CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER

by John Brunner

  It was time, though, to react. Composing his features into the strictest possible mask of disbelief, Roger said, “I do assure you, sir, that no matter what allegations have been made against me, I can either explain or rebut them.”

  He borrowed both words and tone from his father Julian. For two or three years he had been aware that there was little physical resemblance between them, so he was at pains to ensure that he adopted the same mannerisms. Now and then he salted his behavior pattern with a phrase or look copied from his mother, Susan, so she would not feel neglected. Given the way Julian ignored her, she deserved no less—

  But Mr. Brock was staring at him.

  “You think,” he said slowly—“you dare to imagine that you can contradict the judgment of your prep headmaster?”

  Stupid arse! Borderline sadist! You ought to talk to Sarah about the way her father treats her and her brother! No wonder she was desperate for a bit of outside affection! And I don’t suppose he gave me any credit for knowing that Coca-Cola is an efficient spermicide, and making sure she always douched with it afterward.

  Or, come to that, for insisting that all our customers produce an AIDS certificate!

  This, however, was no time for reasoned argument. What was called for was an exercise of charm… Roger donned his most winning smile, and felt the familiar, welcome, sense of cold command pervade his mind.

  “Sir, it is an offense to libel an adult, is it not? How much more so, then, to libel a child my age, who cannot afford legal assistance to defend himself? If it had been in my power, I would certainly have sued my old headmaster!”

  He waited. Little by little, he saw uncertainty invade Mr. Brock’s expression. Eventually he shut his file and gave a shrug.

  “Fair comment, I suppose,” he grunted. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but—well, you have a point. I hope you’ll enjoy your time in my house. Off to bed with you.”

  In the doorway Roger glanced back, smiling. Just as he had expected, Mrs. Brock clasped her hands on her breast and whispered, “Sweet dreams!”

  Very good. Yes, very good indeed!

  Climbing worn stone stairs on his way to a predictably uncomfortable bed, Roger had to struggle not to laugh. There were people he could twist around his little finger… or maybe another organ.

  “Wilson!” snapped the dormitory monitor, who was sixteen and very conscious of his responsibilities. “You’re late!”

  “That’s Cray Wilson, if you don’t mind,” Roger said with a friendly pat on the older boy’s hand. “And it was Mr. and Mrs. Brock who delayed me, so you’ll have to take the matter up with them. Good night. Sweet dreams!”

  And made for his assigned cubicle, wondering how long it would be before he wound up in bed with Mrs. Brock.

  Or the dormitory monitor. So long as he was adequately paid, he had no special preference.

  Though he definitely didn’t fancy Mr. Brock.

  You’re watching TV Plus. Time now for Newsframe.

  As the summer draws to a close, more and more holiday-makers are threatening to sue manufacturers of sun-screen lotions. Perhaps we in Britain should count ourselves lucky, says a spokesman for the British Medical Association. Given that so few of us can afford to travel to the Riviera or North Africa any longer, we’re escaping the worst effects of powerful ultraviolet radiation leaking in through the diminished ozone layer. More in a moment.

  Response to General Thrower’s appeal continues to gather momentum. In London this afternoon, a thousand people…

  Peter struck paydirt sooner than he had dared to hope. Having spent the following morning with an affable flack for an expensive alternative-therapy clinic, and agreed to ghost half a dozen articles emphasizing the side effects of orthodox drugs—not his usual line, and not reflecting his personal convictions, but the pay was generous and there was no shortage of material to draw on—he called his home phone from the pub where he had eaten lunch to check for messages. What he heard was better than just a message:

  Click: “No, she’s still asleep. Jet lag, you know.”

  So the machines had picked up “Claudia Morris!”

  The answer had been in a woman’s voice. Peter didn’t recognize it, but the accent was upper-crust English.

  “Tell her I rang, then. I’m on the staff of her London publishers. And say I’ll try tomorrow at the same time.” That was a man, a youthful baritone.

  “Yes, okay. Thank you.”

  The circuit broke. Peter waited. A hum ensued. Then the number that had been called appeared on the display screen of the pay-phone. Hastily he noted it on his pocket organizer. Someone else was waiting, and growing impatient, but Peter ignored him. Setting the organizer down, he tapped out an access code for British Telecom’s street-by-street customer listing. No one apart from BT employees was authorized to possess such codes; in fact, of course, thousands of people did, not only journalists but market researchers, telephone salespeople, credit agencies, private security firms… He followed it with the called number, and in moments a recorded voice relayed the name and address of the subscriber.

  Perfect. It was in The Wansdyke, a riot-proofed high-security apartment complex near the Angel: only a short walk from his home.

  He was whistling as he left the phone booth, and to the scowl with which the other would-be caller favored him he returned a sunny and infuriating smile.

  There were days like yesterday when he felt the universe was conspiring against him, and days like today when everything seemed to fall patly into place. It wasn’t even raining when he arrived opposite The Wansdyke just after seven, by which time, he estimated, Dr. Morris would have slept off her jet lag. He felt so cheerful, he literally did not notice the gang of sore-exhibiting beggars whining around the bus stop where he got off, but passed between them like a boat dividing scum on stagnant water.

  Well, they were so commonplace in London now, one had to ignore them unless they turned violent…

  And even as he started to cross the road toward his destination, debating what to say if challenged by one of its guards, the building’s gas-proof revolving door uttered the very person he had come in search of. The instant he set eyes on her memory came flooding back. Yes, of course! She’d been that one! Rather stocky, only an inch shorter than himself, with a square face framed by dark-blond hair cut in a pageboy style that she still affected, she had reminded him of Signe Hasso in L’Éternel Retour.

  As a matter of fact, did now, in spite of the sweater and jeans she was wearing.

  Half a dozen alternative strategies chased across his mind. He settled for trying to look as though he was on his way somewhere else entirely, glancing around, glancing again, checking in mid-stride and calling out.

  “Dr. Morris? Dr. Claudia Morris?”

  For a second he feared she was going to deny her name and march off. But faint recognition flickered, and he seized his advantage, closing the gap between them.

  “I can’t believe it! It is! I wish I’d known you were in London—I’d have been in touch before… Oh, you probably don’t remember me. My name is Peter Levin. We met at a conference at Columbia a few years ago. I used to be with Continuum—you know, the TV science program they called Quasar in America.”

  By this time he had halted squarely in front of her, blocking her progress. After surveying him in a cool detached manner, she said at length, “Yes, I do remember. The program had been cancelled just before we met. Correct?”

  “I’m afraid so. If not, I’d have insisted that we give you a slot. I—well, I suspect I sounded off rather, about it being the worst possible time to kill the show because there had never been more need for rationality.”

  When I amid slip a word in edgeways!

  “You certainly did. Even when I told you I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in being put under the TV microscope. Now please excuse me.”

  “Hang about, hang about! Are you doing anything special at the moment? I was just on my way home to face an empty evening,
so if you’re free—Would you perhaps be going out in search of dinner? Could I invite you? On a professional basis, of course. I must warn you straight away that what I’d like to do is pick your brains and turn the result into an article. You see, I’m a freelance now.”

  Gamble, gamble. But I recall her as a very direct person, almost embarrassingly so.

  She spent so long making up her mind, he let his worse judgment overcome his better by adding, “I know this area pretty well. If your jet lag means you’re more in the mood for brunch than dinner I know just the place.”

  “I suspect,” Claudia said with a twist of her lip, “it’s as well you write non-fiction rather than fiction.”

  “What?” The apparent irrelevance took Peter aback.

  “You’re a poor liar and a worse actor. You ‘wished you’d known I was in London,’ did you? How long have you been standing around in case I put in an appearance?”

  “I don’t understand what you—”

  “Oh, fold it and stow it!”—with unfeigned annoyance. “If I’d arrived more than a day or two ago, would I still be jet-lagged enough to go out for brunch at seven in the evening? How the hell did you find out I was here? I was hoping for a couple of weeks’ peace and quiet before word got around!”

  For a moment Peter considered sticking to his original pretense. On balance he decided against. When dealing with a woman like this it made better sense to play the fallible, vulnerable male. Donning a sheepish grin, he spread his hands. “BIOSOC,” he admitted.

  “You’re sharp,” she conceded grudgingly. “There can’t be more than a dozen people in Britain who log on to that board. Talk about a dead zone—! Everybody over here who was doing original research in my field seems to have been driven abroad or forced to quit. I don’t know whether it’s because your government genuinely can’t afford to fund them, or because they’re afraid of what we might turn up.”

  Without apparent intent, they had turned together and were walking side by side toward the main road. Peter seized his chance.

  “More the latter than the former. It isn’t that we’re too broke—can’t be. Your kind of research calls more for data-analysis than expensive new equipment, and in Britain we have some of the best resources anywhere. Mass Observation’s records alone are a treasure without equal. But as soon as one starts to search for the roots of our contemporary mess in decisions taken by previous governments, one’s bound to turn up unpleasant truths that call for remedial action, and that action might very well entail changes that would deprive the ruling class of power on grounds of incompetence—Watch it!”

  He checked her with a touch on her arm as she reflexively glanced the wrong way before crossing the street. A minicab driver in a hurry blasted his horn as he raced by at well above the legal limit. From a side road a police car burned rubber in pursuit, flashing and howling.

  “More like New York every time I come back,” Claudia muttered when they had crossed the road.

  “What does bring you back?” Peter ventured. “To a country that in your view is falling so far behind?”

  She halted and swung to face him. For a moment her expression was harsh. Then she relaxed.

  “All right, I’ll give you your due. You’re a cunning cank, aren’t you? I could even believe that you gave yourself away deliberately with that reference to jet lag, just to underline how much quicker off the mark you’d been than any of your colleagues… Okay, where do we go?”

  He hesitated a moment, for in truth he didn’t know the area as well as he had claimed. Within moments, though, a relay of memory closed.

  “You like Greek food?”

  “Right now I don’t mind what the hell I eat so long as it’s fit for human consumption. All I’ve had in the past twenty-four hours is airline puke and a bowl of porage. My hostess had to go out and when I looked at what she’d left in the refrigerator…” An elaborate shudder.

  Better and better!

  But even as he turned in the direction of the restaurant he had in mind, Peter was aware that he would be well advised not to take this particular lady’s arm next time they had to cross a street.

  When they reached their destination, however, it was in darkness. A sign on the door said it had been closed by the Medical Officer of Health. No reason for the order was given, but it was easy enough to guess. With the cost of pollution-certified food rising to astronomical levels, more and more restaurants were resorting, out of desperation, to supplies that had evaded official inspection, and along with it value-added tax, now at a swingeing 20 percent. The owner here must have been one of the unlucky ones.

  A wordless grunt indicated Claudia’s opinion of Peter’s “knowledge of the area.” Afraid she might change her mind and decide to risk what her hostess had in the fridge after all, he glanced around and caught sight of a bright red sign above an Indian restaurant only fifty yards away. It was indubitably open, and quite possibly the only one in the area that was, judging by the queue of dismerables outside its takeaway window, each clutching his or her one-pound daily food voucher. In passing he wondered how much a pound could buy now—a handful of scraps, at best…

  “We could try there,” he suggested uncertainly. The fact that its sign was switched on indicated that it was bound to be expensive, but he could probably risk deducting the bill from his income tax.

  “Okay,” Claudia sighed, and strode ahead. He followed, less accustomed than she was to outfacing the jealous glares of the urban poor.

  In the upshot, Peter decided Indian cuisine would have been a sensible choice anyway. The more mass-production methods were applied to food, the less it tasted of anything. Farmed salmon, for example, or intensively raised pork, were now beyond redemption, while as for bread—! But here at least the spices made for variety, though they might of course also be employed for their traditional purpose: disguising substandard ingredients. He suggested lamb biriyani and curried vegetables, and an adequately rough red wine, and waited until nothing remained but a spoonful of rice and a smear of sauce before he again broached the matter of Claudia’s reason for spending her sabbatical in Britain.

  Looking her full in the face—and nearly being thrown off stride on realizing for the first time that her unusually colored irises, blue with green radial striations, were not in fact her own but implants—he confined himself to a single word: “Well?”

  She knew precisely what he meant. Raising her glass, tilting it back and forth beneath her blunt-tipped nose, she said at length, “All right. But I’m going to impose conditions. I imagine you’re wearing a recorder?”

  “As a matter of fact I’m not. I own one, of course, and I thought about bringing it, but I came to the conclusion that if you spotted it I wouldn’t stand a hope in hell of convincing you we met by chance and getting you to talk to me. All I have is my regular organizer.” He laid it on the table. And added, “Plus one good old-fashioned spiral-bound notebook, and some ball-pens. Voilà!”

  “I see. You are exactly as much of a smartass cank as I suspected.” A faint but welcome smile quirked the corners of her mouth. “Okay, let’s get rid of the formal bit, shall we? Use a page of that notebook to write down an assurance that you won’t publish anything I tell you in whole or in part without a notarized release and a fee to be mutually agreed, and add that I’m at liberty to withhold permission regardless of how much I’m offered.”

  This was standard practice, especially when dealing with Americans. Peter was already writing. When he tore out and proffered the page, Claudia first nodded, then frowned.

  “What’s this about material attributable to other—?”

  And had already cancelled the question before he had a chance to explain.

  “I see. I see. You think you may be better informed about at least some of what concerns me than I am myself. I can’t argue, though I wish I could. You see…” She took a sip more wine before continuing.

  “You see, my only possible reason for telling you about the thesis I’m resea
rching is because I hope to be repaid in kind—with information. This puky country of yours is obsessed with secrecy! If they could, they’d make the time the sun comes up an official secret! I’ve been in Cuba—I’ve been in China, for pity’s sake!—and they opened more doors for me more easily than ever in Britain!”

  “I know,” Peter muttered. “Like any journalist, I’ve bruised my knuckles on a good few of those doors… On the other hand, they don’t seem to care how much they infringe on their citizens’ privacy, do they?”

  “Not so long as they’re doing it. Anybody else…”

  “Exactly”—in a bitter tone. “We aren’t even allowed to correct errors in our own computer files. There’s at least one file on me that’s riddled with falsehoods—data relating to someone else who gave my name when he was arrested on a drunk-driving charge—but when I tried to have something done about it I was threatened with prosecution because I wasn’t supposed to know it even existed!”

  There was a pause. Then, gazing into her glass as though it were a crystal ball, Claudia said, “You remember the theme of my book?”

  “Of course. I still have the copy you signed for me.”

  “I think I was wrong.”

  Peter blinked at her. He was about to ask why when she rushed ahead.

  “Something that doesn’t fit has turned up, and I’m scared. I don’t want to sound alarmist. In any case I don’t dare. For one thing, all the evidence isn’t in yet. For another, if I overstep the mark I’ve been warned that the funds for my sabbatical will be withdrawn. Even so…”

  She raised her strange artificial irises to look him squarely in the face.

  “Do you remember that weird old phrase about ‘boiling everything down to brass tacks’? When I was a kid, it used to worry the hell out of me. But I suspect we’re about to tread barefoot on a whole pile of tacks! And if that’s so—”

  During the past few minutes, while neither of them was paying attention, a trio of musicians had taken station on a dais in the far corner of the restaurant: a sitar-player, a veena-player and a drummer. They had amplifiers. At that moment they struck up the theme from the latest hit film in Bombay, and their combined volume wiped out the rest of what Claudia had begun to say.