Children of the Dust (16 page)

Laura waited for him at the bottom in the shade of the overhang, pale and wraith-like in her long white over-gown. Above her head a basket of flowers shivered in the draught from the western archway, their glorious colours dampened with dew. He could see looms and spinning wheels in the workshop behind her, and a crude metal printing press in another. Laura pointed.

'The washroom's over there,' she said. 'If you go now, no one will see you.'

'Why should I care who sees me?' Simon asked huffily. 'No one likes being stared at,' Laura replied gravely.

Simon supposed they were bound to stare because he was a stranger but he discovered later that was not the reason. He was seated in the dining hall at one of the long wooden tables. Except for the cooks at the far end serving hot chicory coffee, wholemeal rolls and scrambled eggs, the room had been empty when he and Laura entered it. He was used to communal eating so he had taken no notice when the people started filing in . . . not until the noise and chatter finally stopped.

Everyone was staring at him in complete silence, men, women and children, and every one of them a mutant. Simon stared back at them in shock and horror, several hundred furry albinos with blank white eyes and black pin-prick pupils taking note of him . . . his bare legs, his smooth skin, brown eyes and black curling hair. It was
he
who was different, and it seemed they had never seen a human being before.

'What's that, Mum?' one small child asked. 

Laura rose to her feet.

'This is Simon,' she announced gaily. 'He has come to stay with us. Lilith says we must make him welcome here.' 

Mutant men and women nodded and smiled. 

Mutant children asked questions. 

And the answers carried. 'No, dear, he isn't an animal.' 

'He's like blind Kate used to be.'

'Once upon a time all people were like him.' 

'They were all bald-skinned with limited vision.' 

'No, darling, he isn't dangerous.' 

'They were only dangerous collectively.' 

'They knew too much.' 

'But they weren't intelligent.'

'Intelligent creatures don't commit genocide.'

'Yes, they
did
kill each other.'

'But there's not many left of them now.'

'They can't survive, you see?'

'That's why some of them are coming to live with us.'

'We've got to look after them.'

'And you must always be kind to him.'

'He can't help what he is.'

A lump of bread stuck in Simon's throat, a morsel of their pity which threatened to choke him. He wanted to lash out at them, scream at them, tell them they were wrong. All over England, in every government bunker, there were communities of people who were just like him . . . except that he was not sure about that. The communications system had broken down years ago and they had lost contact. It might be true. He might be a member of a dying breed who had never adapted to outside conditions and ultraviolet light, their numbers decimated by disease and incompetence and malnutrition. But if it were true, and the human race really was on the verge of extinction, one thing Simon knew for certain . . . he did not want a load of hairy mutants offering him pity!

He crammed the remains of his wholemeal roll in his mouth, picked up his crutch and walked out. He had to get
away from them, those white eyes and the alien minds behind them. He had to get away from this place. He was not ending up like blind Kate being spoon-fed on sympathy and pap! He left by the northern archway and entered the sun, felt it cruel and burning on the backs of his legs and neck. His flesh would fry before he had travelled a couple of miles. He limped along the track towards the dammed-up stream, seeking the shade of the willow trees, and Laura came running behind. She was mutant like the rest of them and he did not want her pity.

'Leave me alone!' Simon howled.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Sorry for what happened in there. I did try to warn you but the children were bound to ask questions. We never meant you to be upset.'

'Stuff your apologies!' said Simon.

'What else do you want me to say?' she asked wildly. 'Would you rather we hated you? Threw stones at you? Spat in your face?'

'At least it would be understandable!'

'Why would it?'

'Because we're the ones who made you what you are!'

Laura stared at him.

'There's nothing wrong with the way we are,' she said levelly. 'And violence is incompatible with intelligence. I don't understand why you're behaving like this. We're doing our best. We're trying to make you feel at home here. If you wanted to eat alone you should have said so. You're not obliged to mix with us. We know what you and your people have been through. Harris told us that. We feel for you and we're not heartless. We've agreed to take in as many of you as we can. So what's wrong, Simon? We're willing to give you everything you need. What more can we do?'

Simon closed his eyes. Sunlight and shade from the willow leaves flickered on his face and her words hurt like cruelty, like nails being driven home, a slow crucifixion. She offered to give him everything, food, clothes, shelter. And not just him, others too. But they in the bunkers had never cared what happened to the outsiders so why should Laura care about him? Why should she give? Share? Offer? Everything she had?

'Can't you see?' he groaned.

'Obviously I can't,' she muttered. 'And Lilith says our eyes are different from yours. We see blue silver shining on a rainbow land. We see the veils of ultraviolet light, its shifting intensities. We see the damaged sky. Where things will grow and where they will never grow beneath it. And I see you, Simon. Electrical auras surround all living things, white and gold and glowing, but yours is dark and depressing and I don't know what to say or how to help you.'

Simon clenched his fists.

Laura was either innocent or stupid.

And he did not believe in auras.

'You've already said it!' Simon said bitterly. 'If you're all right then there's obviously something wrong with me! I'm not only sick . . . I'm a freak! You're killing me, Laura! Killing me with every word you say and everything you are! And there's only one way you can help me. Sod off and leave me alone!'

She tried to argue.

But there were tears in her eyes when she walked away.

Simon sat in the shade of the willow trees. Sunlight reflected on the surface of the water and the green woods brooded on the hills beyond. He could hear the sounds of the settlement behind him, a rattle of butter churns and women's laughter. Downstream the mill wheel was turning. Cows chewed their cud in the sleepy morning pastures and men worked in the bean fields up the valley. Seen from a distance, pale-skinned and human in shape, they looked no different from himself.

It was he who was a congenital freak, genetically isolated, unable to join them in the merciless light of the sun. Without the white protective suit Simon was useless. His skin would burn and blister, form weeping sores which were slow to heal, that turned into skin cancer and finally killed. If he wished to escape from this place he would have to travel at night, or not travel at all. The tree shadows trapped him and loneliness plagued him like the flies.

Mutants came and went along the dusty track between the outbuildings and the settlement. Small children played in the shallows at the other end of the lake. Nobody approached him. He supposed Laura had warned them away. His behaviour so far had not been exactly friendly. He was moody and vicious, dangerous if provoked, like a trapped animal. He slapped at the flies that buzzed around his eyes, stripped off the warm woollen shirt and swilled his face in the water. Reflections settled and stilled. A gong sounded and the children went away. The loneliness intensified with the heat and Simon wished he had never set out with Harris and Sowerby.

Back in the bunker they still had hope. They thought if they threw in their lot with the outsiders they would go on surviving. And maybe they would, an endangered species kept by the mutants like animals in a zoo, incapable of fending for themselves. In the bunker they saw it as a solution but there
was
no solution. Out here in the stark hot land there was no future for the human race, just life without dignity and total dependence.

It was not Laura's fault. She had offered him charity and it was not her fault he could not accept. But someone was to blame, all those human beings back in time. They had never come to terms with the aggression factor. Perhaps in the beginning it had been a necessary facet of the evolutionary process, ensuring the survival of the fittest. But in the end it had destroyed them. Violence was incompatible with intelligence, Laura had said, and in this post-nuclear world it had no place. They should have listened to the warning cries of the peace-protesters before the war. In the government bunker they should have listened to Grandfather Harnden, although even then it had been too late.

They had been wasting their lives with their plans and blueprints, dreams of underground cities and technological revival. All her life Grandmother Erica had worked in the food laboratories. All her life Ophelia had peered at chromosomes down a microscope, whilst Sowerby messed around with his maps and Harris struggled to keep the generator running. Not one of them had faced the reality. They should have known resources were finite, that pre-war supplies of petrol, raw chemicals, and component parts were bound to run out. They should have known that if they did not adapt to changed environmental conditions they were doomed to die out. They had sacrificed their children's futures for a technological breakthrough that had never happened, left Simon to face what they could not . . . that
Homo sapiens
would become extinct and mutants would inherit the earth.

Homo sapiens!
The name itself was an irony. They had not been wise at all, but incredibly stupid. Lords of the earth with their great grey brains, their thinking minds had placed them above all other forms of life. Yet it had not been thought that compelled them to act, but emotion. From the dawn of their evolution they had killed, and conquered, and subdued. They had committed atrocities on others of their kind, ravaged the land, polluted and destroyed, left millions to starve in Third World countries, and finished it all with a nuclear holocaust. The mutants were right. Intelligent creatures did not commit genocide, or murder the environment on which they were dependent.

Yet, thinking of himself, Simon knew he was not stupid. Nor had he ever killed anything, except for the dog. As an individual apart from collective history, he had done nothing to be ashamed of. It was only in comparison to Laura that he appeared mentally deficient and emotionally unstable. Like Neanderthal man had been to
Homo sapiens,
so he was to her . . . a lower species. And there was nothing he could do about it, no way he could change himself.

He heard a scuff of footsteps in the dust behind him and turned his head. Blind Kate was standing on the shadow line. She carried a wicker basket and was leaning on a walking stick. A straw hat shaded her ravaged face from the sun but her arms were exposed, patches of raw red skin forming among the festering sores. Blue faded eyes stared sightlessly across the distances. Her dying voice called his name, and called again when he did not answer her.

Simon held his breath, watched and waited to see what she would do. She was his aunt, his own mother's sister, but he could not bring himself to acknowledge her. Nor did he want her near him. She was what he dreaded most of all, an image of his own future, an ailing pathetic thing. He would become like blind Kate, twenty or thirty years from now. She shuffled towards him and put down the basket. Her breath rattled and she shouted at the open water where he was not.

'I know you're there! You didn't want my Laura! But she sent this for you! It's green salad sandwiches, strawberries and cream, cold mint tea and a caftan to keep off the sun. You come and get it! I know you're there.'

From the grass at her feet Simon stared up at her. Emotions tore at him and he wanted to scream. He did not want their gifts . . . strawberries and cream and a fancy caftan. He would rather fry and starve than accept. But blind Kate held it towards him, cool white linen with a loose hood. Unseeing eyes looked directly at him, as if she knew he was there. Her lips twisted in scorn.

'Give it, she told me. Give it to him. And all this morning was spent in making it. And she picked the strawberries herself. That's how we taught her. We have no right to keep things to ourselves. What others need Laura will give, if she can. That's how we taught them all. They must be better people, Johnson said. Better than us. And so they are. True to her kind, my Laura is, and better than you. They are all better than you. You only know how to take, don't you? Take for yourself, not give and receive. I remember, my fine young man. I remember the likes of you!'

Simon bit his lip.

Blind Kate had mothered mutants, fostered a new way of life but she had not forgotten how to hurt. Laura inflicted cruelty by kindness, not even knowing, but blind Kate chose her words and used them like knives, truth cutting into him, paying him back for his nastiness to the granddaughter she loved. There was nothing pathetic about blind Kate now. She was the originator of the settlement, a survivor against all odds, revered and respected. A gobbet of her spittle smacked on the dusty grass beside him.

'Worthless!' she said. 'Yes, we were all worthless, not knowing how to cherish this earth and each other! That was the evil which had to be destroyed. We allowed no wickedness here, Johnson and I. But you have learned nothing, hiding away in your bunker from the human struggle. Think to despise her, don't you? Think yourself better than she? But you'll learn the truth of it yet, my boy. You'll learn!'

Simon reached for the caftan and clutched it to his chest. It was soft and beautiful, a gift from a girl who was better than both of them. He would put it on when blind Kate was gone and quit this place.

The caftan billowed in the hot summer wind as Simon crossed the dam, hung in graceful folds and swished around his ankles when he entered the wood. It did something for him, changed his whole personality, set him free from the galling humiliation of his own humanity. He was free to walk among the silences of trees and actually enjoy himself. He saw a colony of tiny birds feeding on the blight that dropped from the high branches. He saw day-moths fluttering in the shafts of yellow light. Ferns and foxgloves grew among the undergrowth and he could smell the fragrance of the air. White protective suits and plastic visors had cut him off from all of this, but the caftan was different. It let him become a part of the life that was all around him, and extinction seemed a thing of the past.