Famine (11 page)

Very slowly Palfrey said. “Let's worry about that when we know for certain they don't come from somewhere on earth. I would like you to come with me to Lozania because …”

Copuscenti listened, and finally he said: “Of course, I will come. I will have a little rest, and be ready whenever you wish. I shall want Dr. Walsh with me, if that is possible.”

“Of course,” Palfrey said.

“Thank you.” Copuscenti actually smiled, more relaxed than he had been throughout the interview. Walsh nodded, jerkily. “You are good for me, Dr. Palfrey,” went on the Professor. “You have a most calming effect. I think a discussion with you at least once a week would be the best therapy conceivable for me.” He went to the door with Walsh, and unexpectedly shook hands with Palfrey.

Calming, thought Palfrey. Therapy.

As he went to his office, the full significance of everything the Professor and Dr. Walsh had said, swept over him. By the time he reached his desk, he was quivering with a physical reaction, and could hardly control the muscles of his mouth. He dropped into his chair, shivering. His forehead was damp with sweat, his whole body seemed to be drained of blood.

Drained of blood, as if he were suffering from leukaemia.

He buried his face in his hands, and was still like that when the door opened, and Joyce Morgan came in. He was aware of her, but did not look up, until he heard the door close. She had gone. He knew that she must be feeling much as he had felt when confronted with Copuscenti's first reaction. Her coming and going did a little to draw him out of his mood of shocked despair. He had given instructions before going to the laboratory, and she had put some notes on his desk. Everything was in hand; the aircraft had been laid on, there was an appointment with the British Prime Minister at ten o'clock before he left for the airport. An analysis of the reports from Z5 agents was there, too.

He began to study this, his mind working again, but he was aware that he was working at half-pressure. The news, added to what had already happened, had bruised his mind, so that he had lost the power of concentration which had set him apart from most men for so long.

There were forty-two reports from twenty-nine countries.

In twenty-two countries there were acute food shortages, caused almost without exception by losses ascribed to rats. Throughout the world, food storage warehouses and barns which had been untouched for months were being opened, and thousands of them were found empty – the grain and in other staple diets eaten by scavenging hordes. Every report seemed to tear savagely into Palfrey's screaming nerves. Such quantities of food would not have disappeared unless there had been enormous numbers of the creatures feeding off it.

Millions, many millions. He turned a page in the report and saw a typewritten note signed: ‘A. J. Kent.' Kent was the best mathematician in Z5, and the code and cypher expert. His note read:

 

The skin of the creatures is very thin, and the ratio of the skin
area
to the stomach
volume
is five times greater than ours. They eat five times more than we do in relation to their size. Using this basis, and by totalling the amount of food consumed by them as far as we know, I estimate that at least five million are in existence. There could be a hundred million.

 

Palfrey closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, so despairing that he could not think. The door opened again and he thought it was Joyce, and didn't immediately open his eyes. He heard her approach, and then suddenly heard her voice.

“Are you tired, Dr. Palfrey?”

It was Beth Fordham.

 

 

Palfrey was startled for a moment, and his heart missed a beat. Then he said: “Beth” in a whisper only he could hear. She stood in front of him with that half-smile, a Mona Lisa kind of inscrutability, and did not seem to notice that he had said ‘Beth' not ‘Betty'. She was calm and rested – tiredness did not seem to affect her. She wore a suit, with a high collar, the cuffs low over her hands; he had no doubt that she had taken these precautions against the rabbit men.

“Yes,” Palfrey said at last. “And I can't afford to be tired.”

“You can afford to rest,” she retorted.

Rest, he thought bitterly. How could one rest with so much on one's mind?

“You must rest,” she went on, “or you'll crack up, and that won't help anybody.”

He didn't answer at first, it was such a trite thing to say. Yet it was true, too, and her smile had a soothing effect. He was on the point of asking how she had got here when he changed his mind, and said: “Wait here a moment, will you?”

He went outside. A tall, red-haired agent who was always available as a messenger, stood aside. As the door closed, Palfrey touched a one-way window in the passage; he could see exactly what ‘Beth' was doing. Why did he think of her as Beth? He went into Joyce's office, and as that door closed, asked sharply, “How did Mrs. Fordham get into my office?”

“I sent her in,” Joyce answered.

“She hasn't been approved yet. That was folly.”

“Perhaps it was,” Joyce conceded. She stood up from her desk. As always she seemed taller than he expected. “Sap, you looked dreadful when I came in.”

“I felt dreadful.”

“You looked nearly as bad this morning.”

“Must I put on a mask for you?”

Joyce said quietly: “Sap, a year ago it would have hurt me terribly if you'd talked like that, but it doesn't now. I know you, and you know that I've been in love with you for a long time. I think I've come to know what you need. I really do.”

Only half-mollified, Palfrey said, “You fuss over me as if I were a pet dog.”

“Perhaps I do.” She was determined to be conciliatory. “Sap, please listen to me. I've never known you so affected by a case. You sensed the magnitude of it from the beginning – you have this awful prescience. And it's done something to you. It's sapped a lot of your strength, you must know that.”

How well he knew it!

“Yet you've never needed all your strength and single-mindedness as you do now.” Joyce continued. “As we do now.”

Palfrey asked more quietly: “What has all this to do with Mrs. Fordham?”

“A great deal,” Joyce said. “I was startled to see you so relaxed when you came back from her this morning. It didn't last long, but it was astonishing. Mrs. Fordham did something to you, actually gave you back some of the strength you'd lost. Didn't you sense that?”

He had indeed, but could he admit it now? Wasn't it absurd to believe that he could draw strength from a woman whom he had known for only a few hours? He began to coil strands of hair about his forefinger and slowly his lips curved in a smile.

“I suppose I did,” he said. “But she's still a grave security risk.”

“You'll be a bigger one, if you can't stand up to the strain. And it's going to get worse. Sap …” Joyce rounded the desk and came towards him taking his hands; she was very close and very attractive in her earnestness. “The last thing I want is for you to find comfort with another woman. I always hoped it would be with me. But I know now, it won't be. Take her with you to Lozan. If you do, you may be able to rest on the flight, instead of sleeping under drugs which take the edge off your mind. You need natural sleep, natural relaxation. Take her with you.” When he didn't answer, Joyce went on: “She isn't
such
a big security risk. All the inquiries we've made are in her favour. If she were being considered as an agent, we would feel by now she would be all right. Even Armitage's report is good.”

“How well does he know her?”

“He lunched with her,” Joyce said simply. “And I spent an hour with her, too. Tig said he thought she was as good as bread.”

Palfrey almost exclaimed aloud.

“And if you want to know more about her, here's the report so far,” Joyce went on. “She's forty-four, one of five children of a Devonshire farmer, who made a lot of money. She was educated at Malvem College for Girls and a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. She was going to read philosophy and economics at Girton, but her mother fell ill, and she stayed at home, housekeeping, for two years. That was when she met David Fordham. The reports say it was a love match. There were two children. One died of poliomyelitis, the other was drowned in a boating accident. All of her sisters and brothers are alive, married, and as far as we can tell from a quick check, highly reputable. One solicitor, one farmer, one shopkeeper's wife, one a parson's wife. All of them live in the South-West.”

Joyce stopped, and drew back.

Palfrey laughed; and it was a long time since he had felt like laughing.

“Will you take her?” Joyce asked eagerly.

“Yes,” Palfrey answered. “I'll give your amateur psychiatry a chance.” His eyes shone. “In any case I like her!”

“That's why I think she'll be good for you,” Joyce Morgan said.

Palfrey laughed again.

Yet as he left Joyce's office, he sobered up at once, with a new and different kind of problem; how to tell Beth Fordham why he wanted to take her to Lozan? She had offered, in fact begged to help, but this was hardly what she had asked to be – a course in therapy for Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey. He laughed again, and turned to the messenger.

“Anything?”

“She took a book down from the right-hand case, and has been looking through it. She didn't go nearer your desk.”

“All right, thanks.” Palfrey went in, and immediately Betty Fordham looked up, with a slightly preoccupied air, as if suddenly she wondered where she was.

“Hallo.”

“Hallo,” said Palfrey. “What are you reading?”

“Russell's
Conquest of Happiness.”

Palfrey almost gaped.

“With the world falling to pieces about you?”

She laughed. “If I have to die, I'd rather die happy.” She stopped speaking, and a dark thought had obviously crossed her mind. “Did that sound callous? I'm sorry if it did, but I think my husband was happy. In fact I'm sure he was. And I never could live in the past.”

“Yesterday's past always seems a long way away,” remarked Palfrey gently. He stood in front of her, taking the book. “My wife would have enjoyed knowing you,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “And my secretary thinks you are good for me.”

“Does she?” Eagerness lit up Beth's eyes. “Oh, I'm so glad. And I do hope she's right.”

“So do I,” said Palfrey drily. “Will you think me absurd if I call you Beth, not Betty?”

“Of course not.”

“Thank you,” Palfrey stared at her for what seemed a long time, and there was a kind of peace inside him; at least temporary freedom from the awful turmoil which had been so agonising a short while before. “We think we have a clue about the origin of these creatures.”

Beth waited, her breathing quickening.

“In Lozan. I'm to fly out there tonight, with a small team of investigators.”

Still she kept silent.

“Will you come?” Palfrey asked.

“If you think I'll be useful.”

“I would like you to come.”

“Then of course I will,” she said.

Palfrey moved away and sat on the edge of his desk, still looking at her, and still puzzled by this unexpected peace. Beth's expression was calm and interested. He had the strange idea that although she grasped what he had said she did not see the full implication; there was an unsophisticated simplicity about her.

“You'll need to study reports which won't make nice reading,” he said. “They can't be much nastier than the things I've seen.”

“That's true enough,” Palfrey conceded. “Can you be ready by half past twelve.”

“Of course.”

“I'll see you then,” he said. “Here.”

She gave a rather wistful smile, perhaps a little mechanical, or perhaps more truly puzzled, and went out. He picked up his telephone and told Joyce to let her see the Copuscenti and Walsh reports, the Campson autopsy report and the analysis of the reports from overseas. That done, he began to read the analysis again. The horror was no less, but the effect on him was quite different; it was as if Beth Fordham acted on him as a sedative. Whatever the cause, he could now think more clearly and objectively. If one ignored the leukaemia danger, one must try to estimate the amount of food already eaten, and how many people it would affect. If there were ten million eating that amount of food dally— and if they multiplied quickly, obviously they would greatly aggravate the shortages in countries where there was already a food problem.

One such place was Lozania.

 

“What do you expect to find in Lozania, Palfrey?” asked the Prime Minister.

“I hope, information of these creatures.”

“What do you think of the Copuscenti and Walsh reports?”

“Accurate,” Palfrey answered.

“Yes. If the consumption of food goes on at the present rate, how long do you think stocks will last?”

“We don't know how long the present situation has been developing. If they are infested by the creatures, the food situation in China, the Far East generally, India and Pakistan and some South American countries could be grave within two months.”

“Or less.”

Palfrey said slowly: “I should have said acute in two months. It's grave now.”

“And Europe?”

“It will depend on the harvest,” Palfrey reasoned, but there was no conviction in his voice.

The Prime Minister moved away and studied the analysis again. In a voice as flat as Palfrey's he said: “I have analysed and studied all the reports. It is now known that there are seventy-five colonies under the earth, much the same as the one you first discovered. If these creatures get hungry they will steal the food before it is harvested.”

“That's another of my fears, sir.”

“My God!” Mason said, as if the horror suddenly struck home. “My God, if we can't kill them, what are we going to do? How many are there? How can we possibly cope? The War Minister suggests gas, but how can we gas these creatures without gassing the people? Palfrey—” Mason caught his breath. “Is there a chance? Or have we discovered this situation too late? Even without them the world food problem is acute. The World Food Organisation prophesies four major famine areas next year – Southern China, North-East India, Pakistan and Indonesia. Others will be on the borderline. If these creatures multiply, the famine will come much sooner even than we feared. We simply have to stop their breeding and multiplying, we have to find a way of saving the food for the people already in the world. Do you think you might have a real hope in Lozania?”

“As far as I can judge, it's the only hope we have,” Palfrey said soberly. “I wish—”

There was a tap at the door of this small room at Number 10, and the Prime Minister looked across in annoyance, but called: “Come in.” A middle aged man entered, austere-looking, grave.

“I'm sorry to worry you, sir, but there is an urgent telephone message for Dr. Palfrey, from Smolensk.”

Immediately Palfrey's thought sprang to Stephan Andromovitch, the Russian who was second in Command of Z5.

 

Andromovitch was a huge man, six feet seven tall, broad, massive, a giant in size as well as in achievement. He had been for many years almost the only reliable source of communication between East and West, the only man trusted by Moscow and Peking as well as by Washington and Whitehall. Of late, Palfrey had been accepted too, and regular channels of communication had been opened. There was at least a measure of trust in many spheres.

No one who saw Andromovitch for the first time was surprised at the faith he inspired. He had big features, inevitably, and undoubtedly he was handsome, but it was his expression, at times almost beautiful, which broke down the barriers of prejudice and distrust. Many a hard-bitten, sophisticated, even callous journalist had described the giant Russian as having the face of a saint.

On the day when Palfrey had been in the centre of the situation in London, at the time of the horror in Piccadilly, Andromovitch had been in one of the richest wheat-producing areas in Western Russia, not far from the Polish border. He had been summoned by a Z5 agent who was a Party Member and leader of the Commune of Istra which had thrice won a prize for growing the finest crops in the Soviet Union. This year, the wheat had promised to be exceptional, even for Istra. That afternoon, Andromovitch had stood with a silent crowd of peasants, seeing how vast fields of wheat had been eaten down to the stubble. There could be no harvest here, the crop had gone.

There was worse.

Towards the east, where the land rose in gentle slopes, some earth subsidence had been discovered and with a company of Red Star Army, Andromovitch had investigated, and had used cyanide gas, as on vermin.

Everyone had stood, appalled.

Here was a primitive underground city, like the one near Salisbury in England, but with one dreadful difference. All the inhabitants were dying, or dead, the young outnumbering their parents by tens of thousands.

 

“I saw these things myself, Sap,” Stefan Andromovitch said in a hard voice. “I saw women who had died as they gave birth. I saw seven of the females who had been delivered of
ten
young. The average litter, and that is the only word I can think of, was eight.