by John Brunner
Matters grew worse when Rio disappeared.
“Where is the bocky cank?”
“Last I heard,” Taff said, having glanced nervously up and down the street from their usual meeting-place, “he was—uh—seen talking to the growser in the Roller.”
“You’re shooting me!”
“Straight as I stand here!” Taff asserted. “Last night when you wouldn’t come the pub with us. Barney got in a barney”—it was a stale joke but good for a grin—“and Rio slid when someone bust a bottle. After, this slag touting on the next corner said she’d seen him.”
“Doing—?” The tension in Terry’s gut was unbearable.
“The Roller stopped and someone in it talked to him. I told you!”
“And—?”
“Today he’s not around.”
“We better go turn over his drum!”
Rio’s home was in a refurbished but still detested high-rise block. His mother having walked out a year or two ago, his father was living with a younger woman, pretty but stupid. Despite Terry’s best efforts the couple were evasive. All they were willing to say was that the boy had gone south—maybe to London.
Waiting for the lift after they quit the flat, Terry grew aware that his “mates” were looking at him in a new way. Never before had they shown such open distrust.
His confidence began to evaporate, and they sensed it.
“I think Rio had the right idea,” Taff said as the lift arrived. Getting in, Terry tried to counter, with a forced laugh.
“Think he hitched a ride in the Roller? Think he’s gone for rent in Park Lane?”
Ordinarily, among youths who sported the red-white-and-blue, reference to being kept by a rich homosexual would provoke instant fury. Terry had relied on that reflex. This time, to his dismay, it didn’t work. Taff and Barney merely exchanged glances and gave a simultaneous shrug. Terry’s heart sank into his traditional lace-up boots.
The lift arrived, and he relaxed a little. In a confined and airless space—he didn’t know why—his personal magnetism seemed to work the best. Wheedling, he said, “I didn’t mean what I just said about Rio. I know as well as you, he’d never go for rent in London!”
And made the mistake of reaching out for Taff’s hand.
“No, he wouldn’t! But you would, wouldn’t you?” Taff blasted, and kicked him on the right shin just as the lift reached the ground floor. Barney, ever glad of the chance, added a second kick, accurately beneath the kneecap, and the two of them ran off laughing into the foggy night.
“Wait! Wait…!”
But it was no use. They were out of earshot, and there was no one else around save a tired, middle-aged woman, clinging to a half-filled shopping bag and afraid to risk the lift unless she was alone.
Cursing, Terry staggered past her and out into the dim of evening. The sky was cloudy, most of the streetlamps, as usual, were broken, and the only response to his shouting of Taff’s and Barney’s names was alarm among those other local residents brave enough to be abroad after dark.
No. Not the only response.
For, as he hobbled to the edge of the roadway, staring left and right for any sign of the mates he had so long relied on, a huge gray silent car whispered out of mist, and stopped.
A rear door opened. A voice spoke to him—only a few syllables: “Get in! We’ll take you home.”
But that was enough to convey a mass of alarming information. For one thing, the words were in an American accent. Among the chimeras that had haunted Terry since he first heard about the mysterious Rolls Royce, persecution by the Stateside Mafia was the least—yet, on the instant, thanks to years of conditioning by the American programs on TV that he affected to despise, he was prepared to believe it and feel powerless. For another, the voice was that of a boy not much older than himself, but it was going to be an authoritative baritone when its owner became adult, whereas Terry’s—as he had realized after listening to recordings that his “friends” had made—would remain a light tenor.
A snatch recalled from a news bulletin abruptly came to dominate his mind: The American occupation forces in Libya… With all that that implied regarding war!
Terry was on the verge of screaming when his hand was grasped and he was drawn into the womblike car.
“So, you see, Mr. Owens—Mrs. Owens—there is no real alternative, is there?”
Where am I? What’s going on? Blurrily, as though lost in the river-mist that enveloped the street outside, Terry strove to recover his self-possession. He was in his parents’ living room; the first clue he had, before he managed to open his eyes, was the smell of over-brewed tea, which his mother would reflexively have offered. When he looked around, he saw that cupfuls of the precious liquid were cooling and growing a skin. Shameful waste, when tea cost so much, was such a luxury, was due—so rumor held—to be rationed, along with other oriental goods like rice.
But that was somewhere else, and in another time. Terry anchored himself to here and now, and found a boy his own age talking to his parents, backed up (on the two-seat sofa near the window) by an incredibly well-dressed couple both tanned to a degree even Rio couldn’t achieve, using the best artificial creams… It dawned of a sudden: they must be the owners of the Roller.
I’m trapped. I don’t know how. I can only admire who did it!
He listened again. The boy was saying:
“Of course, if it were to become known that a kid your Terry’s age had been masterminding a protection racket, the consequences would be terrible. Your competence as parents would be called in question, to begin with. Our present government, as you are well aware”—as though by reflex, he stroked the red-white-blue ribbon he wore in his lapel—“lays great stress on parental responsibility, even though they make certain allowances for disadvantaged citizens…”
His parents were nodding, even though—no! Because they understood the police-type code: It’s all right for our sort to go around smashing windows, stuffing shit through letter-boxes and burning kids in bed, but as soon as the bocky blacks and wogs hit back the Bill comes down like a landslide… and good luck to them!
This was Terry’s language, the one he had been brought up to. He nodded vigorous approval.
And yet, at the same time, was aware of something very wrong indeed. The air in this room—and it wasn’t the smell of stewed tea…
No good. He couldn’t work it out. He could only sit back and go on nodding.
“So, for the benefit of your neighbors, shopkeepers like yourself, such as your newsagent Mr. Lal, and Mr. Lee at the takeaway, who provide such valuable services for the community—”
Just a moment!
Those being precisely the people Terry, with help from Barney and Taff and Rio, had been struggling to force into line, he felt impelled to jump up and yell!
And found he couldn’t.
With the sweetest possible smile, the boy-stranger (at some stage Terry had registered that he was called David) took his arm. He said, “Oh, don’t be so scared! Come along—the car’s outside.”
Me? Scared? I’ve had the widest boys on the manor eating out of my hand since the year dot!
And yet he was. He was shaking, head to foot. He was crying, and afraid he might—well—wet his pants!
How? Why?
But as to crying, he saw as he cast a last glance over his shoulder that both his parents were in tears.
Yet at the same time laughing. Laughing with sheer relief!
For the first time the question crossed his mind:
Who am I? What kind of person?
In the incredibly comfortable back seat of the Roller, like all the three-piece suits in local shops that he had thought of conning into his home except that the living room was too small, he tried to frame the question.
But could not. He could only say, “What happened to Rio and my other friends?”
The boy beside him, the one called David, said, “They weren’t your friends. They were your tools.”
&
nbsp; Terry could not avoid a giggle, which David froze with a glare.
“You’ve had your fun,” he said. “Now you have to do your duty.”
“What?”—trying not to laugh again.
“Shut up! There’s not much time!”
You’re watching TV Plus. Newsframe follows.
Car-bombs this morning exploded outside five Malaysian embassies in Western European capitals including London, causing extensive damage and many casualties. In telephone calls to newspapers, TV and radio stations, a group using the name Free Singapore Army claimed responsibility. More in a moment.
In a radio interview, General Thrower said, quote, “It’s intolerable that a petty squabble half a world away should be made the excuse for destroying British lives and British property.” Asked what countermeasures he could suggest…
The clocks had gone back an hour over the weekend, so this evening it was dark when Ellen returned home from her cleaning job under the suspicious gaze of those who still belonged to the Neighborhood Watch. Lately such organizations had again been condemned by the government as a plot to obstruct the police in the execution of their duty, and their signs had vanished from all save a few defiant windows. (The other day Peter had confessed to being ashamed of not having joined the Watch in this street, as he had intended when he moved here, but he wasn’t going to now.)
Moreover it had begun to drizzle. She was eager to get indoors. As she was fumbling for her door-key, however, she heard a faint mew. Glancing around in the gloom, she spotted a small tabby cat, very thin, sheltering under a bush beside the path.
“Poor thing!” she exclaimed, slinging her shoulder-bag behind her and dropping to a crouch. “Here, kitty! Here, kitty!”
It would have liked to flee, but it was too weak. Resignedly it let her carry it indoors.
Peter came home fuming, having spent another fruitless day in vain attempts to interest someone in yet another disaster story—the only sort of lead, it seemed, that he was picking up these days. This time it concerned a painkiller banned in the United States and several Western European countries but freely available in Britain and the Third World. (Nowadays he was often tempted to say, “The rest of the Third World…”) The evidence that pregnant women who took it bore deformed and mentally handicapped babies was almost at the thalidomide level, but nobody would pay him to investigate. Even Jake had shrugged and said it was out of the question.
In addition, on the way home he had counted five fish-and-chip shops displaying hopeful “For Sale” signs. Driven out of business, of course, by the potato shortage. What with one thing and another, therefore, he was in a pretty bloody mood.
“What’s that?” he rasped as he entered the kitchen and saw the scrawny cat lying on a scrap of old carpet near the stove.
“It’s a cat, of course,” Ellen answered, not looking up from her attempts to feed it. Tonight they were having liver and onions for dinner, offal still being comparatively cheap. She had cut a few shreds of the liver and was offering them in her fingers. Also she had put down a dish of milk.
“I think it’s hurt,” she added.
“More likely ill,” Peter grunted, taking the jug of homemade beer from the fridge. “And probably alive with fleas! Did you have to bring it into the house?”
For an instant she seemed on the verge of exploding. Then she changed her mind, as the cat accepted a mouthful of the liver and essayed a feeble purr by way of thanks.
Rising, wiping her hands, she turned to her father. “Dad, don’t be like that!” she pleaded. “Let me try and rescue the poor thing! If I can, it’ll be company for me when I’m home alone.”
You don’t have to be…
But the words died. Didn’t have to be? That wasn’t true. Fewer and fewer of her friends from school, boys or girls, were willing to be seen in her company, for fear of reprisals from the Throwers…
Pressure, of course. But encouraged from the top.
And, speaking of pressure—
“All right,” he sighed. “You can keep it overnight, but tomorrow it goes to the vet for a thorough check, okay?”
Somehow, when she turned her melting eyes on him, he found it impossible to resist her. Which wasn’t too surprising. All his life he’d been a sucker for beautiful sad girls. Just so had Kamala attracted his attention, having been cruelly jilted by a former lover. It looked as though Ellen had inherited at least one of her mother’s traits…
She kissed him smackingly on the cheek. “Thank you so much!” she cried. “Dinner will be ready in half an hour! What’s more, I found some potatoes. Do you want chips or mash?”
“With—?”
“I told you this morning! Liver and onions!”
“So you did… All right, mash.”
“Right. Got to keep down the intake of fried food, hm? Eat better, live longer…” And her face changed magically to a mask of misery. “Not that I know why anyone should want to.”
“Ellen darling, what in the world—?”
For suddenly tears were flowing down her cheeks.
“It is the world,” she forced out, turning away to seize a tissue. “All the bad things that are on the news every day, worse than my most awful nightmares! Did you hear about the train crash?”
“What train crash?”
“At Manchester this afternoon. It was on the radio—I heard it when I first came in. No, don’t turn on the telly”—as by reflex he moved to do so. “I don’t want to see the pictures. People were crushed alive, squashed into pulp! They said something went wrong with the computer that controls the signals…”
She was recovering. After a final dab at her eyes she discarded the tissue.
“Sorry,” she mumbled at last. “It’s just that it made me think of what must have happened in the plane crash that—that burned down my old home.”
It was the first time in weeks that she had made direct reference to her mother’s death. Peter put a comforting arm around her, at a loss for anything to say.
“And there’s a message from Claudia,” Ellen went on after a pause. “She’s ill. In hospital.”
“Oh, no! What’s wrong?” He remembered that she had complained of feeling unwell recently, but since the story that had seemed so promising was completely stagnant he had allowed himself to drift out of touch for several days.
“Codworm.”
“What—? Oh. No, don’t tell me.” Peter felt his mouth set in a grim line. “I know about codworm. And it’s nasty.”
“Yes, it sounds awful. I looked it up. Its medical name is anisakiasis and you catch it from eating raw fish.”
“Or cheap fish improperly prepared.”
“It said that, too.”
“Will she have to have an operation?”
“I don’t think so. They’re giving her a—a vermifuge, is that right?”
“Yes, quite right. But is she going to be in hospital for long?”
“A week at least, she said. I don’t mean she actually said. She didn’t phone up, just left an email message.”
“Then I’d better send a get-well card in the morning. I don’t suppose she has an email terminal beside her bed.”
A faint whimpering noise emanated from the cat. Turning, they saw it trying to rise and head for the door.
“I suppose I’d better let it out,” Ellen said after a moment. “I hope it doesn’t run away…”
It didn’t, but came gratefully back into the warm and dry. And, just as it returned, the phone rang.
“Bernie. Can I drop around? I need to talk.”
How can I say no?
But what Peter mainly wanted to say—only he couldn’t find the proper words—was this, to Ellen: Yes, you poor kid! We’ve messed up the world for you, haven’t we? Me, I envied the generation just before mine, who had all the fun of the permissive society, when you could shrug off a dose of the clap or even pox and carry right on screwing. Then came AIDS… And now there’s a sense of universal doom. What if those Tibetan terrorist
s really have captured a load of nuclear waste? It’s been denied, but who believes governments any more? If some crazy dictator in the Third World gets hold of nuclear weapons, and they keep talking about India and Pakistan and the Malaysians, not to mention the South Americans—or if it’s true about the ozone layer being destroyed, and I suspect it is—or if the loss of the Amazon rain-forests really means we’re running short of oxygen—or if poisons in the food we eat are really due to cut our life-expectancy—or if the tailored bacteria we’re releasing to the environment are as imperfect as our computer programs, another of which just broke down and ruined a major Japanese bank—or if our squandering of fossil fuel is really going to melt the icecaps… then all we can say to our children is, “We’re very sorry!”
And a fat lot of good that will do!
Meditatively, as Ellen busied herself at the stove, he said, “You know, years ago I read about a mother who cured her daughter of making a mess. The kid was careless and kept knocking things over, and thought it was enough to say, ‘I’m sorry!’”
Ellen glanced around with large dark puzzled eyes. Suddenly Peter felt it very important to complete the story and put its point across.
“So one day when she knocked a jugful of milk all over the table and the carpet, her mother handed her a tea towel—tied it around her head like a turban—and also a stick. She said ‘Right, now you’re a magician, and you’ve got a wand. Wave it over the spilt milk and say the magic word “sorry”!’ And, of course…”
“Of course the mess was still there,” Ellen said in a brisk tone. “So?”
“So that’s what I’d like to do to all the politicians and economists and businessmen and—all those bocky canks! Because it’s not enough to say sorry to you kids that we’re leaving to clear up the mess.”
“Don’t worry,” she answered, piling richly scented fried onions on to plates, adding the grilled liver, scraping every trace of the precious mashed potatoes from the saucepan, producing cutlery and mustard to go with the food.
He blinked at her. “What on earth do you mean? How can I help worrying?”
