Evil Water and Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  “This is naked exploitation,” I complained, with an effort at wit. (She was mostly naked at the time.) “You’re exploiting yourself shamelessly.”

  “Now who’s exploiting who, Honey?” she purred.

  “You’re exploiting me. Your bosses are exploiting you.”

  “I’m increasing your charge, darling; should that be what’s needed. You should complain about exploitation, with your nymph showers and nude basins and your bestial baths.”

  “I plead guilty,” I groaned.

  “Just you increase that charge of guilt, too.”

  “You’re a remarkable lady, Ms Geology Specialist. I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  “No, you ain’t. But feel free to imagine it.”

  It took me a long while to get to sleep that night (alone).

  The newly completed triad was planted in a small rear garden of tubbed shrubs with high brick walls around it, not totally dissimilar to my own patch of patio and lawn at home. My very own pair of steps was set up adjacent to the triad, with the same aluminium ladder at hand—no expenses spared. D-J’s fellow specialists had hung video-cameras overhead to record the scene inside the triad and the view from the final Window upon tape. As yet no one knew what, if anything, that sixth Window showed. Nobody was kibitzing just in case the consciousness of the observer should interfere with the functioning of the Window prematurely; hence the video-recorders, left unmonitored.

  The outer views were of an alien swamp infested with creepy-crawlies; a yellow, surf-lashed beach backed by coconut palms; and a plain of bubbling mud.

  I’d been shown videos of the first two inner views. I’d seen an alien forest with rutted barrel-trees sprouting enormous parasol leaves and dangling yellow fruit, the ground covered with velvety purple fuzz. I’d also viewed a sloping rocky terrain with a few stiff growths reminiscent of stag’s-horn coral.

  D-J’s colleagues were maintaining a low profile indoors, so as to keep out of our hair; and Danny was with them.

  Both inner landscapes looked survivable, for at least a while. Presumably if one of those views had been of an airless moon or of molten lava we mightn’t have pursued the experiment.

  Which commenced with my telling Danny, inside the house, “I’m going to search for Thea, Son,” then my stepping outside, to be deeply kissed by Donna-Jean. D-J and I were both kitted out in stout boots, tough trousers and hooded weatherproof jackets incorporating numerous pockets crammed with survival essentials, even including little high-powered radios and a pistol each. We both wore Reactolite sun-glasses. All courtesy of D-J’s team. This was equipment left over from the returning Mars-ship—in case Venturer Two had come down in the Amazon or Arctic. I felt ludicrous to be standing in that little city garden dressed this way.

  “Okay, let’s go. Catch me if you can.” D-J climbed. I followed up and pushed the ladder high so that she could manoeuvre it over and slide it down.

  She took care not even to glance at the view which was as yet unrevealed, both while she settled the ladder firmly and while she clambered down inside. We’d agreed that we should face the barrel-forest—until the moment when I caressed her and we both turned round.

  “Come on in,” she called up softly. “Water’s fine.”

  So I started down the ladder. Five rungs more to the bottom. Four. Three. By now I was squashing against her. Her breasts pressed my thighs, my back. Two.

  One foot on the soil now. The soil of Earth: the human humus.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Both feet, Buster.”

  “Both,” I confirmed.

  “Let go the ladder. We’re going to both turn round together, and

  you’re going to fondle me.”

  Here we were, two fancy-dress-ball explorers stuck in a tight glass elevator … the situation was absurd, but damn it I felt excited.

  “On the count of six. If you know some Latin, that’s English for sex.”

  “Oh very droll.”

  “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Sex.”

  We both squirmed round together, and I placed my hands on her jacket over her breasts.

  The “target” Window was blank—for only a moment. Suddenly it flashed, and the view was …

  To our surprise radio communication through the Windows is no problem at all, just so long as there are radios on both sides.

  There are two radios in that rocky terrain.

  There are two more radios—ours—in the alien forest.

  And there are two in the alien civilization where the “successful” Donna-Jean Scott and I arrived. (Plus a spare with the team at Sam Jakobs’ place.)

  We can all chatter to each other, and to those back home on Earth.

  Our jubilant twins in the civilization have great tales to tell: of the sparkling city they arrived in, and of its saurian-descended inhabitants who haven’t torn them to pieces but who have proved hospitable and brightly curious. Those two are already learning how to talk to the natives.

  Our other twins are slogging down an endless rocky slope, hoping against hope to find somewhere less stark. At least it’s cool there, though they’re being burnt by the naked rays of a white sun.

  And us? We’ve been hiking through these barrel-trees for a couple of days now, wondering how soon we should drink from a stream or test the fruit or even shoot one of the miniature dappled “bears” to try the meat.

  It’s odd talking to your own self on the radio and hearing your own self answer.

  “Hullo, Donna on the rocks,” says my Dee-Jay. “Hey Honey, you’re the Madonna of the rocks!”

  “At least it’s better than Mars,” comes the parched reply. “Not much. A bit. And it’s downhill all the way.”

  “We’re going to test a barrel-pear tomorrow morning. One of us. Doesn’t matter which. If one of us gets poisoned, the other one’s days are numbered too.”

  “We can eat the food here,” calls D-Jean from the saurian city.

  “Some folks have all the luck,” remarks my Dee-Jay.

  I don’t talk to my own twins very much. Can’t stand the sound of my own voice.

  It’s evening under the parasols. The purple fuzz is soft beneath our feet. Time to bed down for the night. We’ll build a camp-fire of barrel-tree bark and branches, though we haven’t seen any sign of predators. There ought to be some predators, otherwise the mini-bears would overrun the forest. But perhaps the mini-bears aren’t too hot at breeding.

  “Call a halt here, Dee-Jay?”

  “Yep. Over and out, Earth and elsewhere. We’re gonna gather kindling.”

  Later, as we sit in the dark by our camp-fire listening to assorted distant croaks and twitters—none of them notably menacing—the radio beeps.

  “This is Earth. You guys all listening?”

  Dee-Jay and her twins acknowledge.

  “On account of this radio business we’ve figured that Windows must be some kind of transmitter device after all. They’re a type of galactic phone directory. Something’s obviously screwy about the way we’ve been using it—I mean, multiplying millions of the things. Also, the idea must be to transmit equipment, not personnel. Because of the tripling factor, right? There has to be a way to trigger a sending without sending people in the process. We’re really going to work on this. Maybe if we could somehow send a Window through a Window, we’d have us a two-way door. Don’t know as yet how we could fit a Window inside of a triad … but if you guys can hang in there long enough there’s a chance we could haul you out.”

  “Haul three copies of us out?” enquires Donna of the Rocks.

  “Yeah, there’s that to consider too. Maybe you’d all three fuse back together again. Maybe three copies are meant to be routed variously and fused at destination—as a checking system—in case of signal loss.”

  “Personally I’m in no wild hurry,” chips in my twin from Saurian City. “I want to see if I can interest our hosts in some new home designs. I appreciate that it’s difficult for D-Jean and myself in
that stony place—”

  “You ain’t kidding,” says that other Donna. “Four or five days, and we’ve had it. Unless a miracle occurs.”

  “And here in the forest,” says my Dee-Jay, “we just don’t know. If we can live off the land without poisoning ourselves, I guess we could last out.”

  I hear the voice of my twin with incredulity. He’s me—yet he isn’t me. I find it hard to accept that I exist elsewhere and that the elsewhere-person is myself. Or that he’s sure he’s the real me. Which, of course, he is. If Windows can make copies of people, are people no more than complicated biological machines? Perhaps! It’s futile to pursue this line of thought.

  Yet curiously it isn’t futility which I feel right now—though I’ll accept that my twin on that stony slope may be feeling terminally futile. Sitting here in the firelight under the alien trees I feel oddly content at last. Finally I’ve arrived somewhere, even if I don’t know where it is. I have even found a true friend.

  I put my arm around Dee-Jay and she nestles against me.

  “Goodnight, Earth.” I thumb the radio off. “Let’s make love,” I suggest.

  “Yes,” she agrees.

  Today we reach the edge of the barrel-forest. We have eaten alien pears and not fallen sick. Ahead, across a shallow river, stretches a blue pasture land with scattered groves of umbrella-trees. And there’s a crude village or encampment. With dappled dwellers who have two legs and two arms and knobbly, tufted heads. We watch them through our binoculars.

  “They look fairly primitive,” murmurs Dee-Jay.

  “Maybe they weren’t so primitive once. And maybe a lot of Windows have wandered off focus since they were first designed a million years ago; or whenever. Or maybe climates have changed. Forests have grown. Deserts have shifted. Mountains have heaved up. Maybe Windows can be drifted across a landscape to a good destination. If only we knew how.”

  “A million years ago those villagers might still have been animals.”

  “They might have some more sophisticated cousins a thousand miles from here.”

  “Compared with animals, they look sophisticated. What do we have to lose? Let’s try them.”

  “We have ourselves to lose, Dee-Jay. Though really I don’t feel lost at all. Not any more.”

  So we paddle then wade across the river.

  EVIL WATER

  The vicar, Hubert Smythe, pointed to the humpy field beyond Pook Pond where Charolais cows were grazing. Those cattle were as large as rhino; they seemed closer than they actually were, and the daffodil-bordered lawn fading into wild garden, less extensive. Yet there was no menace in the beasts. Frisky they might be; their tufty woollen coats, reminiscent of the mushroom-coloured carpet in the lounge, were visually cuddly.

  “Easton Hampcote was sited there in the Middle Ages, you see,” the vicar told Paul and Alicia Philips. “That was once the village duck pond. After the Black Death laid us waste—”

  “Us?” echoed Alicia, and Paul smiled at his wife. Alicia was an agnostic, and the quaintness of this visit by a vicar amused her. Just so long as it did not become a regular practice! Paul continued smiling, appreciating Alicia. Reasonably slim, long honey hair, challenging blue eyes, fine small breasts, good tanned legs. The bloom of pregnancy was on her, not yet the distortions. He realized that he was undressing her mentally, and his smile died. It had been several weeks since they last made love. Morning sickness, headache at bedtime, a touch of back pain, womb pain; whatever else.

  “One soon feels oneself part of the community. I hope you will too.” The vicar, who must only be in his early forties, was greying, almost haggard. A poor diet for clerics, on their salary; and he wore cheap clothes. He wouldn’t undress in his mind any female members of his flock.

  “I’m sure we will,” said Alicia. “Paul especially. He’s a real chameleon.” She darted him an (affectionate?) glance.

  “A chameleon, Mrs Philips?”

  “Private joke, Mr Smythe. Or should I call you Reverend?”

  “Whatever you wish. The younger people sometimes call me Hubert.”

  “We’ve had such a string of welcomers,” Paul intervened. “Betty Nichols from the Women’s Institute, Harry Dale hoping for a gardening job …”

  He realized he was doing “it” again: unconsciously mimicking, in this case, Hubert Smythe’s accent which was clipped and unctuous, with a strong hint of Midlands. “It” must have begun as a means of ingratiating himself. “Speaking the other fellow’s language.” The beneficiaries hardly ever seemed to notice, or resent, the subtle parody. So: a useful talent for an insurance manager.

  A few times lately, now that he was driving ten miles every morning to the office of Life Mutual in Lederbury, on his own in the Saab he had spoken aloud, trying to overhear the real Paul without success. He would crane his head to glance in the driving-mirror at a face—under neat brown hair—which was at once mobile and vacant, as if awaiting expressions to imitate. A pint of water, which would take on whatever shape it was poured into.

  Puzzled, the vicar resumed. “The survivors abandoned the old site and rebuilt the village half a mile to the north. Of course, in the nineteenth century and then with Birdland, Easton Hampcote has spread down here again.”

  “Birdland!” Alicia grinned. “Is that what the locals call the development?”

  Nightingale Close, Pigeon Drive, Owl Close, Wren Close, Magpie Close: the private housing formed an ingenious maze, or jigsaw, packing the maximum number of barely detached residences and pocket gardens into the minimum acreage. Owl Close, highest ranking in the price spectrum, favoured repro brass carriage lamps in the Georgian-style porches. The Philips’ own house, Hollyhocks, was near the ten-year-old development, but definitely not of it. Hollyhocks was two artisan cottages knocked spaciously into one. A steep tiled roof. (Who but a snob wanted a thatch? Rethatching every seven years. Double the fire insurance.) A fine spread of land at the back ran down to Pook Pond.

  “It fits,” the vicar said with a smile of complicity. He didn’t live in the sprawling old vicarage—the Church Commissioners had sold that off to a car dealer—but nor did he live in Birdland, half of whose residents seemed comically ambitious to graduate upwards to Owl Close and carriage lamps.

  “Amazing,” said Alicia, “how they had the energy after a plague.”

  “They would wish to escape a revisitation of the evil. Rat fleas in the straw. Though they didn’t know that.”

  “So why move? Why not stay put and pray?” She was needling the vicar, gently.

  Hubert Smythe shrugged. “As it happens, they chose providentially. After a fashion, the new village prospered.”

  “Praise be.”

  “So those bits of ruins beyond the pond are medieval cottages?’ asked Paul.

  “Oh no. The little that’s left is all under soil. The ruin, such as it is, features on old maps as Barton’s Folly. You know Barton Farm over the hill? Owned by the Langleys now?”

  Paul nodded. “We’ve met. Briefly.” The tubby, red-faced man with the ethereal wife. They farmed pigs, in intensive housing. When they mucked out on to the concrete, and the wind was in this direction, you certainly knew it.

  “Humphrey Barton was a gentleman farmer. Eighteenth century. He travelled around Britain and even in Germany just before the Napoleonic Wars. He conceived a passion for spas, and saw Easton Hampcote as putting in a bid to rival Harrogate or Baden-Baden. He began building on the old village site. Plenty of stone buried there. Pook Pond was to be a centrepiece—deepened, marble-floored, roofed over. With statues of nymphs and grottos. A fantasy! He hired a sculptor. He was going to heat the spring-water. He was a man possessed by a vision.”

  “Why is it called Pook Pond?”

  “Spook, Mrs Philips. It’s a way of saying ‘spook’.”

  “Have people seen ghosts, then?”

  “I haven’t, in ten years. What I’ve seen is mist coiling up from the water. Quite wraithlike, till I shone my torch.”

 
“What a shame. I could fancy a ghost at the bottom of the garden. Ought to be worth another thousand on the price, eh Paul? ‘Large delightful modernized period cottage, the rear laid to lawn and wilderness and ghost.’ “

  “This is a lovely house,” agreed the vicar.

  “I suppose people in the past thought your mist was the souls of plague victims.”

  “Drunks thought so, I expect. In the nineteenth century Easton Hampcote boasted five pubs, would you believe? The strongest ale cost but a penny a pint. The old records say that farm labourers used to lie paralytic in the lanes. Roaming pigs sometimes chewed a finger off, or bit through an ear. But the drunks thought they were seeing the ghost of Humphrey Barton. When his spa scheme foundered he went mad and drowned himself in Pook Pond, you see. Apparently he roped himself to one of the stone nymphs. Dived in clutching her. She, mm, dragged him down.”

  Alicia had pursed her lips. “No, I don’t see. Why did he go mad?”

  Smythe spread his hands. “Why? Disappointment. Obsession. He must have been unbalanced to begin. Easton Hampcote was hardly a likely candidate for a fashionable spa. What, a rustic village with a rutted road? Where were the promenades and parks and lodging-houses? The concert-hall, the library, the assembly rooms?”

  “If he was mad to start with,” Alicia said logically, “madness can’t be why he killed himself.”

  “Progressive madness, Mrs Philips. There has always been a lot of madness in the world.”

  The vicar was staying too long, eking out his cup of Earl Grey tea, hoping for additions to his congregation.

  “Yes,” said Paul, “all sorts of people have been calling on us. We can hardly get fixed up. I have to repoint the kitchen wall.”

  “Oh, do excuse me.” Smythe rose.

  “For instance,” said Alicia, “just before lunch there came an emissary demanding Paul’s presence at ‘Boys’ Night’.”

  “But there’s no youth club, Mrs Philips. I tried my best. The club collapsed after a year.”