The Thinktank That Leaked

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  I did it hard and she cried but she didn’t lose control of the aircraft. She managed, “I wanted to cry, and you knew.”

  I said, “The sad part about Paula is nobody’s going to do anything — even that — to solve any of her problems.”

  She said, “I knew it all the time and I don’t know why I made such a thing of it and I deserved what you gave me just then.”

  I said, “You didn’t deserve it at all but I’ve never felt so desperate in my life and I had to do it to show what a great big brute I am when inside I’m just a baby who’s become completely dependent on you in forty-eight hours and if I ever lose you I’ll be all hollow inside but I’d never give up if you left me because I’d spend the rest of my life hoping you’d come back.”

  She said, “What brought me to my senses was the rocket I got from Mike when I got home. I realized how much you’d done for him and that you couldn’t possibly be a fraud and he said I was a silly little bitch and why didn’t I grow up and get in the MG and catch the one person who’d got my number before you had a chance to change your mind.”

  I said, “Why do they make out in movies that men know what they’re doing and are self-sufficient and have stern moral fibre and take everything on the chin when half the actors in the movie fall apart before they’re forty?”

  She said, “Because the scriptwriters can never convince themselves that the public have ever really been in love.”

  I said, crying idiotically, so that for a while I couldn’t read the instruments, “Nesta, you aren’t going to break my heart, are you?”

  She said, “We’re both safe, Roger. I know.”

  *

  “Roger, are you going to call Bristol?”

  “No. Sure that QNH was right?”

  “Certain. I phoned the met office.”

  “Then let’s stay out of trouble. If Bristol had us on radar they’d have called us up by now. Can I have control, now?”

  “You have control.”

  “Where is this place?”

  She showed me on the chart and I altered the heading slightly left. I asked her, “What’s the field like?”

  “Long enough. And you can make a flat approach if you come in from the western end. The field runs parallel with the house and behind it.”

  “What about obstacles?”

  “I took a walk there with Mike while he was undergoing what Spender fondly describes as treatment. It isn’t rocky or marshy, and as it’s been eaten down to the roots it’s very unlikey there are any cattle.”

  “When did you visit Mike?”

  “Two months ago. But there’s been a drought so the grass won’t have recovered enough for grazing and the ground should be really hard.”

  “Listen, Nesta, I don’t want to be heard, if possible. But we’ll need power down to the ground, as you know, in this. How do we manage that?”

  “As far as I can remember there’s another field to the west of the one you land in. Apart from the wooden fence, the only obstacle between the two fields is a stream.”

  “What about trees?”

  “I wouldn’t swear it, but I think you’ll find that the trees flank the two fields to the north and south. They don’t divide them. The fence itself is the usual five-barred thing. There is a cow-bridge and I think that does have a few trees around it, yes … I’m sure it does, so you’d better keep clear of that.”

  “Is it on what you think of as being the centre-line?”

  “No. Keep the bridge to your left. There’s a tennis court — a hard court — at the limit of the touchdown run, if you take the field from the west.”

  “With the usual high perimeter fence of wire mesh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll have to come in from the west. Let’s just hope the wind is right.”

  “Should be, Roger. Mike talked nothing but flying while I was down there. He mentioned that I could perfectly well have flown in, instead of driving, which is why I remember the detail. He showed me a weather vane, it’s on top of the garage, and I noted it pointed east, and he said, that’s right, the prevailing wind is usually roughly east, because of the valley, so what you do is cut power right over the stream, you’ll have flared-out by then, so that you touch just the other side.”

  “Right, well you call out the airspeeds all the time, we’ll take it as slow as we dare, don’t want to slam into the wire mesh of the court.”

  “Okay.”

  *

  We were over Exmoor. Although there was a frieze of cloud surrounding us the moon was up and clear.

  You couldn’t help being struck by the primitive grace of those dark, rolling hills. It had a kind of coarse beauty, an uncut diamond of a place, and the occasional crag reinforced this impression. We saw no lights and no farms therefore, so that the true wildness of the moor seemed the more arresting.

  I flew quite low in crisp visibility, roller-coasting with the undulating terrain, throttling back to sweep quite close to the trees in the shallow gulleys, quite broad and perfectly safe to fly in, then put on power to clear the peaks.

  Nesta spoke softly. “Exmoor ponies. Don’t let’s frighten them.”

  “And I thought I had eyesight!” — I banked left and allowed them to enjoy their peace.

  She said, “I was looking out for them.”

  “You really do ride, then?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t help smiling. “Even bareback, sometimes.”

  “You’ve ridden up here? — on the moor?”

  “Once … Isn’t that your tracking station?”

  She was pointing north, toward a peak overlooking Porlock.

  I could make out the antenna dish; and here there were a few dim lights. Near the dish was a low, concrete building. It was a bit of an eyesore, but that wasn’t what made my spine go electrical on me. I was still thinking about what Spender had said.

  Nesta said, “Better climb a bit. In this light they could recognize this as a Grumman.”

  I did so and said, “Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, that the main computer link runs right past the house in Orscombe?”

  She said, staring down at the antenna as we banked high around it, “I feel there are less coincidences in all this than one might think.”

  I said, “The one thing Spender has in common with God is that they both move in a mysterious way. Spender must have chosen Tithings for his clinic for reasons other than idyllic scenery.”

  “It is, though, Isn’t it? I wish —”

  “ — So do I, Roger. One day we’ll come to Exmoor for a much better reason than this one … I’ll show you places even the locals don’t know.” She had the chart open and was using the torch. “You want to head Zero-nine-zero from here. And you can start the descent into the valley. That peak we’ve just cleared was Dunkery Beacon — the highest point on the moor.”

  *

  “Is that the field, yonder?”

  We’d opened the hatch and got our harness done up busting-tight and made ready for a full emergency. We both knew the drills for a Grumman and had been over them.

  She said, “The village below us now is —”

  “ — is Timberscombe.”

  “Right. The slope of the ground is downhill from now on, and now we’re in the neck of the valley. You won’t be able to do an overshoot once we reach the stream because beyond the wires of the tennis court there are some high trees, pine I think … So once we get as far as the fence between the two fields we’re committed. You won’t clear the trees unless you put on full power at the stream. So if you change your mind you’ll have to act fast.”

  “Okay.” I could smell the sweet summer air through the open hatch. It refreshed me for the landing. “Full flap, please.”

  “Full flap is down.”

  I kept on a little power as we swept low over a narrow lane that preceded the first of the adjoining fields. Dividing the two was the bridge and she was right: there was a small group of trees nearby, and obeying her I kept these
to port.

  I loved the sound of the slipstream as it sucked around the flaps and I held the aircraft straight and level as Nesta called out the speeds — calibrated, on this machine, in Miles Per Hour …

  “Seventy … seventy … sixty five …”

  Now things were happening very fast, but I’d left the landing lights to the very last moment.

  “Lights on.”

  Two cones swept down ahead onto the short grass and we were over the stream. I was alarmed. The field was too short. I still had time to use full throttle and go round but that meant the engine would wake everyone for miles.

  “Sixty …”

  I eased back on the control wheel and it immediately became more difficult to see, because the lights pivoted upward as the angle of attack increased.

  “Fifty-five …”

  I closed the throttle. I could feel the aircraft stalling and then we hit the bumpy grass, and I knew I had to grip it, there wasn’t time to start bouncing because I was going to need the brakes as soon as I could apply them; so I must keep the full weight of the aeroplane hard down on the wheels.

  I shouted, “Close fuel cocks.”

  “Fuel cocks closed.”

  I said through gritted teeth, “We’re going to hit that damn wire!”

  I slammed on hard left rudder and the starboard wing almost sliced into the turf, and we were skidding all over the place, but I was trying to cut a diagonal path toward the far left hand corner of the field. And this turned out to be marshy, and the nose-wheel tried to dig in, and I thought we were going to go straight over, nose first, and I shouted, “If we overturn, don’t unstrap without taking your weight with your hands. You’ll break your neck!”

  The tail started to come up and I thought we’d had it, and in my mind’s eye for a split second I saw a frightful ball of fire, and I saw Nesta, ignited, rolling in flames on the grass, heard the death-scrunch of compacted metal and exploding fuel … But the nose-wheel held, and the tail sagged down again, and I stood on the brakes, so that we pulled up where the river had taken a bend to the north, tucking us in tight between the tennis court and the stream, only a few metres away from where the ground sloped down toward it.

  And we stopped. Miraculously, but we stopped.

  I snapped off the landing lights instantly and cut the master switch.

  We didn’t need to say anything to each other, but climbed out quietly onto the wing steps and jumped down onto the grass.

  I had fully expected lights to come on in the house from top to bottom. But it remained in darkness except for the one square of light at the easterly end on the ground floor that had been on all the time — nightnurse’s duty room, presumably.

  A crazy paving-stone path led from the tennis court toward the back of the house. The path was flanked by a line of stones forming a rough rock garden our side of the path, I hadn’t even seen that. It would have been worse than hitting the wire.

  Tithings was not a house that was particularly attractive seen from the back. You could see where Spender had built on, a nasty sort of boil sticking out from the main body of the building, not very elegantly done. In a low voice Nesta said, “I think that’s where most of the computer equipment is.”

  We both stopped instinctively at the same instant. I had one of my rare pangs for a cigarette and lit one. I couldn’t help marvelling at the way Nesta’s nerve had held. It’s always easier for the one at the controls — you’ve got more to do. You’re not the powerless victim of someone else’s misguided reactions in a tight spot. But we both knew what we each thought, and I didn’t say anything.

  She asked, “Have you planned what to do?”

  I said, “We won’t get into the computer room. But let’s take a close look from the outside.” I’d got a pocket flashlight and I used this so that we could pick our way around the garden.

  At first I didn’t notice anything conspicuous other than the faint hum of electricity and air conditioning. I tried the door and of course it was locked.

  Nesta said, “What about coming out into the open and talking to the night nurse?”

  “What do we say?”

  “We say we were in a car and it’s broken down and we want to call a garage. I know it’s the oldest excuse in the world —”

  I nodded in the darkness. “ — But we might have to use it.”

  Nesta said, “I don’t like that smell much. What is it?”

  I could smell it too. I couldn’t identify it.

  I swung the thin slit of the flashlight around the lower part of the wall. Here, weeds protruded from the soil but I did notice that something was glittering in the glow of the torch-beam.

  “What the hell is it, Nesta?”

  “Isn’t it just dew?”

  “No. Don’t touch it. It may not be nice to know.”

  She said, “It seems to be sort of growing out through the wall.”

  I took a long, hard look, stooping down to get a closer view. It was from this that the odd smell had been coming from. I stood up again and said, “Crystalline.”

  No doubt about that. There was a whole patch of it. Originally it appeared to have oozed through the brickwork of the wall. But the mass of it, perhaps four foot square, formed an iridescent mosaic, glistening faintly in the torchlight like tarnished diamonds, on the flagstone path that flanked a little brook. Presumably this narrow stretch of water flowed eventually into the river near the parked aeroplane; but I noticed that the upstream end came from right underneath the house itself.

  When I switched off the torch, the mosaic continued to glow for a few seconds, then faded out.

  There was something so weird about the whole spectacle that I felt unashamedly frightened. I drew Nesta close to me. She wasn’t wearing perfume but I could smell sweet skin. Rare is the girl who seems so cleansed yet doesn’t regard semen as an unwelcome impurity. Nesta, unobsessive about hygiene, just couldn’t help being clean.

  This aspect of her seemed an essential. There was something profane — there’s no other word for it — about the stink from those crystals. Nesta somehow cancelled their evil. Sounds crazy, but that’s the way it was.

  It was Nesta who, upon this first direct revelation, reminded me of our bizarre encounter with Pottersman at the Barbican. She murmured, “Remember what that character said? — Spender’s patient? … ‘An expanding universe of solid state can be a threat to the human mind’.”

  I said, “We have to try and translate that kind of gobbledegook into real terms.”

  “But it does seem to be growing.”

  “Don’t touch it, Nesta!” I arrested her hand just in time.

  She said mildly, “Spender wasn’t afraid of touching his.”

  “Exactly! But what the hell has he stumbled on to? This stuff didn’t come out of one of his metaphorical test tubes.”

  She said thoughtfully, “He was discussing moods when he said that, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  She made no further comment on this, but followed me as I began to explore the outside of the house. And my mind was racing. What else had Pottersman said in his dementia? — ‘Self-organizing’? Did he mean that a crystal lattice could somehow perform the functions of both the software and the hardware of a computer, in one logical unit? — building up a physical expression of a program and possibly modifying it? If so, this could explain why two apparently incompatible programs might have got embedded in one another. The idea was fantastic; but then so was Pottersman’s mode of trying to convey it. Was he as mad as the Sister had thought? Or was he scared halfway out of his mind? … Surely this would be indistinguishable from other symptoms?

  We picked our way round the narrow path that flanked the back of the house, till it wound its way past the lighted square of the only visible window. We gave this a wide berth, then went back to the path again until it ran around the easterly end of the house and joined the front drive.

  From the front, you could see in the moonlight that it wa
s conventionally rustic in all the right places. At least in theory, it was the very archetype of farmhouse kind of place that every couple longs to own. Yet there was something not quite right about it; and however hard I tried I couldn’t make out what it was. I didn’t comment, waiting to see if Nesta had observed anything; but she said nothing yet, so we continued quietly along the short drive that ran the length of the house, and found the outbuildings. On one of them was the weather vane; and although there wasn’t much wind it was pointing west. “We landed downwind,” I said. “That explains why we ran out of field.”

  She said, “I feel better about that now. I thought I had miscalculated. I noticed that your groundspeed was a bit fast compared with the reading on the ASI.”

  I said, “That’ll make it much easier to get off. We’ll turn her round manually, then take off into wind. Easy money.”

  There was a succession of dilapidated barns, in a sad state of decay. Doors were off their hinges, ladders rotted, and bits of old farm gear — rusting tractor parts, a broken horse-trailer, those sort of bits and pieces, were strewn all over the place. When we got to the end of that part of the track that ran parallel with the road, Nesta said, “Did you notice anything while we were closer to the house?”

  “Yes. I was waiting to see if you were going to say anything.”

  “And I was wondering if you would,” she said.

  “Well?”

  She stood there in the moonlight. “It’s going to sound … balmy.”

  “Not to me.”

  “It’s giving out emotions.”

  “What sort?”

  “You’ll think I’m just … elaborating on what’s already been said.”

  A shiver took hold of her. I took her gently by the waist. “I won’t. Say what you think.”

  “It … hates,” she said.

  “When did you first notice this?”

  “As soon as we found those crystal things. And when you shone the torch on them, the feeling got stronger … Then, in the drive, it all looked so innocent, so cosy, but the feeling didn’t go off.”

  I said, “I thought I was imagining it.”