by John Brunner
“Until she was brought here.”
“Yes, of course… We really are doing something worthwhile, aren’t we?”
“Absolutely. Even though I don’t know how or why we drifted into it.”
“I think it must be because…” The words trailed away.
“Go on!”
In a defiant tone, as though expecting to be contradicted, or mocked, she said, “I think it must be out of love.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Hmm! Now you put it like that…”
“I know it sounds rather sententious, but—”
“But me no buts. I think you’re right. I didn’t realize until now, but—yes. I’ve always loved David, naturally, in spite of him not actually being mine. Now I’m coming to feel the same sort of affection for them all. And—” He hesitated, then concluded, “And I’m glad to be out of the commercial rat-race. I’ve cut a few corners in my time, I admit, but the people in charge of the world’s economy nowadays act as though they’d learned their business in the drug trade.”
“Maybe they did.”
“As a matter of fact, I wasn’t entirely joking… No, I feel we’re well out of it.”
“What better reason for a drink?”
After the second snifter of brandy they were becoming amorous for the first time in several weeks, when the kids’ meeting broke up with a noisy clatter of feet on the hall parquet and David walked in. As ever, his expression was neutral; he looked neither happy nor downcast, merely purposeful.
“We have to make another trip tomorrow,” he announced.
“What if the education inspector calls?” Harry objected.
“Oh, her!” David said dismissively. “She’s a soft touch. Provided the forms have been filled in, Alice can cope.”
Dismay showed on her face. “I honestly don’t think—”
“Or the other kids can.” He brushed the objection aside with an impatient wave. “I’ll brief them on what to say. But I’ve found another possible recruit.”
They knew, though didn’t understand, how. It had to do with the efficiency of his computers, that included some of the world’s most advanced models. Compared to what the British were using—even the British government—they were five years ahead, and he was exploiting this fact to unearth data from supposedly shellbacked sources. However, they sensed it would not do to inquire over-closely into that side of David’s affairs.
He concluded, not expecting opposition, “I’d like to leave directly after breakfast.”
And was gone.
Tracy Coward had enjoyed a grim moment of triumph in court, when the girls who had attacked her were punished while she herself received back all the possessions they were trying to reclaim.
But that had been the last time she felt remotely happy or satisfied.
Her decline began when she was warned that the scars inflicted during her beating were not going to disappear without long and expensive cosmetic surgery. Now she had to smear herself with makeup, privately in her room, before showing herself even to her parents, and even that didn’t entirely hide the marks—especially when the sight of her own face in the mirror made her weep and mar her cheeks. In addition she had to comb and spray her hair so that it covered the place where a patch of scalp had been torn away.
Furious, vengeful, she took to brooding alone every evening and weekend, poring over her jewelry like a miser counting coins. At school she refused to work, but found entertainment in provoking fights between the other girls—she hadn’t lost her talent for that—in the hope they too might wind up scarred for life. The teaching staff were helpless to control her.
Until one of them, smarter than the rest, took advantage of her monthly “window of vulnerability.”
Thanks to that, she had been suspended and was awaiting an order that would transfer her compulsorily to a special school for disturbed children.
Me, a mental case! I’ll get my own back on that bitch! I swear I’ll see all these canks rotting from the arse up before I’m through with them!
Inevitably her parents bore the brunt of her rage. She forced them to behave like her fellow pupils, bent them to her every whim: buy me this, take me there…
She would lie awake at night and listen to her mother weeping in the next room, and think:
It’s no more than she deserves. It’s no more than all of them deserve who landed me in this bocky mess!
“Well—hello!”
It had become Tracy’s custom, every lunch hour, to walk from her home and pass the school playground, wearing her most fashionable clothes and sporting her finest regalia. In her mind was the idea that the other girls would see and envy her, free to go about where and when she chose instead of being shut up for hours on end in bocky classrooms listening to bocky stupid teachers.
But this encounter, practically on her doorstep, she had not been expecting.
Here was a good-looking boy, dark-haired, with an olive complexion not unlike her own (she still remembered the gibes from primary school, years ago, when she had been called “blackie” and “coon”) and extremely but extremely well-dressed; indeed, his gear was of a kind she had only seen hitherto in American magazines.
And he was looking her up and down appraisingly, and nodding.
“Hmm! You’re a bright sight on a gloomy day! I’m David—who are you?”
All of a sudden her mind was a jumble of possibilities, a torrent of optimistic visions.
Suppose I play up to him—maybe take his arm—walk with him past the school…
As though he had read her thoughts, he smiled.
“Going anywhere in particular?”
“Just—just for a stroll.”
“I’m at a loose end, too. Shall we make it together? And you still haven’t told me your name.”
Feeling as though she had been caught up in a dream, she whispered, “Tracy…” She had never liked her surname, Coward. That too had caused her persecution.
“That’s a pretty name. To suit a pretty girl.”
Can he truly not see through the makeup? Or…
The dream intensified.
Or does he simply not care? After all, I do have a fairly good figure…
By this time the chaotic images at the back of her mind had already extended to the point of showing off her body rather than her face, her flawless unmarked skin beneath the hampering clothes of chilly autumn. They focused into a climactic phrase:
I heard of love at first sight. Do you suppose…?
But he had linked his arm in hers, companionably, and was asking, “Well, which way? Oh, just a second.”
And he waved toward the corner of the street.
Glancing to find out why, she saw an improbable Rolls Royce, such a car as never normally intruded into areas like this.
“Excuse me,” he was saying. “I just had to tell my driver I’m okay.”
“Your”—faintly—“driver?”
“Mm-hm. I get bored sitting on those bocky cushions. So insulating! Riding in a Roller cuts you off from the real world, you know? I simply had to stretch my legs. He’ll follow us, of course, but don’t worry.”
To walk to the school with this David—to wave at the girls I used to call my friends—then to let them watch me getting in a Roller with him…!
The plan was complete in an instant, bar some petty details about maybe kissing him, too, where they could watch and hate her. She let a slow smile spread across her face.
“This way,” she said.
All went precisely as she had planned—at first. They arrived just at the right moment, when her former fellow pupils were turned out for a few minutes prior to the commencement of afternoon classes. She waved to them, not letting go of David for an instant, saw the envy on their faces—or interpreted it as such, though it could equally have been hate—and, even as they were recalled indoors, the Rolls arrived. They were too far away to hear her whisper, “I’ve never ridden in a Roller. May I—?”
“Jump in!”
He held the door for her.
And then, almost at once, things went terribly and fearfully awry.
Why did the car immediately head toward her home? Why was she being taken inside, still clinging to David’s hand as to a life-raft in a rough sea? Who was this strange, grave adult discussing her future with her parents?
I’ve been drugged! I’m going to be kidnapped!
But such wild notions culled from television vanished. She grew calmer, recognizing key words from the conversation: “special school”—“many similar children”…
And realized with a flash of insight: He’s a liar! He didn’t just chance on me in the street! Because—!
Here came the most exciting news of all.
Because he has the power, too. I’m not alone.
She buried her face in her hands and started to cry.
During the long trip to Virginia Water she snuggled into a corner of the car’s luxurious back seat and enjoyed her soundest sleep in months.
You’re watching TV Plus. Now for Newsframe.
Three hundred people were rendered homeless in Staffordshire today when methane escaping from a forgotten rubbish dump caught fire. Fire engines and ambulances on their way to the disaster were stoned by youths wearing pro-Thrower armbands. One of them, who declined to be identified, claimed that the gas had been fired deliberately because the area is largely occupied by blacks. More in a moment.
General Thrower himself, addressing a rally in West London this afternoon, said, quote, “The abandonment of medium-range nuclear missiles was the greatest act of treachery in living memory. We British deserve to wield the most modern weapons in defense of freedom and democracy…”
Turning away from his computer, Peter swore under his breath. From the couch facing the TV, whose sound she had turned down for a commercial break, Ellen inquired what was wrong. The air was full of spicy scent from the vegetable curry she was cooking. Later, she’d said, she would make chapattis; the cost of rice had risen from astronomical to prohibitive in the past few weeks.
Peter slumped down beside her, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Someone very high up indeed owns shares in the company that manufactures Thanataph—the stuff that killed the bees. Jake daren’t touch the story, nor the TV people. I thought I had another certain winner. We’re going to be surviving on vegetables for the foreseeable future.”
“Never mind,” she said consolingly, pressing his hand. “Something else will turn up. I’ve made some more beer and it should be about ready. Like me to bring you some?”
“Yes, please—Goodness, I didn’t realize what time it was!” He reached for the remote control to turn up the TV sound again. “I wonder what news is making it to the screen these days.”
The answer was, in a word, bad. He jolted upright at the first item. During a storm in the North Sea, a Dutch freighter had been driven against a drill-rig and torn it loose. The resulting oil slick was already ten miles long and spreading, with no hope—said a miserable-looking company spokesman—of capping the broken pipe until the weather improved… which the forecasters warned might not be for a week.
“Oh, kid,” Peter said in a broken voice. “What a world we have bequeathed to you! When I think what could have been done with the profits from that oil—from all the oil! Unemployment is up to five million now, you know.”
“I didn’t see that on telly!” she exclaimed as she handed him his glass of beer.
“You wouldn’t. Officially it’s less than four, but they’re running out of ways to drag the total down. What that means, of course, is that the profit from North Sea oil has been squandered on paying people to do nothing, instead of repairing the infrastructure… Sorry, I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?”
She nodded, frowning. “But how could they be so stupid? I mean, surely even Cabinet ministers and businessmen need clean water, proper drains, safe bridges and all the rest.”
“I don’t think the trouble is so much that they’re stupid. I think it’s simply that they’re greedy. I remember reading years ago—probably when I was about your age—about a rich American who said, when he was tackled by an environmentalist worried about pollution and asked what sort of a world his children would be living in—he said he didn’t care because he’d bought land for them in Canada, away from all the mess.”
“That’s stupid,” Ellen said with authority, her eyes still on the screen. It now showed a map of the North Sea with the prevailing winds and currents. “Oh dear, that looks bad, doesn’t it?”
Peter forced his mind back to the present. After a moment he said, “Very bad. I’d hate to be a trawlerman in the northeast, to start with. And when the bills come in from Scandinavia…”
“Why don’t you ring Jake and offer him a piece about the consequences?”
“Darling, you are a genius. I don’t know what’s come over me lately!” Gulping his beer, he headed for the phone. Over his shoulder he added, “Call up a North Sea weather map, please!”
“Sure!” She was seated before the computer instantly. “What do I key?”
“021-METEORO. My user code is PETREL.” He was already punching the number of the Comet.
“Hmm? Dad, you did say petrol, didn’t you? The system won’t recognize it.”
“What—? Oh, sorry. Petrel with two e’s. The stormbird.”
“Ah!… Okay, got it. North Sea… What do you want added?”
“Same as they had on the telly—winds, currents—plus commercial activities around the coast, economic values, income from tourism… Anything else you can think of?”
“What about the value of the lost oil?”
“Good idea!”
The Comet’s lines were of course busy. Peter left the phone on automatic re-dial—though plenty of other people had most likely done the same, which meant the lines would be tied up indefinitely—and came over to study the map when it was complete.
“That’s really bad,” he muttered. “File that for the moment, though, and try something else that’s just occurred to me. You heard that rumor about the flooding in the Norfolk Broads being due to subsidence of the sea-bed? They denied it, and they might be right—after all, there have been lots of floods in the area before—but this time there’s a lot of gas coming out as well as the oil. Normally, to stabilize the sea-floor, they pump water in as the oil and gas are drawn off, and this time they aren’t going to have a chance, are they? See if you can find your way to a geological profile of the area—there’s a data-base in Oslo called SEADRILL that ought to have one on call—and figure out what might happen if the sea-bed suddenly collapses.”
Ellen’s hands, poised above the keyboard, abruptly froze.
“Tidal wave?” she said in a shaky voice.
“Oh, I doubt there’ll actually be a tsunami. I was more thinking of what might happen to the people trying to cap the pipe.”
The phone rang. He seized it, leaving her to get on with the search.
Which she did to such effect that the data were already on screen before Jake had agreed to take his usual 800 words. Peter had been intending to dictate; seeing the diagram Ellen had constructed, he changed his mind and promised to file via modem within the hour. He added that he might need a thousand words. Jake sighed, but since this was bound to be the biggest story of the day conceded the request, subject to editing.
As her father sat down to the computer again, Ellen slipped into the kitchen to turn off the dinner. In the end they didn’t eat until nearly ten.
It was good, anyway.
Strictly Ellen should have turned in directly after the meal, it being past her bedtime, but lately they had fallen into the habit of winding up the evening with a quiet chat, companionably side by side on the sofa. A sub from the Comet had called back to say she needed to lose a few lines from the story, but at least she’d had the sense to ask before she cut, which was reassuring. Pleased with this unexpected windfall, Peter smiled sidewise at his
daughter.
“At the risk of repeating myself,” he murmured, “I do more and more regret that things didn’t work out between Kamala and me. I could have been eating meals as good as yours for years!”
She dug him playfully in the ribs.
And then grew serious.
“Dad,” she ventured after a moment, “why did you and Mum break up? I would like to know. And before you answer”—she laid a slim brown finger on his lips to forestall an immediate reaction—“please remember that I’m quite grown up now. It happened years and years ago, and there can’t be any harm in telling the truth after so long. Which is what I want to hear.”
He pondered a long while. In the end her appealing eyes decided him. Sighing, leaning back and gazing into nowhere, he explained.
“It was because of a girl called Sindy… I suppose I ought to say woman. I met her at a party when I was still studying medicine. She was older than me, married for several years, but constantly quarrelling with her husband because they both wanted children and she had never conceived. But he wouldn’t go for a check to see if it was his fault—insisted that it must be hers.”
He had poured more beer to drink with his meal; there was a little left, and he sipped it.
“So… Well, I was a bit drunk by then, or I wouldn’t have talked so freely. I mentioned the Chinn-Wilkinson, said she ought to go there while she was in London—she came from somewhere in the provinces but she never said exactly where—and she said she’d thought about artinsem but the idea didn’t appeal to her because it was much too impersonal. So…”
An embarrassed shrug.
“You have to understand that I’d been a donor for several months by then, and it was coming home to me that by now I very likely had a child somewhere, with more to follow. I’d meant to be detached and cynical about it—like Louis Parker, if I have to be absolutely frank. He didn’t seem as though he could give a hoot. Probably had by-blows already in half a dozen countries. I think I told you he was devastatingly handsome?”
