“Nothing. Nothing bad, if that’s what you mean. Now I’ve been tramping miles and my feet are aching. I’m going in to sit down. If you want to come in you’re welcome, but I’m not going to stand out here in the yard arguing with you.”
He turned and shuffled into the dim interior. Preston hesitated, then hoisted his shoulders and followed.
“Right, then,” he said, picking the least dilapidated chair. All the same, it creaked under his weight. “What happened that day?”
“What’s this—the third degree? He came here with the film he took of my demonstration. He showed it. Then… well, all right, I suppose I was a bit short with him. He left pretty abruptly. But he knows me—if anyone does. He knew I was fed up.”
“How short? Come on—let’s have it.”
“I told him to go back to his books.”
“I bet I know the way you told him to do that!”
“All right, Press, have it your own way. But I’ve never tried to deflect him from his studies. What do you think—I want to set him some kind of shining example? I know myself a bit better than that. I may talk a few ideas with him. Some of my ways of looking at things—ones perhaps you don’t agree with—might have rubbed off on him a bit. But nothing bad for him. A kid’s got to equate the world about him. He shouldn’t take it all out of books and teachers’ mouths.”
“There—I knew it!”
Quy cursed himself for saying the wrong thing. He always seemed to, speaking to his son. It was like a demon in him. He added quickly:
“But I’ve always told him that he’s got to learn what’s in the books first. I haven’t tried to undermine his teachers’ authority—or yours.” He suddenly remembered. “But some weeks ago, just after he knew he’d failed his exams, he told me that you had your mind set on him joining you at the Ministry. He didn’t like the idea of working on weapons.”
“I don’t care where he works. He can make his own mind up. I just want him to do something worthwhile, not go around the way he has been these past few weeks.”
“I told him to join you, if that’s what you wanted. I wouldn’t want to wish my kind of life on anyone, least of all a kid.”
“You can say that again,” said Preston, looking about him at the dingy, chaotic room. “My God, what have I done to deserve this? I’ve always tried to make things right for my family, for Alan, for you even. If I was going to have a problem father why couldn’t I have had just a simple alcoholic, like other people, or a helpless dependent? Not somebody you couldn’t help even if you tried?”
“All right, son, don’t carry on. You won’t do yourself any good. Alan will be all right. He’s a sensible kid. He knows what’s in his power and what isn’t.” He sniffed. “Which is more than I ever did, I suppose. No, he’s just gone off somewhere to work out his future course. As for me, I’m sorry.”
Preston stared at him suspiciously. “That’s the first time I ever remember you using those particular words.”
“Yes, I’m sorry I haven’t been a better father to you, instead of somebody you’re ashamed of.” He waved a skinny hand. “No, you needn’t deny it. You’ve had enough grounds. I’m a failure. No, not even that. If I’d been a failure I might have recognized the fact earlier, got reconciled to it the way millions of other people have to. But I couldn’t even manage that properly. I’m a half-failure—a strange twilight beast—somebody always doomed to be on the edge of success and never get there. I—”
“Please, father. Don’t speak like that. There aren’t that many true successes in the world. But, look, if you’ve given up all your big hopes at last… say I make you an allowance? Not a lot, I can’t afford that. But I’ve just had a few hundreds salary increase. Enough to see that you live better than this. You’ve worked hard enough at your ideas, whatever I may have thought about them. You’ve earned some kind of a pension. But on condition that you don’t tinker about any more, don’t go around talking people into parting with their money. I want to help you. I—”
“Then help me in this. Look, Press, I’ve made the big strike at last. A man doesn’t know what shape his life is taking, what it’s all in aid of. But I do now. I’ve discovered the biggest thing since—since God knows when. Since atomic energy, anyway.”
Preston shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Here we go again! You mean, that thing I saw on television?”
“Yes—that thing you saw on television. That was the first flight, however primitive, of an antigravity craft.”
“Oh, not—”
“You say Cavorite this time and I’ll—”
“All right, but antigravity in that sense is still an impossibility.”
“All right, in that sense it is. But in any other sense? It breaks Newton’s Third Law of Motion? Got any other objections?”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?”
“That doesn’t start to be enough. Just because every human method of propulsion has been by reaction against something else, is that any proof why it has to be a universal law? There’s no inherent reason why the power of a self-contained unit can’t be transferred directly into movement of that unit—if only we know the trick. Mankind’s got to find that trick or stay marooned on his own little planet for the rest of his existence.”
“We’re already on the Moon. Soon they’ll get to Mars. We’re not exactly—”
“What, on those bloody deathtraps they use now? All right, but how far? And at what cost?”
“You didn’t talk like that in the thirties. I may have been only a kid, but I remember the way you used to carry on about rockets and the conquest of space.”
“I gave them up, didn’t I?”
“You thumping old—” Preston broke off, and sighed. “Look, dad, are you trying to kid yourself now? You know you gave them up because the Germans were obviously way ahead.”
“Nonsense. I realized even then that they weren’t the answer. Rockets have got about as much future as the dirigible airship had. A certain beauty, a kind of glamour, but too damn dangerous and cumbersome and expensive. Riding space in a pint-sized canister on top of a thousand tons of high explosive—that’s not the way. We’ve got all the energy we want, if we can only use it. We shouldn’t have to rely, in this day and age, on crude chemical reaction. Subject a man to ruinous accelerations because we have to carry a giant-size gas tank a minimum distance. What we need is more like a nuclear-powered submarine. Point its nose in the air and float up.”
“Simple as that? They’re working on atomic rockets. Ion drives, laser adaptations.”
“Pah! That still involves chucking stuff out the back. Reaction mass. So you’ve still got to get rid of that mass as soon as possible. You’re still going to have your acceleration stresses, which is going to limit the kind of people you can send up, the number of people.”
“They’re working on that, too. They’ve got—” He stopped abruptly. “That’s top security. It’s not my department, anyway. But I can tell you they’ve got teams working on all these problems.”
“Anti-grav?”
“Any kind of propulsion that’ll get them into space easier and better.”
“All right then, Press. It may not be your department, but you’re a pretty important man. I’ve got to the stage where I’m beating my head against a wall. I can’t afford to wait any longer. You put up my discovery to ’em. You—”
Preston looked pained. “I only chat with a few people in the space program. We meet at parties. Sometimes we exchange information in committee. But—”
Quy was suddenly angry. “You mean you won’t? All right, I tried to make peace between us. I thought that this way I could redeem myself. I’d even forego the credit. How much farther could I go than that? Put it forward as your own idea.” He laughed shortly. “Of course, they’d never believe that! So perhaps you’ve got reason.”
Preston skirted the sarcasm. “Put it forward yourself. On your own. You don’t need my sponsorship.”
“Hah, I can just
see that! ‘Passed to you for your attention.’ ‘What’s this? Anti-gravity? Put it in the special file; you know, the one for crackpot ideas.’ Finishing up as just another folder gathering dust somewhere in the vaults of Whitehall. No, thank you very much.”
He got to his feet.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, Press. I’ll find somebody somewhere. There must be a firm somewhere in these benighted islands that—”
He broke off. “Firm? What am I talking about?”
Preston looked nervously at his father, then recognised an expression that had been familiar to him, on and off, since childhood. One that meant that there was no point in discussing anything any further. He got up too.
“I’ll be off, then. Don’t forget what I said about—”
“All right, son, all right,” said his father.
But he wasn’t listening.
Fourteen
After some initial research he wrote three letters. Within a few days he received three form letters beginning “Dear Sir, We thank you…” going on, “We regret…” and finishing, “However we will keep your application on our register, and should…”
He sat down and wrote two more, exhausting his. short list.
The next day there was a knock at his door. He opened it to find a big man in a blue raincoat standing on the doorstep.
“Mr. Quy?”
Quy’s eyes flickered over the visitor.
“Who?”
The man consulted a notebook.
“Adolphe Quy.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Who are you then?”
“What’s it to do with you?”
The big man grunted heavily. “All right, what are you doing here if you’re not the occupant?”
“I’ve been sent by the landlord to clean this place up after the last tenant.”
“Was his name Quy?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“What’s the landlord’s name and address?”
Quy improvised quickly.
“Canal Estates, fifteen—” he broke into a short fit of coughing—“fifteen Finsbury Pavement.” That was near enough for the other to follow it up now and not make it any more awkward for him at the moment—and far enough to afford himself time to take evasive action. “Now, if you’ll let me get on with my work.”
The big man wrote in his notebook, gave Quy a last suspicious look and departed. Quy went back into his basement, then after a few minutes came out, a moth-eaten carpet bag in his hand. He proceeded to lock the door with a large old-fashioned key, then went upstairs to Norman.
“I’ve got to leave rather hurriedly,” he explained. “I just had a visitor who’s a bailiff if I ever saw one. I managed to duck this time, but he’ll be back. Not that I’ve got anything worth seizing, but I know what the follow-up will be. Will you alert the postman, make sure you get any letters addressed to me?”
“Certainly, Mr. Quy. That’ll be all right. But I’m sorry to hear the news. Where shall I forward the letters to.”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”
He caught the train for Brighton. The place he was looking for was a bus-ride out of town. He got there to find a haughty female who told him that applications had to go before a committee, that she could tell him now that there wasn’t a vacancy at the moment, but that they would keep his application on file.
He thanked her with more civility than he felt and rode back to the town.
It was the end of the season, but the town was full of day trippers. Why didn’t he drop everything right here? There must be plenty of odd jobs going. Washing up in restaurants. Caretaking. He could walk along the sea-front on his days off, in white shoes, chat to the old dears. Perhaps find some widow with a nest egg. Come to Seaview. Mr. & Mrs. Adolphe Quy, Proprietors. Personal Attention. Kippers for tea and bingo every Wednesday and Friday.
He shook his head and took a bus to the station. There he made enquiries and caught a train to a little town he had never heard of, called Uckfield. From there he took a bus to Tunbridge Wells. The sun had been set for a long time, before, three bus changes later, his limbs cramped, he arrived at Midbury.
He came out into medieval streets. His few fellow-passengers—it had been the last bus—had evaporated, leaving the place deserted under the light of a swollen harvest moon. His footsteps rang on the cobbles as he set off in search of a bed.
He soon gave up. The town had put up its shutters for the night. He settled for a bus shelter. The nights were getting cold now, but he was tired out and he soon fell asleep.
He awoke at dawn, had a wash, shave and brush up at a public lavatory, left his bag at the bus station and set off for his goal.
He passed the soaring cathedral on the way, and black-and-white Tudor houses, but the University was all bright brickwork and modern statuary. He found his way to the bursar’s office.
The woman behind the desk here was a carbon copy, tweeds and all, of the one at Sussex University at Brighton.
“Mr. Osborne? We received your application yesterday. You couldn’t have got our letter already?”
“Letter? Ah no, I happened to be in the neighborhood, so I thought I would look you up.”
She reached into a drawer and brought up some papers.
“Well, we do happen to have a vacancy for a technician, grade two, in our Biological Laboratory. But—” she looked at him quizzically—“aren’t you rather—er—” She met his fierce gaze and looked down at the papers. “You say you’re fifty-seven?”
“That’s right.”
“You realize, of course, that there could be no question of superannuation.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Quy told her cheerfully. “I’m well provided for. I haven’t worked for several years, as you see from my references.” The “references” and the identity were ones he had used when he had infiltrated Preston’s department. “But with the current shortage of skilled workers I thought I should put the national need before my own motives.”
“Well, since you’re here, we can soon find out whether you’ll be any use to us.” She pressed a buzzer, and shortly afterward one of the uniformed figures Quy had seen at the gate entered the room.
“Oh, Rogers, this is Mr. Osborne. Take him across to Mr. Herd in the Biological Department.” She scribbled on a card. “And give him this.”
“Thank you, madame,” Quy murmured. He followed Rogers across a flagged quadrangle, past something that looked vaguely like a chapel—it had a concrete spire standing next to it, anyway—and into a large building. They finished up in a small office. A thin-nosed man in a white coat looked up and read the card that the porter handed him.
“Mm-mm. Thank you, Dave.” He looked at Quy dubiously. “Let’s see if you know your way around.” He led Quy into a vast, gleaming laboratory. “What’s that?”
“An autoclave,” Quy answered without hesitation.
“This?”
“An electron microscope.”
“And this?”
It was like a large safe set into one wall. There was an observation window in it, beneath which were. set a pair of what looked like openwork metal gauntlets. Through the porthole he could see a pair of metal arms.
“A radioactive chamber. This is a biological laboratory, so it’s probably used mainly for radioactive isotopes.”
Herd’s thin face cracked into a frosty smile. “Good. I think you’ll do. Can you report for duty tomorrow?”
He hadn’t done such a humble job in a laboratory for years. Clad in a brown coat, he autoclaved specimens, renewed the contents of bottles and racks, made up solutions, cleaned test tubes—and even swabbed floors.
And was happy.
He soon became an accepted part of the surroundings. The young men and women, mainly, seemed to like him. He was probably a change, at that, he reflected, from some ham-fisted kid. He found comfortable lodgings in the town. He even began to put on weight.
The only slig
ht snags were technical ones—like the whereabouts of his national insurance cards and tax papers. He hadn’t been very careful about those in his right name; he had none at all in the name of Osborne. He told the office they were on the way, and after two repetitions of the query they left him alone, deducting the cost of a stamp every week and putting him on temporary tax coding. Which meant a shrunken pay packet, but that was the last thing he was worrying about. If anything, it lent substance to his claim that he had private means. He got enough to get by on… and he was laying his plans, finding requisition forms, external order forms, practicing signatures.
He let Norman know his new address—and his new name. But it was not until October that a letter came for him bearing a N.1. postmark. He smiled in distant gratitude for the fact that Norman had re-enclosed the letter and had even covered the name and address on the original envelope inside with a thick white label.
The letter was from Alan, the envelope postmarked Scotland.
S/C 12467
Craigmyle Depot
West Lothian
Scotland
5th October 1973
Dear AQ,
Sorry to be such a long time letting you know my whereabouts. But I couldn’t let anybody know until I was sure that I was here to stay. I had to forge dad’s consent to get in here.
Quy smiled ruefully. That made two of them.
I had a long long think about things. It wasn’t dad’s work: I just realized that I wasn’t cut out for a desk job—or a bench job, come to that.
Dad was hopping mad when I let him know. He threatened to have me out. Which he could have done easily enough in the circumstances. But he came up here and we talked it over. He must have seen how happy I was, because he gave way in the end.
Happy! I must be crazy. They get you up at O-six thirty hours and the day starts with a brisk half-hour’s P.E. Then it’s lessons, more P.E., lessons—then a spot of P.E. for a change. Next week we start unarmed combat. Don’t ask me what that’s got to do with it.
Hope you’re finding a way to perfect the Quy Effect.
The Quy Effect Page 11
