be some classical performer or conductor since he was talking about the world’s concert halls. His next choice of record, one of Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, began – melancholy, goldenly sensual. Maybe it was the last song in the world.

  It cut off.

  “We interrupt this programme for a newsflash. Reports are reaching us at the moment from the eastern Mediterranean that the American aircraft carrier Enterprise has been destroyed by a low-yield nuclear weapon. Several support vessels in the vicinity were crippled or sunk. We are going over to Mark Tully in Nicosia –”

  “That’s for Damascus,” Gareth said blankly. “One for one. Tit-for-tat, you see. It isn’t actually escalation. They said low-yield.”

  “You don’t use five megatons te wallop a boat!”

  “The poor shits,” whispered Nell. “Burnt, blinded, boiled alive* Hundreds of people. Thousands.”

  “Less than in Damascus,” mumbled Gareth.

  Sixteen

  At five Jeni announced, “I’m going out for a breath of air.”

  No more news of actual hostilities had been broadcast, though there were threats and counterthreats by Washington and Moscow, plus much analysis and improvisation from studio experts and foreign correspondents. The Territorial Army reserve had been called up by Queen’s Order and reservists should report to their units the following day. Even that wasn’t totally ominous, though as a commentator observed events were happening faster than anyone had ever predicted. Would all British forces be transferred to mainland Europe? – hardly an overnight manoeuvre – when thus far the death and destruction had happened in the Levant?

  Police reported a twelve mile tailback on the M4 out of London to the West Country, as well as major congestion on other routes such as the M5 south of Birmingham and the roads to North Wales. These routes had now been closed and motorists were being urged not to leave home unless their journeys were essential. No doubt Gareth, back in Old Roses, was feeling exonerated.

  Ports and airports were still operating normally, though the latter were besieged by people clamouring to fly to destinations supposedly out of harm’s way: the West Indies, Guyana, West Africa.

  Jack volunteered to tag along with Jeni on her walk, since Bess would be needing to empty herself. In fact, they could all do with a stroll.

  “Thanks, but I’d rather be on my own. To think. I’ll take Bess with me.”

  “We’re crowdin’ ye outa house n’ home, pet.”

  “No; no. Besides, Nell and Mitzi will be sleeping next door. Let’s all go to the pub when it opens. Andy and I were planning to go at lunchtime, but. … The pub’ll either be totally empty –”

  “Or else every bugger’ll be there. Unless they’d rather gan te chorch te pray.”

  She shrugged and clicked her tongue to the dog, who came willingly. Soon she was wandering aimlessly down Green Street in the direction of the brook, with Bess lolloping ahead.

  Every bugger did indeed seem to be in the White Lion that evening. With similar instinct, Tom Tate had opened early, and bother the Sunday licensing hours. Old Tom already had extra volunteer hands behind the bar. This was the only way most people would get served inside of ten minutes. At this rate he would run out of beer by Wednesday, before the draymen were due to call again. By then would breweries be allowed to use petrol or roads or trucks? Right now Tom was coining it. Occasionally he flicked a speculative glance at the notice pinned to the main oak beam: SUNDAY SNOWBALL NOW £40.

  Some lucky sod was bound to walk off with the snowball tonight. He’d instituted this at a mere five quid to buck up what was invariably a thin Sunday night. Until now. Week by week the snowball had accumulated. With the attention of most customers on world news, maybe he should try to sneak the sign down. Fat chance, with this mob to squeeze through!

  The most recent news before Jeni and party had headed for the White Lion – collecting Gareth and Nancy en route – was that Warsaw Pact forces had pushed their massive manoeuvres through into East Germany, according to ham radio broadcasts picked up in Vienna. Seemingly some DDR units were being obstructive and were being swept aside. With casualties. So much for doubts about reinforcing Europe.

  The usual taped music wasn’t playing in the White Lion that evening. Instead a transistor set was propped beneath the optics, tuned to Radio One to catch any newsflashes. Meantime, Bruno Brookes was counting down the last of the Top Forty, mostly drowned by chatter.

  “Who are this lot, then?” Bert Morris asked Jeni, and for a moment she worried that the villagers were about to turn their backs on all outsiders.

  “The peace campers from Kerthrop, Bert, that’s who they are. The Americans saw them off at gunpoint. They shot one man dead for arguing. They’re blocking off the roads and expelling householders from Kerthrop village. They shot a British person.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true,” confirmed Gareth.

  Immediately the group became a centre of questions, incredulity, and as their story was heard, indignant sympathy; for the most part. The local battery pig farmer, Dennis Ainsworth – a flushed, belligerent fellow – declared that the American allies would only be doing the necessary to protect freedom, we should be damn glad of it, and lefties could sod off. Jack started shouting, but couldn’t get close enough to collar Ainsworth, who looked as though he was spoiling for trouble in any case. Gareth calmed Jack. Fresh arrivals – farmers – brought word of lanes and fields occupied by USAF troops.

  “… But I’ve got ewes lambing in that field. ‘See the commanding officer,’ says soldier boy. How do I see him, eh?”

  “… The Russians mightn’t have blasted those ships themselves! Maybe some Arabs got their hands on a nuclear bomb? They’ve been trying for long enough. I mean, otherwise that red fleet’s a sitting duck for retaliation.”

  “… Bulldozers churning up his rape for missile batteries. Does he get compensation?”

  “… That’s Tears for Fears, with the biggest jump to four. Billy Ocean goes up!”

  “… Num-ber Threeee!” sang the gung-ho chorus line.

  “… They shot one of those peace campers as if he was a dog.”

  “… You’re in charge legally, George. You’re the chairman of the PC. What should we be doing?”

  George Vaux dragged on his moustache, perplexed.

  The Anne Nightingale Request Show had been running for
half an hour when it was broken into. Tom Tate flapped his arms, and the pub hushed.

  “… two Emergency Powers bills have been made law by royal prerogative –”

  “They didn’t wait for Parliament!” Jeni cried. “They just rammed those bills through by fiat.”

  “More like by tank, pet,” said Jack.

  “Shut up, we can’t hear!” snapped Ainsworth.

  Time warped onward, seeming to slow down and speed up unpredictably. There would be a broadcast by the Prime Minister on all radio and TV channels at eight o’clock, followed by the Home Secretary outlining the detailed provisions of those emergency bills, with which Jeni was all too familiar….

  “We’re going to be interned,” she whispered.

  “If anyone has time to,” Jack pointed out. “Things is whippetin’ alang.”

  “What do they mean, agricultural stockpiles’ll be requisitioned?” someone was demanding loudly. “And oil too?”

  “You’ll have to wait till eight, Roger!”

  “You’ll notice,” Gareth commented, “that broadcasting becomes subject to ministerial direction. Maybe that’s the last real news we’re ever going to hear. We’ll just be guessing from now on. I’ll bet you the government isn’t in London any longer.”

  It was then that Sheri Diamond forced her way through into the bar: hot-diggity Captain Ron’s wife. She was blonde, blue-eyed, snub-nosed, with a very strong jaw, as if an orthodontist had not only perfected her white teeth but had decided they needed a superb foundation of marble. She was also slight – no pyramid-hips on her – but her American accents cut through the noise, quieting it as though somehow she might be bringing them the genuine global bottom line.

  However, what she cried out a second time was, “Can anyone help me?”

  Take Two: her blonde curls were damply matted. Her white wool sweater was soaked, delineating breasts a bit large for her frame – a polar bear nymphette after a swim. The bottoms of her tight jeans and her once-white sneakers were brown with mud.

  She clutched a torch.

  “Mr Vaux, can you-help?”

  George thrust through. “What is it, Mrs Diamond?”

  “Our boy Felix hasn’t come home for hours. I’ve been hunting all over. The Kuzkas too. Ed and Carol are still out searching. Mary’s at my house in case Felix … Ron’s on duty.”

  “I bet he is,” said dumpy Eric Bennett. The little man sounded unfriendly for once.

  “I tried the new folks at the school house, but they aren’t at home.”

  “Too busy shooting British people, I suppose.”

  “Eric!” George rebuked.

  Ainsworth barged through, swaying; he’d been knocking them back. “The lady wants help, Bennett, not your lip. Right! Who’s going to turn out and search?” He glared pugnaciously, his face as red as if he’d just walked across the Sahara, though drought played no part in his condition.

  Bennett licked his lips, and smoothed back sparse slicks of black hair from the top of his cranium. “Ah, so she’ll be wanting a posse? While thousands of kids are burning alive in Damascus!”

  Oh, the worm was turning. Ainsworth grabbed Bennett by the lapels of his dark blue suit.

  “What’s wrong? You land a fat contract to supply beauty cream to the Syrians?” Ainsworth wrung Eric Bennett, almost lifting him off his feet.

  “Some Syrians’ll need more than beauty cream,” squeaked Bennett.

  “I didn’t do that,” protested Sheri. “Please!” she squealed, clinging to Ainsworth’s arm.

  Ainsworth released the little man, with a, “You aren’t worth it.”

  Bennett dusted himself off. Muttered, “The peaceful intermediary, hmm.” Tried to order a Scotch.

  “Come, come, this won’t do,” said George.

  “I phoned the police but I just get the out-of-order tone –”

  “Domestic subscribers have been cut off at the exchanges, that’ll be why,” said Gareth.

  “Wey, if the bairn’s gan missin’ we should aal pitch in. The police’d be as much use as scalded cats.”

  Ainsworth eyed Jack, his flushed face twitching. “That’s the spirit.”

  Seventeen

  Morning had broken, like the last dawning. All red and orange stops were pulled out on the colour organ; must be extra dust in the stratosphere. Jeni had fled to the churchyard to be by herself. Today the serried old gravestones looked like a filing system for dead families of bygone years, as if a score of skeletons had been compressed into each of those weathered rectangles. The golden lichen was dried flesh or remains of scalp. Worn chiselled dates were inaccessible code numbers in this stony data bank. Sheep, like woolly erasers, had used the memorial markers as rubbing posts and sparrows were scavenging the tatters of fleece to pad their nests.

  Equally, Jeni was fleeing from herself….

  Last night they’d all missed the eight o’clock broadcast. No matter; it was also the nine o’clock broadcast – and the ten o’clock one.

  Felix Diamond had been found along the lane beyond the brook. A ford for tractors and a footbridge led on to the lane. Rough-surfaced and hedge-hugged, it wended a mile through pastures, past an isolated cow byre, till it reached the embankment of the one-time railway line. Shadowed by stands of Scots pine, the line, long since stripped of its rails and sleepers, was now one of Andy’s “very long narrow fields”. Felix hadn’t been quite that far along.

  The little boy was dead. Of course he was. Would you expect a half-naked child, whose bowels had been hauled out through his devastated anus and knotted round his neck, to be alive? He’d almost been turned inside out.

  Jeremy Partridge and Ainsworth had found the boy. It had been Ainsworth’s idea to call the vicar out to do his duty. Ainsworth smelled as if he’d vomited all his beer, and the vicar was stunned enough to break his lenten resolution with a very large neat gin back in the pub, when those two checked in as arranged by posse organizer Ainsworth.

  They’d be needing a wheelbarrow to use as a stretcher, and a blanket to hide the contents.

  Ought they to shift the body from the scene of death? Or should they leave it out overnight, with volunteers keeping watch in the wet mizzle? Hardly – when no one looked like being able to phone for any police or ambulance in the near future.

  The news would have to be broken to Sheri Diamond, who was through in the pub kitchen with Mrs Tate. Mrs T was looking after her, encouraging her. Mrs Diamond had to be told that her boy was dead – but not how. She mustn’t be allowed to see the corpse. The vicar would have to talk to her. Him, obviously. He was the right person. After just one more gin, to blind out the devil’s abomination he’d seen….

  Other search parties were returning as agreed, to rejoin those who had stayed in the pub to co-ordinate. The new arrivals heard the news in whispers. Jeni, who had stayed, listened blankly.

  Ainsworth was cold sober now, pallid with a sudden all-draining sobriety.

  “What I saw, I tell you it’s physically impossible. Not that anyone could bring themselves to do such a thing – though that’s hard enough to credit. But that it could be done at all I’ve seen a prolapsed sow or two in my time, but … someone, something, must’ve reached right up inside the poor little bastard and … yanked everything out. You tell ’em, vicar! I’m not spinning a….”

  Partridge said, “I couldn’t believe what I saw in the light of the torch. The boy wasn’t murdered. He wasn’t … buggered to death. He was martyred.” He drank. “God forgive me.” For what? For the gin – or for a lapse of faith at the sight he’d had to witness?

  “Evil is abroad,” he murmured. “Foul evil.”

  “I’ll help you collect the body,” offered Bert Morris. “Where shall we take it, though? If that’s the state it’s in, we daren’t even tell the woman where. How about the church?”

  “No!” howled Partridge. “That would be allowing an abomination in. Something may have hidden itself inside the boy. Perhaps that’s why it tore out his �
�”

  “Divven’t be so –!” Jack checked himself. Doubtless he was remembering the ghoul horses and their riders; he exchanged glances with Jeni and friends. Jeni could only think about the … toilet thing … which had come out of her and swum away.

  George began, “Surely the church should protect –”

  “No, I forbid it.”

  Tom Tate leaned over the bar. “First, get shot of Mrs Diamond. If you wrap the thing up well, and it’s sealed inside a few plastic bags, you can stick it in our cellar temporary. Till an ambulance can collect it. It’s cold down there. Chilly as a morgue.”

  “What, put it right next to the beer we’re drinking?” asked a voice.

  “That’s in casks. The little lad won’t sup any. And don’t look a gift horse.”

  “That’s an outstanding offer, Tom,” said George.

  “I’ve got an empty cupboard down there, anyway.”

  “What about the teleph –” began Bert. He bit off his words. George was shaking his head violently. Tom mustn’t have put two and two together yet about the phones and the emergency services. If he cottoned on, he might take his offer back.

  “Yes, Tom’s cellar!” Partridge spoke with utter certainty. That would be far enough away from St Mary’s.

  “The boy might have been done in some place else, and taken to where we found him.” Ainsworth was playing detective, to sterilize an impossible experience. “Lane’s muddy. I noticed recent drag marks.”

  No murderer would drag a little boy, thought Jeni. A murderer would carry such a light burden, especially if the person in question was strong enough to … do what had been done. A dog might drag its victim. She herself had been down that way with Bess, hadn’t she? Bess the bestial molester! – she almost laughed.

  Such marks in the mud as Ainsworth described might be the work of a thin boneless disembodied arm pulling itself along the ground as it escaped from the scene. Supposing it had compelled the boy to go there by clinging to him like a lamprey to a fish, by biting into his nervous system to pilot him. They might have been made by a yellow muscle creature which could force itself up a child’s anus as if up a waste pipe, and fasten on with teeth or suckers then contract fiercely enough to expel itself along with the intestine it was gripping. She sensed this occuring almost as clearly as if she was dreaming it, right there in the bar.