Suddenly the machine lifted. It was two hundred feet up and traveling fast before he recovered enough to work the radio control. The thing suddenly went into an arc. It must have turned over, he thought desperately, a lateral effect. And then the machine was plummeting dangerously near to the TV van. He juggled with the controls and, with a scream of air, the thing came cartwheeling over their heads.
They all ducked, its inventor included, but he turned up power to the full as he did so. When he raised his head, the thing was streaking up into the sky, an eastward component in its trajectory. A glint in the sun, and then it was gone.
“There!” Quy shouted triumphantly. “It worked. You all saw it!”
Norman was white-faced; so was Alan, under his tan. Fenton was green. The cameraman’s legs were trembling as he straightened. Only the girl seemed unshaken.
“Very impressive, Mr. Quy,” she said. “I’ll phone in a full report. I hope my paper will find room for it.”
“Thank you, my dear young lady,” said Quy gallantly. He turned to the cameraman. “Did you get it?”
“Dunno. Hope so. I did my best to keep my camera on it.”
“How about you, Fenton?” asked Quy. “Where—?”
But Fenton was being sick in the undergrowth.
Twelve
Not possessing a television, he went down to the Swan which had one in the private bar. But the news came and went with no mention of the demonstration.
“It’s early yet,” said Norman, who had accompanied him to the pub. They bought a late extra Globe from a passing vendor. But he was shouting of a crisis in Pakistan and, though they scanned the paper through to the classified ads and out the other side, there was no mention in the Globe either. They waited till the nine o’clock bulletin.
“The crisis is easing in Pakistan,” it started. It went on to the visit of the Turkish Prime Minister, the latest on the latest unsolved murder, a protest note handed to the American Moonbase commandant by the Russian Moonbase commandant, the Miss Universe eliminators, and it was getting down to the bottom-of-the-page stuff. Then, “That is the end of the general news. Here are the close of play scores in the county cricket matches. Lancashire—”
Quy turned to Norman and sighed. “Well, that’s it. I’ve had a heavy day.”
“Wait till tomorrow,” Norman said quietly. “There’s the Echo, and the Globe probably passed it on to their morning paper, the Sun, if it was too late for them to give a proper write-up.”
“Only three turned up,” said Quy. “And I sent over invitations. Who am I trying to kid?”
In the morning he was waiting on the local news agent’s doorstep. He bought the Echo and the Sun, then—just in case—every other morning paper.
He found a paragraph at the bottom of page five of the Echo.
“Flying Machine Tested. Anton Quey, 71, demonstrated new type of flying machine today at Wileys Green, Essex. It operates on an entirely new principle, claims the inventor. It is apparently some kind of hovercraft, without visible propellers or jets. The demonstration was only partially successful. After rising from the ground, the machine got out of control and was soon lost to sight. The craft was unpiloted and there were no casualties.”
The old man felt suddenly sick of it all. Not a mention of antigravity. Hovercraft! They hadn’t even got his name right. Just as well, probably, if that was all the publicity he was going to get. There was always danger from a lurking creditor whenever he lifted his head above ground.
He scanned through the others. There wasn’t a line. He would never know how loyally or not the blonde kid with the posh voice had implemented her promise to give it a full write-up. He fancied that she was a good kid under all that manner. She had probably rung in screeds to her desk. She was also probably a very junior reporter and it had gone straight into the wastepaper basket. No hand would lift in any board room now, that was for sure. He sat in his shadowy room, wondering what the hell he could do next, when there came a sound of ringing, faint and faraway. It rang a few times before it penetrated his gloom. He leaped up and hobbled down to the callbox.
“Canal 5262,” he said.
“Mr. Adolphe Quy?” It was a young woman’s voice.
“Speaking.”
“This is the B.B.C. We’re ringing you because we thought you might like to know that the news item which you so kindly acquainted us with is being televised in our Nineteen-Five program this evening.”
“Nineteen five?” He was all adrift. What was she talking about the past for? His invention was of today—the future.
“That’s the time it’s on, Mr. Quy. Seven five P.M. It’s our early evening topical interest program.”
“Oh, I see. Thank you, miss. It was very kind of you to ring.”
That evening he went down to the Swan in good time—alone. Norman had popped in to tell him, soon after the phone call, that he had just got a telegram from the editor of Torso to report immediately. It must have been an assignment, because he hadn’t returned.
He had to switch the TV set from one of the other channels—to the anguished protests of an old hag who said she wanted to see her favorite serial and that was all she came in the pub on a Tuesday for. A senile skirmish in the sex war threatened until George, the landlord, intervened in Quy’s favor. The old girl sniffed, drank up her Guinness and departed, leaving Quy the only occupant the bar.
When the program started, Quy, with a disturbing sense of uncertainty, wondered .whether he had got the B.B.C. woman’s message right after all. The opening shot was straight out of nineteen hundred and five, a flickering sequence—obviously an ancient newsreel—of a birdman jumping to his death off a bridge.
The next shot was of a ridiculous flapping-wing machine of a similar vintage which went round in circles before collapsing.
“Man’s dream of flight,” said a smooth voice. “Those were just two examples of men’s early attempts. The airscrew machine of the Wright Brothers was already a reality when those two shots were filmed, the main path to the skies already laid down.
“But there are always the pioneers, the restless ones, men who look ahead to new ways of conquering space.” There was another shot, of a primitive helicopter bucking up and down without clearing the ground, finally disintegrating under the fury of its own frustrated efforts; then one of a thing with fifty propellers along the top of it, which had about as much chance of flying as a sow in farrow.
“Some hopeless, some—” there was a still of an early rocket plane, hardly bigger than a child’s firework—“that contain the seed of the future.” Rapid shots of a jet plane and then the fulmination of a space rocket launching.
“Yesterday our cameras went down to Essex to film a demonstration by a veteran inventor.” There was a shot of the Blue Boar, then one of the machine. Of himself, loping across the grass, and of the rest of them. Back to the machine and the reporters looking at it. “Is this the shape of things to come?”
The old man writhed. What were they trying to do? Didn’t all early models of anything look ramshackle?
“Or—” There was a shot of himself with his hand on the radio control. Another shot… Christ! did I look as hopeless as that… feel as hopeless as I looked?
The camera just caught the machine, suddenly, blurred, at the top of its first flight upwards, then the landscape pitched crazily; the next shot was of the sled hurtling toward the camera. The landscape tilted again, there was a split-second shot of himself, a flash of Alan’s face—good, the boy was holding his camera up—then the world tilted again, it was all sky, and that was that.
The shots were replaced by a studio shot of a face, the owner of the smooth voice, talking.
“Or just another hopeless dream? And now—the Pakistan crisis and its aftermath…”
Quy drained his glass and went back to his basement. That was it—no conclusive proof of anything. People had become too case-hardened by faked pictures of flying saucers and things like the “landing” on Mars a cou
ple of years before which had turned out to be a publicity stunt for a film. People were too ready with other explanations. They’d prefer to believe in mass hypnosis rather than a real discovery. He had explained to them on the spot that the machine weighed several hundred pounds, that there had been nothing that could possibly have lifted it except some new motive power. But the world had got past being able to believe that a new discovery could be demonstrated in a field in Essex by a lone inventor. It was all launching pads nowadays and government publicity.
Alan turned up the next day with a projector and screen lashed to his bike.
“I got them processed as soon as I could, AQ. I got one better shot than they got on that TV program.”
He set up the screen in AQ’s room. Norman was back from his assignment—it had been to interview a Mexican python wrestler off the Queen Elizabeth at Southampton—and he came down to watch.
There was one better shot. The boy’s quick reflexes had caught the machine going up. There had been a slight tremor and a jerk at the moment it took off. The film tracked it to its first peak. He had missed it there, though, having tracked on into empty sky. He had caught it up as it had hurtled over their heads—he had stuck to his guns—but the machine only showed up as a blur across one corner of the screen. It could have been a bird, anything.
The screen flickered and went white.
“Thanks, son,” Quy said. “You did well.” But he didn’t look very happy.
“What’s up, AQ?”
“It’s not enough.”
“But the TV program, the report in the Echo, this. I know they’re not a lot, I know the paper and the TV program got the facts wrong or distorted them, but put together, they prove that something happened.”
“They don’t prove anything. And who’s going to be bothered even starting to add up? As for the few people who saw it with their own eyes—I never bothered with Christianity because I thought that if all those people had seen what happened, there wouldn’t have been just twelve apostles, but hundreds. I’m not so sure now. The human eye has got marvelous powers of self-deception. No, it’s not in the eye—the mind, or somewhere in between. People see what they want to see. And they refuse to see what they don’t want to. The ostrich bloody complex.”
“I’ll put an article together,” said Norman quickly, “and try and get my editor interested. It’s not their normal cup of—”
“Thanks, Norman,” Quy said wearily. “But do you really think an article in that kind of magazine would be any help?”
“It was just a thought.”
“No—I’ve got to start all over again. My God!—old women die and leave a fortune to a dog’s home. They raise fifty thousand quid, easy as kiss your backside, to put up a monument to some crooked politician. And here—I’ve got this… and what use is it to me or anybody?
“Ach, what’s the use of talking? Leave me alone. Go back to your typewriter, Norman, and do some real work. Let somebody be producing something that somebody wants.” He wheeled on Alan. “And you get back to your books, d’you hear me? There’re enough failures in the Quy family.”
He slumped down and bowed his head in his hands.
Norman looked across at Alan with a pained, helplessly sympathetic look on his face, then softly opened the door and was gone.
Alan stood there, looking down at his grandfather.
“I—”
The old man looked up.
“What, haven’t you gone yet?” His voice was suddenly vehement. “Bugger off!”
The boy flinched as if he had been slapped across the face. And his face was suddenly as red. He turned abruptly and stumbled out of the door.
Quy did not stir for some moments, then a look of sudden grief seized his face. He propped himself to his feet and saw, as he moved to the door, that the boy had left his movie equipment behind.
He went out into the yard, but the bike was gone. And the alley was empty in the August glare. He rushed out into the street, but there was no sign of the boy. He shrugged. He would be back.
He stopped by the callbox, hesitated, then went in and dialed a number.
No ringing tone came immediately, then there was a click, a brief ring and a voice said, “Park Mansions.”
That was odd. It was entered as a direct line in the directory. But he jabbed button A.
“Lady Wentworth, please.”
“I’m sorry, her ladyship is away. This is the porter. All calls have been switched to the switchboard. Can I help you?”
“How long will she be away?”
“I’m not sure, sir. Her ladyship is away on a cruise.”
“But you must know when she’ll be back. I—”
“I’m sorry, sir, that’s all the information I can give.” And the line went dead.
He cursed. But he came out of the callbox feeling almost relieved. But where else was he to try now? He couldn’t go back to Biotechnics. They had probably put his file in the hands of their legal department by now. And he had exhausted every other company that could conceivably do the job.
But it was more than a strip of the material he needed now. There was no point in rigging up another demonstration in the middle of nowhere. He had to harness it properly. He had proved the Quy Effect—at least to himself. His lips freaked in a bitter smile at the name. The Quy Effect!
But a strip could be enough. It had been arrogance on his part, he recognized now. Or fear that the credit for the one great discovery of his life would be filched from him. But to hell with that! The discovery was the important thing, not the bloody glory. And he could protect himself, all right. He should have done it this last time, taken the strip to one of the big firms and let them test it their own selected conditions. They’d have to believe it then.
But now he needed another strip… another ten thousand pounds.
For a moment he had a wild idea of haring over eastern England, seeing if he could find out if something had dropped out of the skies. Perhaps, right at this moment, a scrap of something that looked like blue cardboard was lying in somebody’s backyard.
He dismissed the idea with the contempt it deserved.
But somewhere there must be somebody. America. They were more go-ahead there, more ready to look at new ideas, more money to spend on crazy-looking projects without having to worry whether more than one in a hundred turned up. Ten thousand quid—how much was that in dollars? Anyway, it would be peanuts to them.
But he had about ten pounds left in the world. That wouldn’t see him very far across the Atlantic. Fly Now, Pay Later? You had to have credit standing for that.
And his own was at an all-time low.
Thirteen
He spent the next couple of days brooding impotently, feeling that life had shriveled to a heavy acid lump in his guts, wandering, rubbing shoulders in cheap cafés, on park benches, with the other failures of the great city.
He came back home the second evening, lingering by the canal. He looked down into the oily black waters that the rays of the sloping sun seemed to shun.
Down there under the waters must be the detritus of many hopes. Rusted iron that had once been shining machines, losing race tickets, programs of theatres that had long since closed their doors, old boots, contraceptives, a lonely body or two that nobody had ever bothered to look for.
All buried now under the easeful anonymous slime.
He shivered and turned away. When he got back to his basement he found somebody waiting for him in the yard. It was Preston Quy.
“Hello, son,” the old man said dully. “Why didn’t you go in? The door’s open.”
“I did. I soon came out again. Where’s Alan?”
Quy noticed now that his son’s face was grim.
“Alan? I haven’t seen him for a couple of days. Why?”
“He’s missing from home.”
“I see. But that’s rather a drastic phrase, isn’t it? He’s just gone off somewhere for a few days. You know what kids are.”
; “I know perfectly well what kids are. Better than you possibly could. I also know my own son. He often goes away on the spur of the moment in the holidays or at weekends. But he always leaves a note or telephones. Two evenings ago, he came in, didn’t say good evening to his mother or me. When Doris called him for his supper he was just gone. So was his bicycle. I know he came to see you that day. He had a film. That’s his projector inside, isn’t it?”
Quy nodded. “Oh, he’s probably still brooding on his exam results, that’s all.”
“I don’t think so. He seems to have recovered from his disappointment. I’d made arrangements for extra tutoring for him.”
“Well, that then. You’re worrying over nothing. He goes back to school soon, doesn’t he? He’s just making the most of his last days of freedom.”
Preston snorted angrily. “It’s more than that. What have you been saying to the boy? I know he’s been seeing a lot of you lately.”
“He told you that?”
“I can tell. I can always tell. I know you’ve got some scheme or other on foot. I know he went with you on that so-called demonstration. I saw that piece about it on television.”
“Did you now?”
“Doris says he was all excited when he went out that day. He told her he was going to pick up the film. Now just what happened in a few hours to make him change so abruptly? Is he doing something for you?”
“No. Not that I know of. I didn’t ask him. No, there couldn’t be anything.”
“You don’t sound very sure.”
“We-ell, he knew I needed money.”
“That’s nothing new.”
“Perhaps. But I don’t think Alan, with all the will in the world, could have imagined that he’d be able to raise ten thousand pounds.”
“Ten thousand?” Preston Quy lifted his eyes to heaven. Then he shook his head disgustedly. “What an influence on a boy his age! Wild schemes, haring after crazy dreams. What have you been feeding him?”
The Quy Effect Page 10
