New Writings in SF 25 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  ‘Come on!’ Collier urged, and felt foolish as he realised she could, in all probability, skip up and down banksides like this much more surely than ever he could. Out of his confusion came the wonder that the local young men had not come ‘wolfing’ after this lovely creature long ago, followed instantly by the wry realisation that there weren’t any ‘young men’ in Chesterlea any more.

  She laughed, ran nimbly down where he had slipped and slithered, and came into his offered arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He had kissed girls before, but never had it been like this. Unsteady, breathless and struggling for calm, he pushed her gently away, angry at his own embarrassment.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

  She looked puzzled and pleased all in one. ‘Nice!’ she said firmly. ‘I like that. Again!’ But he shook his head.

  ‘Not now. Come on, we have other things to do.’ He led her around the car, opened the door, saw her settled bouncingly in the seat, and got in the other side, still in some confusion. Once, long ago, he had rashly gulped a double whisky on an empty stomach. This feeling was highly similar. He let off the hand-brake and started down the road again, cautiously, trying to avoid the worst of the pot-holes. By his side she was all wide-eyed excitement and curiosity, until she realised where they were headed, then that shivering, mindless terror came back, washing over him like a soundless scream. It was like sitting beside a caged and frantic animal, frightened and cowering from something it didn’t understand. And there was something Collier didn’t understand, either. All his boyhood had been spent here, and he had been back more than once as an adult. For him, with his particular talent, Chesterlea was more than just the place, with sight, sound and smell. It was also a feel. There should have been the distant thought-mumble, like the hushed roar of surf on a beach, growing stronger with nearness. He knew every inch of this road. By now he should have been hearing the ‘life’ of the place. Instead there was nothing, nothing at all.

  * * * *

  As Mary Ellen had said, they were all gone away. Or dead. There was a silence that was shocking to him, against which her bubbling terror stood out all the more vividly. There came a steep straight stretch, a sharp right-hand turn at the bottom. The trees fell away. There was the village, full in the mid-morning sun, some fifty or so old houses ranged along either side of the chuckling Lea. And Collier choked on an oath, clamped on his brakes, and stared, sweat breaking out on his face. Because everything was as serene and normal as it could be. He had arrived just in time to see three latecomers mount the church steps and disappear into the dark interior. He would have sworn they were Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Mumford and her sister. Miss Collins. There was old Jack Atkinson, sitting dozing on his low stool by his half-open front door, with Sam, his aged and near-blind bulldog, sprawled at his feet. And there, too, was Granny Parry in her little patch of front garden, snipping away at her hedge, as she had done every fine Sunday morning as far back as he could remember. All was as normal, natural and Sunday-perfect as the sunshine which lit and warmed them all.

  But for Collier, gifted or cursed with an extra sense, this was the total opposite of normality, was so utterly impossible that his mind circled on itself in panic, trying to find some end to catch hold of. With his eyes shut he would have sworn there wasn’t a living person within a mile, except the terrified girl by his side. With his eyes open he stared at utter insanity, at Chesterlea going about its usual Sunday business ... on a Tuesday! In sudden sympathy for Mary Ellen he put his arm around her and she snuggled wordlessly close.

  ‘I know exactly how you feel,’ he muttered. ‘It scares the spit out of me, too. It’s like watching TV with the sound turned off, only this is real ... or I am stark, staring crackers.’ He eased his foot off the brake, let the car run slowly until they were abreast the garden where Granny Parry snipped away. He stopped the car and called out,

  ‘Good morning to you. Gran!’

  The grey-haired old lady went snipping on methodically, paying not the slightest heed. He took an unsteady breath, nerved himself against the ice-water fear that trickled down his spine, got out of the car, went to her garden gate, clicked it open, moved to stand by her side. And now he could ‘hear’ something from her mind, a strange click-click-rattle noise like nothing he had ever met before. It was, he thought with a shudder, the kind of sound a machine might make, if it could think. But it seemed to come from her.

  ‘Morning, Gran!’ he said again, loudly, defiantly. He might as well not have been there for all the notice she took. His feet wanted to turn and run. He had to command his hand and arm to reach out and touch her sleeve, to catch, and tug. And tug harder, until she staggered a little and turned towards him, the shears still going snip-snip in mid-air, her eyes staring blankly forward. Like an animate doll. He drove himself to crane and peer full into her old and many-wrinkled face, her faded grey eyes. Not by so much as a flicker or hint of expression did she acknowledge his presence. From her mind came that obscene click-rattle, louder now. The shears in her withered old hands snipped steadily away within dangerous inches of his coat. He withdrew his grasp, shivering, and she swung back, back to her hedge, back to her trimming.

  He shambled back to the car, to slump behind the wheel, breathing hard. That meaningless rattle was terrifying. He had listened to minds that were drunk, or unconscious; twice to the insane, and once, even, to a mind fading slowly away and becoming silent in death. But he had never before heard anything like that hideous rattle. Now that he was aware of it, he could hear it from old Jack, across the way, and, faint with distance, from many others. He had neither the need nor the courage to check any further. He knew he would get that same awful rattle from everyone else in the village. But what did it mean? Mary Ellen shivered close to him, pathetic in her complete trust in his wisdom.

  ‘What the hell do I do now?’ he asked her, expecting neither a reply nor that she would understand, but simply for the reassurance of his own voice. ‘What can I do? If I go back to Davie Dodds and tell him about this ... He’ll have me put away! Besides, suppose I did go back, what would I tell him? They look all right. How could I explain that I know they aren’t?’ For it was lifelong habit, ever since the strange faculty of his had come on him at puberty, not to try to explain to anyone just how different he was. Not to anyone, not ever. ‘All the same, though, somebody’s got to do something, if it’s only to find out what’s happened to all these poor people. Are they all sick, bewitched, poisoned, or what?’

  Mary Ellen wriggled closer; but said nothing.

  ‘Damned if I ever heard of a disease or plague anything like this, at all. A doctor might know, though. Good God! The doctor! I’d forgotten all about him.’ He sat up urgently, reached for the starter, and Mary Ellen looked at him in quick curiosity.

  ‘Doctor?’ she said. ‘Can he fix’m?’

  ‘I very much doubt it, somehow.’ Collier had none of the average layman’s awe of the medical profession. He was in a unique position to know only too well just what went on under their facade of all-knowledge. ‘But at least he ought to know what to do, who to get in touch with. To get the whole thing off my back.’ He hesitated. The same problem would come up. How to explain? But it wanted only for the learned man to step outside his laboratory long enough to see for himself. That should do it, all right. He made a smile for Mary Ellen.

  ‘You’re an odd one, though, aren’t you? You knew all about this. Some sort of instinct, I imagine. I don’t wonder you were scared.’ He put out his hand to pat her in reassurance and his palm fell on the silky smooth warmth of her naked thigh where her dress was split. The tingle made him snatch his hand away as if he had touched something hot. He saw now that her ragged dress was split entirely up one side, perilously held in one place by a large safety-pin. And that she had nothing at all on underneath.

  ‘Nice!’ she said, with that white smile of hers. ‘Again?’

  He put both hands carefully on the whe
el, swallowed, sought for words as he carefully refrained from looking at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, inadequately. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. Look, I have all the trouble I can handle, right now. Let’s go find that doctor, shall we? The pit-head laboratory, Davie said.’

  To reach it he had to drive the length of the village street and across the old stone bridge, then back up the other side of the Lea. Pushing away the innocently primitive warmth from Mary Ellen left a vacuum into which the chill horror of the ‘dead’ village flooded freely. Forced to fight on two fronts, he began to feel stretched. The Mini bumbled over the hump-back of the bridge and bore sharp right, passing the old abandoned drift-mouth of the mine. A dark and forbidding gap straight into the hillside, it had been boarded up so long ago that several of the old timbers had rotted loose, leaving gaps where an agile body might squirm through. He had heard rumours that Mary Ellen took refuge there sometimes, when the weather was very bad. He eyed it as they passed, and decided it would be a very hard day indeed when he would take shelter in a place like that. He snatched a sideways glance at her. No wonder she was so filthy. But it was all on the surface. As his Aunt Maud would say: ‘Nothing that soap and water won’t cure.” The glance was unwise. He saw the neatness of her hip, the first soft swell of a mature breast, and went warm as he stared forward once more.

  Then a stream of thought, new and strange, impinged on his mind and took all his attention. A man’s thought, a man in the grip of some strong and exhilarating excitement, it was all in a jumble, as thought-streams usually were, with occasional phrases bubbling to the surface.

  Chance ... of course ... sheer good luck ... the right man in the right place at the right time ... happened to Fleming, didn’t it ? Got something positive, sure about that. Damn that broken flask. Have to do it all over again. But something. A positive reaction ... no doubt at all...

  The old pit-head laboratory building was in sight now, its red bricks weather-stained and grimy, the stolid square windows thick with dust. As he reduced speed the stream of thought abruptly changed.

  ‘A car? Who in blazes can be driving a car, here? Stopped, now. Can’t be coming here, surely? Damned interference ... who can it be?’

  Collier climbed out, offered his hand to Mary Ellen, who hung back timidly. ‘Come on,’ he said, gently. ‘It’s all right. No need to be frightened here. You’re quite safe with me, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said, and smiled dazzlingly, enough to make his head pound for a moment. Damn it, he thought, you have to be careful what you say to a simple soul like her. She accepted his hand, came leggily out, and he led her to the dingy old door, rapped firmly on it.

  * * * *

  ‘Doctor Parker?’ he said, to the small, red-faced man in glasses who opened the door to them. ‘My name is Gordon Collier, of the Stanfield Weekly News. I do hope I’m not interrupting you in the middle of anything critical.’

  ‘Well, I’m blowed!’ Parker took off his glasses, to tap them against his thigh under a grubby white dust-coat. ‘A newspaper reporter in this forsaken back-of-beyond ? What do you expect to get out of me, eh?’

  ‘Some help, to start with.’

  ‘Oh!’ Parker looked up at him, then at Mary Ellen. ‘I’m not that kind of a doctor. Not a G.P. No authority. Unless it’s some kind of emergency ...? Who’s she?’

  ‘You could call her the village idiot, if you were that way inclined. I came across her on the way here and she appeared to be in considerable distress, so I brought her along.’

  ‘I see.’ Parker replaced his glasses, eyed Mary Ellen up and down, and shook his head. ‘She could do with a hot bath and some decent clothes, but she looks otherwise fit and healthy to me. And retarded minds are hardly in my field, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Me too.’ Collier made himself be patient. ‘Look, I’m doing this all wrong. I came over from Stanfield this morning to see you and get some kind of story from you, but something’s gone wrong on the way. Something in the village out there, and it’s not going to be easy to explain. D’you mind if we come in for a minute or two?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, all right, I suppose, so long as the young lady isn’t afraid of rats.’

  ‘Rats? I shouldn’t think so. She has the name for being very good with animals of all kinds.’ Following Parker, he led Mary Ellen into a long, low, barn-like room full of scuffling and squeaking. Banks of cages filled the whole of one wall. Down the middle of the floor long benches had been set end-to-end and were littered with apparatus. There were tubes and bottles, dishes and flasks, balances, and a square-bodied machine that hummed and clicked away to itself over some abstruse performance or other. There was an overall smell that had fur in it, and hints of ammonia.

  ‘It’s a bit of a shambles,’ Parker apologised. ‘I can’t offer you a seat. There’s only the one, and I suppose we’d better reserve that for the lady ...’ but Mary Ellen wasn’t interested in sitting. She was off along the array of cages, slowly and curiously, peering into each one until she got to the far end, then retraced her steps to a group of three near the middle. Watching, Collier was caught by the tension in her attitude. Parker made as if to move; but Collier caught at his arm.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ he cautioned quietly. ‘She may have found something. She’s a sensitive, you know what I mean ? It was she who spotted the trouble in the village, too. Let’s see what she’s found.’ They went to join her. She looked to Collier in visible dread.

  ‘All dead in this one,’ she said. ‘Just like the people. All dead.’ He stared, puzzled, at the lively little beasts. Then, on a hunch, he put his head close to this bank of cages. Little currents of life-force were threading the air all around him, but here, just here ... these three cages ... there it was again ... that awful clicking rattle. Feeling sick, he stared at these rats. So far as he could see with the eye they were no different from all the rest. He turned to Parker, and saw suppressed fury on the doctor’s face.

  ‘What the devil made you pick those cages, eh?’ Parker demanded. ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘Tell what?’ Collier challenged. ‘Is there something wrong with these particular rats?’

  Parker took off his glasses again, slowly, stood twirling them and staring from one to the other of his unexpected guests.

  ‘Just who the hell are you anyway. Collier? Excuse me for being unduly suspicious, but I’ve had more than my fair share of cranks, spies and snoops, and your appearance here, just at this time, seems something more than just a bloody coincidence. What exactly are you after ? Just how much do you know?’

  Collier thought fast, desperately. There had to be some way to get out of this corner, to make this man talk without giving away his own oddity.

  ‘They’re all dead,’ Mary Ellen said again. ‘Just like the people.’

  ‘There, you heard what she said?’ Collier snatched at the opening. ‘I don’t know how she knows; but she does. There’s something wrong with those rats. They look all right to you, to me, but there’s something different about them. What? You know, and you’d better tell me. It could be important.’

  ‘Important?’ Parker made it a sneer. ‘If you only knew! For years medicine has been chasing a cure for cancer, a general one, not a snivelling little specific but something that will stop it flat. And I think I’ve got it, like that!’ He gestured with a finger and thumb close together. ‘So simple, if I’m right. And you say it could be important, hah!’

  ‘But what?’ Collier demanded. ‘Just what does it do?’

  ‘Well ...’ Parker shook his head slowly, ‘... to put it in terms you might be able to understand, and without giving away any technical angles ... you know, I hope, that a cancerous cell actually isn’t any different from an ordinary one except that it’s anarchic, it runs wild in the system, forms its own communities, doesn’t obey any of the rules ... anyway ... I happened on a culture. In some ways it acts like a fungus, in others like a mould. Curious stuff. It may even be a virus. But it has exactly the opposite eff
ect. All cells grow, develop and change, the good ones in accordance with the organised system, the cancer ones, as I say, just run wild. But my culture halts them all dead in their tracks. They don’t develop, they don’t change, they just stay put. It’s weird. I can’t explain it yet, but I will.’

  His voice and manner took on the irrational air of the dedicated fanatic. Collier listened in growing unease. ‘I had a flask of the serum, and two score rats as test. Some were clone whites, some were wild ones I trapped in the mine for control and comparison. These are all that are left of my test batch. They don’t get any older, Collier. They don’t change, at all! Even their visible behaviour is odd. Repetitious. Cyclic. As if they were stuck in a groove. It is quite remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it. And that, whether you like it or not, is all I’m going to tell you!’

  ‘Oh no it isn’t!’ Collier spoke with sudden angry conviction. ‘You just listen to me for a moment!” Parker backed away to the bench, looking apprehensive. ‘I’m no scientist but I’m reasonably well-informed on the broader issues. It’s part of my job. I’m going to suggest to you that your damned serum, mould or fungus or whatever it is, has somehow interfered with the biological clock in those rats. It’s their twenty-four hour rhythm that’s stuck in a groove. No, just wait a moment,’ as Parker began to smile derisively. ‘We have just come in through the village. Whatever is wrong with those blasted mice of yours is also wrong with those people out there. You needn’t take my word for it, come and see what we saw ... and wonder if you’re going mad. I know those old people well. They are going through the motions of living, just like robots. They don’t hear when you speak. They don’t answer. There ... hear that? That’s the church bell. For those people out there ... it’s Sunday. Still! We know that it’s Tuesday, Parker, don’t we? But for them this is their third Sunday in a row. Are you going to try to tell me that is not your bloody culture, got loose somehow?’