CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER

by John Brunner

  Peter bit his tongue to stop himself from uttering a whole bunch of profit-losing comments. When he recovered, he said, “Jake, please—why?”

  “I may have been up all night, I may still be boozing at breakfast time, but I have more sense than to answer a stupid question like that over the phone!”

  Oh. This sounds big. I don’t want to comply, but I suppose I’d better…

  Wishing, oddly enough, that Ellen were here to counsel him, Peter heaved a deep sigh.

  “All right. I’m on my way… Oh, just a sec!”

  “What?”—in a tone bordering on explosion.

  “If I call a cab, will you—?”

  “Call a bocky helicopter if you must! Just get here—and bocky well move!”

  Peter rang for a cab at once, but it took half an hour to arrive, and then it was detoured by the police to avoid a procession of fishermen from the northeast, driven out of business by the ever-widening oil slick in the North Sea, marching on Whitehall to present a petition of protest.

  They would not, of course, be allowed to get there. No one without a government pass had entered the zone around Parliament Square and Downing Street for eighteen months.

  On reaching the building where the Comet office was located, he had to walk up from the ground floor. Yet another power failure had put the lifts out of operation. A battery radio that he heard when passing, exhausted, a dangerously open door on the floor below, was informing London in a cheery voice that the saboteurs responsible were known to the police and someone would shortly be “assisting Scotland Yard with their inquiries.”

  Why do I have the feeling that I’ve heard that before?

  Most of the business of the editorial office was proceeding normally—after all, there was tomorrow’s edition to prepare—but there was an air of tension that struck Peter immediately he entered. He noticed with surprise that Bernie was installed in his usual corner; from their by-now long acquaintance he was aware that the hacker preferred to get up around midday. Had he, like Jake, been here all night?

  Red-eyed, unshaven, his jacket hung on the back of his chair, his shirt-cuffs grimy and his tie-knot halfway to his navel, the editor broke off from intense discussion with a woman Peter didn’t know, and let out a cry of mingled annoyance and relief.

  “Finally you made it! Don’t bother explaining—I’ve heard all the excuses and the trouble is most of them are true. Come here! By the way, this is Sally Gough, our crime-reporter.”

  A long-faced woman with heavy glasses, she offered a firm handshake.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Jake invited around a yawn. On his desk ice-cubes were melting in a glass, and he took an absent-minded sip. Then he leaned forward intently.

  “Peter, you’ve got to keep this under your hat, because I finally have the beat I’ve been dreaming of. But I dare not publish until it’s rock-solid. I have all my top people working on the story, but Bernie thinks I need you as well. And Claudia.”

  Peter started. “Don’t tell me you found Louis Parker!”

  “Who—? Oh, him! No, no, no! But what’s happened may just possibly tie in with this red herring you spent so much of the paper’s money on… General Thrower has apparently been kidnapped. Emphasis on kid.”

  “I can’t believe it! How? When?”

  Reaching into a drawer of his desk in search of the bottle he was drinking from, Jake indicated with a nod that Sally Gough should take over. In a few crisp sentences she explained what they believed to have happened.

  “He addressed a public meeting at Sandhurst last night—Sandhurst in Surrey, near the officers’ training college. It’s all army country around there, solid pro-government with a strong admixture of pro-Thrower. Among the audience were a bunch of kids in their early teens. After the meeting they came up and asked him for autographs. Somehow the organizers’ attention was distracted, and when they came back to look for him he was nowhere to be found. The police are working on the theory that he’s been abducted by a left-wing group who used the kids for cover.”

  Peter whistled soundlessly. “That’s incredible,” he muttered.

  “My reaction precisely,” Jake concurred, having taken a gulp of his fresh drink. He was beginning to show the extreme caution in speech and movement of someone who knows he is on the brink of complete intoxication. “He never moves a step without a bodyguard. Anywhere he goes, he can count on scores of disenchanted unemployed as volunteers.”

  “This time—maybe not genuine volunteers?”

  “Hmm!” Jake raised his eyebrows. “Good thinking. Sally, have we anyone who could check out the stewards at the meeting?”

  Overhearing, Bernie said without looking around, “The police have already interrogated them. So far all of them have turned out to be long-term British Movement, National Front or whatever. Dyed-in-the-wool types.”

  “Sorry, Peter,” Jake said with a shrug. “Unless the left-wingers planted them years ago, which I suppose isn’t inconceivable, that knocks your notion on the head.”

  “Well, it was just a thought… But what is it exactly that you want me and Claudia to do?”

  “Grief, man! Isn’t it obvious?” Jake was abruptly on the verge of alcoholic rage. “A gang of kids! Making off with a national celebrity under the noses of his private army!”

  “You mean you think it could have been the kids’ own idea?”

  “Any lead is worth following up,” Sally said. “So far, you see, we appear to be the only national paper that’s picked up the story. There were three other stringers at the meeting, all from right-wing tabloids, and according to what we can deduce from the grapevine they accepted the official yarn that General Thrower was too tired after his speech to answer any more questions and had decided to turn in early. Ours was the only one who bothered to sneak around the back door of his hotel and bribe the porter. General Thrower did not sleep in his own bed last night.”

  “He’ll get a bonus for that,” Jake said blurrily. “If we are the first to break the story.”

  “Hang on,” Peter said in confusion. “I’m still not sure what exactly you want me to do.”

  “Oh my God.” Jake leaned his elbows on his desk and rested his head in his hands. In a muffled voice, as though his patience were at its uttermost limit, he said, “Look, what I want is eight hundred words on cases where kids have broken the law and got away with it in spite of the best that adults could do to stop them. Okay? I don’t want anything down-market and cheaply sensational. I want something sober, reasoned and convincing. It doesn’t have to be right, but it has to be convincing.”

  “And you want it by nine tonight.”

  “Six would be better.”

  “Okay. Can I use your phone?”

  Jake raised his head sharply. “To call Claudia? No way! Use a public phone, or just go straight there! The chance exists that some police nark may have noticed our reporter at the meeting, or one of the other people I’ve assigned to the story this morning, and started eavesdropping on us again.”

  “Again? I didn’t know they’d stopped.”

  “Not funny,” Jake said wearily. “Last month the Bill decided we didn’t pose any sort of threat because we’d be bankrupt by Christmas. It’s no secret that our sales have plummeted. But by God, if I do have to go under, I’d like it to be in a blaze of glory!”

  The force of his last phrase was undermined by another uncontrollable yawn.

  “Okay,” Peter grunted, rising. “Claudia has an interesting theory about this phenomenon—this control over other people—going back to Neolithic times. Says it could account for Stonehenge. What about something for expenses?”

  “Hm? Oh. All right.” Jake fumbled for an intercom switch and issued the necessary instructions.

  “Stop by on the way out. The cash will be waiting for you. And do a good job, won’t you—please?”

  The public phones that Peter passed on his way to the only bus route he knew still to be running in the direction of his former home had all b
een vandalized; some, to judge by the state they were in, several weeks or even months ago. Catching sight of a bus—far too precious to miss—he abandoned the idea of ringing to warn Claudia of his arrival, and hoped against hope that she would be in.

  She was. But by the look of the flat, not for much longer. She had added only a few personal touches to it, chiefly books, posters, and a few pictures. Now she was taking them down and packing them into cardboard cartons.

  “What’s going on?” demanded Peter, aghast.

  “I’m going to have to go home,” she answered with a shrug, closing and triple-locking the door.

  “When?”

  “Before Christmas. Come in, sit down. Want a drink?”

  “Much too early,” Peter said reflexively, and thought of the state of Jake’s liver. “But why?”

  “Oh, the funders won. I no longer have tenure, I can no longer look forward to a salary, and Cecil Strugman has been driven to the verge of bankruptcy by a bunch of smart financial operators who call themselves Eye of the Needle. Reportedly they include the head of the Federal Reserve Board. They don’t care for Cecil’s political views, so they decided to force down the value of his investments. Rumor has it that they bribed the broker who handles his affairs. Cecil himself is pretty unworldly, you know.”

  “This is awful,” Peter said, sinking slowly into a chair. “Can’t your lawyer friend do anything—Walter?”

  “Walter’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Yesterday.” Claudia passed a tired hand through her hair. “Car crash. Early snow—slight thaw—hard frost the following day… I suppose one has to believe it. Especially since he’d been drinking. Funny, though…”

  “Go on!”

  “I’ve never known him to drive after drinking. He’d leave his car on the street and risk it being stolen rather than drive himself. In fact two of his cars were stolen for just that reason. One of them turned up in Mexico.”

  “So you’re abandoning your research,” Peter said after a pause.

  “I can’t see any way of staying on.” She glanced despondently at a pile of printout on a nearby table: he recognized it as the draft of her thesis.

  “So what will you do? Couldn’t you—well, if you can’t keep up the payments on the flat, couldn’t you go back to stay with your friend, where you were before?”

  “No, she’s in the hospital. Hepatitis. Could be fatal.”

  Peter clenched his fists. “It can’t be true, but I keep getting the feeling that everybody’s dying!”

  “Life expectancy in Western Europe and North America has gone down each year for the past three years. Ask any actuary. Not, of course, for the very rich—mainly for people on the poverty-line, or in manual work like farming, street-cleaning that sort of thing. And they don’t buy much insurance, so… Didn’t you know about that?”

  Peter shook his head, licking dry lips. “If only Continuum—”

  “You’d have made a program about it,” Claudia cut in. “Let’s skip that, shall we? What brings you here, and will it take long?”

  He recalled himself to duty with an effort, and outlined the story Jake and Sally Gough had told him. Her dull expression changed as she listened.

  “Lord! It’s too much to hope for, but it’s a remarkable coincidence, isn’t it? Not that I can stick around and follow it up, of course. But—well, say again what Jake actually wants from us.”

  He repeated the editor’s specifications, and concluded, “I thought particularly of that point you made about Stone Age culture. I’m afraid I don’t recall the exact details, though.”

  “Stone Age…? Oh! Yes, I know what you mean. My idea that this kind of control over other people might not be new after all.”

  “I think you said”—frowning with the effort of recollection—“it would account for Stonehenge.”

  “Mm-hm. Which called for an immense communal effort at a time before there were kings or armies, let alone police forces, and in a culture where there wasn’t even a hierocracy of the kind that resulted in the Pyramids.”

  “A what?”

  “Ruling class of priests, controlling people through religion. In spite of the lack of any obvious means to compel them, thousands of people worked sometimes for years to create these gigantic structures. Someone must have had a silver tongue, at least.”

  “That’s good for a couple of paras,” Peter said with satisfaction. “Can you spare the time to help me with a rough draft? I’ll make sure you get your fair share of the fee.”

  Rising, he turned toward her computer.

  “No power,” she said.

  He blinked in startlement. He had noticed that despite the gloom of the day no lights were on, despite the damp chill there seemed to be no heating, but had forborne to comment, assuming that her lack of funds meant she was economizing.

  “No power!” she said again, standing up angrily. “It went off around nine, when everybody else in the house had left for work—or to look for some. I’m the only one here during the day, did you know?”

  “Have you phoned the electricity board?”

  “They claim to be working on it.”

  “Well, then, I suppose we’d better go to my place. Jake gave me plenty for expenses, so we can afford a taxi… Can you spare the time?”

  She was already in the hallway, donning a coat. Over her shoulder she said, “Who am I kidding? All the gear I have I can pack in a couple of hours. I don’t have to prolong the agony. Besides, I’m cold.”

  By tacit agreement they drafted the story as though it were the definitive epitaph for Claudia’s original project. The hard part, of course, was condensing the material into the allotted space. More than once they started snapping at each other, Claudia insisting that a particular point was indispensable, Peter countering that this time Jake’s limit of 800 words must absolutely be adhered to. Having broken off only to make and eat some sandwiches with stale bread and cheese they had to scrape clean of mold, they were still at it when Ellen returned from school. She seemed subdued, but refused to talk and insisted they must go on working, and disappeared into her own room. Shortly they heard the hum of her computer.

  At long last they reached a compromise, and when Peter called for a word count, it came up at 799. He leaned back, stretched and yawned.

  “Can’t ask for fairer than that,” he grunted. “And—grief, it’s not yet six. Well, this ought to make a good impression on Jake. Fire up the modem, would you?”

  And within moments the text was on its way.

  Rising, bending back and forth to alleviate stiffness, he went on, “Lord, I wish we had something better to drink than Ellen’s home-made! Still, it is improving—”

  “What’s wrong with my homemade wine?” Ellen demanded from the doorway.

  “Sorry, sorry! I did say it’s improving, didn’t I—? Say, you look excited about something.”

  “I am.” Flushed, eyes sparkling, she advanced into the room. “You want to know where Louis Parker is? Somewhere in Surrey!”

  “Surrey!” Peter exclaimed. And looked at Claudia, his expression saying as clearly as words: That’s just too much of a coincidence!

  Visions of a fantastic conspiracy came and went in a flash.

  But Ellen was continuing in a more apologetic tone, “I’m afraid I can’t narrow it down any closer, not yet. I only know that the age fits, and the physical appearance. But the program I’m running ought to find some clue to his actual address, or at least a phone number he’s been using. With luck we should have it some time this evening… Claudia, excuse me, but you don’t look very pleased.”

  Claudia shrugged, leaning back and stretching as Peter had done, and explained.

  “That’s terrible!” Ellen cried. “But—well, goodness! After getting so close, don’t you want to find out whether it really was Louis Parker who—who fathered these kids? You said you don’t have to be home until Christmas, and that’s still a long time off.”

  “Two wee
ks, to be exact,” Claudia muttered. “Though you wouldn’t think it was that long, the way everybody’s hyping it this year. The shopkeepers must be desperate to make people part with their money… By the way, Peter, one of the investments Cecil was backing, one of those that have just been bankrupted, was a chain of stores selling organic produce and additive-free foods.”

  “But I thought—”

  “You thought they were booming? They were. Until the slump.”

  “Are they actually saying slump now?” Ellen put in. “Not recession?”

  “The people on the receiving end are.”

  Then, with an unexpected access of briskness, Claudia pushed herself to her feet.

  “Ellen dear, you must forgive me, but I still find it kind of hard to believe that you managed to trace this Louis Parker when Bernie failed. Mind showing me what kind of program you’re running?”

  Ellen flushed again. She said diffidently, “Well, I shouldn’t be running it, not really. I came by it sort of unofficially. I did honestly mean to tell Bernie about it, but—well, he seemed to have lost interest. I hope it wasn’t wrong of me to go ahead on my own?”

  “Wrong?” Peter echoed. “Not at all. You’re a marvel! But I’d like to see it, too.”

  “Well…” She hesitated. “The trouble is, if you want me to show how it works, I’ll have to interrupt the run, won’t I?”

  “You don’t have a copy?” Claudia demanded. “One you can show us in here?” She gestured at Peter’s computer.

  Ellen shook her head. Today she was wearing her hair neatly braided and coiled around her small shapely head. “I’m afraid not. It’s the kind that only allows any user to copy it from the master once. If you try and copy the copy, it corrupts itself. I haven’t tried it, but there’s a warning.”

  “Sounds like a high-security job,” Peter said slowly. “How in the world did you come by it?”

  Ellen put her hand to her mouth and bit her knuckle, giggling. Suddenly she seemed all child again.

  “By trying to get a bit of my own back. I moused into PNC looking for the data they keep on brown and black people, not because they’ve done anything but because of their color—I wanted to find out what they had about my family, you see. Suddenly I found I’d accessed a national search program, that can trace literally anybody who’s ever been mentioned on any data-base, and it mistook me for an authorized user because until I came along nobody else had ever lucked into it.”