Mandrake (22 page)

Oakley said softly: ‘Christ! This isn’t in the book—what the hell are they up to?’

Then there was a weight suddenly against him, and Beth slumped into his arms. He glimpsed her white face, and struggled to keep her on her feet; Oakley moved forward swiftly to help. ‘Outside. Quick.’ They moved away down the long aisle, half-dragging her; every face and mind in the room was bent utterly on Warren, and no head turned as they struggled by. Queston was urgent for escape; quivering in the room he could feel something more than the great sexual tide unleashed in the panting crowd of women; something like the helpless knowledge of nightmare, in pursuit. He felt cool air on his face as they reached the entrance to the room; Beth spluttered and moved, and they paused. He supported her as Oakley reached for the door. The fantastic noise of the women gripped him with revulsion; the baying of harpies, he thought. And then it changed.

The voice of the crowd took a long shuddering breath, a sound so horribly compelling that involuntarily they looked back. On the platform, in the shaft of blue light more weird and luminous now from their greater distance, Warren was writhing on the ground. The big woman was no longer there. Alone, the man’s body thrashed and arched, sweeping the chair from the platform with a crash; he uttered short, throaty cries, his limbs and trunk contorting and leaping in an obscene parody of physical love. The women were motionless now, taut and gasping, and a susurration from them like the blowing of dry leaves. In the air the music throbbed and wailed. Warren screamed shrilly: ‘No! No!’ in a way that Queston had heard before.

Then his back arched up from the ground in a great leaping curve impossible for any conscious man; he slumped back again to lie inert, and from his throat they heard a voice, harsh, tremendous, inhuman. It snarled out, booming in every corner of the hollowed underground hall; it was not real, Queston thought in disbelief; no voice could contain that force, the cold, mocking triumph, the viciousness, the size. Not Warren’s voice, or any man’s.

‘You bloody fools,’ it said, in a thundering, icy laughter. ‘You stupid, bloody fools. What do you think you—what do you think—’ It ran off into gibberish, and then exploded into a series of appalling disjointed obscenities, laughing all the while; and all the while Warren, from whose unconscious throat it came, lay motionless on the floor.

Then it howled like an animal, and the sense was back again. ‘Stupid. Stupid. You think you call. You dare to call. You shall see what you call you shall see what you call you shall see what you call—’

The words thumped evenly out, over and over again, like a faulty gramophone, in the relentless huge snarl. Queston pulled himself into movement; it was like shaking off a heavy restraining hand. He saw Beth and the journalist listening, staring, with the old look of abject attentiveness that always so horrified him.

‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Quick.’

They went together out of the door, pushing it shut behind them; but the cacophony still followed them along the echoing corridor towards the surface, until they stood between the great open doors at the entrance, breathing the cool night.

Then they heard a new sound. A long, low rumbling came from inside the shelter; a deep ominous note that made them scramble instinctively away, up the long ramp, running against the thrust of the slope, with all the time the noise growing and growling, and muffling a faint sound of screams from within so that afterwards Queston wondered if he had heard them at all. When they were clear they stood gasping, in an open street looking back to the lamplit entrance of the shelter, with the bulk of the cathedral rearing up over it blacker than the black sky.

And in that moment Queston was instantly back in another place, another time, under hot sun and a white sky. He looked at the entrance, through the heavy doors, and he saw a small cloud of dust puff out of its mouth like smoke from a gun barrel. And hang, drifting. Then the ground shivered under their feet, and the long subterranean roar burst out after the dust, and it seemed impossible that the drifting mist should not be scattered by the noise. But still it hung in the air while they saw, terribly, the long dark stretch of grass above the shelter gently slip and slump and fall to leave a great gaping pit. It was not possible, and they watched without belief.

But Oakley was looking farther; straining to see into the darkness beyond. Suddenly he swung round and grabbed at them to pull them away.

‘Get out, quick! Along the wall, in the open. The cathedral’s going!’

They ran desperately through streets, round corners, flinching once as a chimney pot crashed to the ground a second after they passed. Lights were flicking on in some of the houses, and children’s voices calling in fear. Round the third corner Oakley stumbled to a halt, in the open paved stretch where two roads met at the city gate. The roar behind them had grown, following, and as they paused there, panting for breath, they saw incredulously the towering bulk of the cathedral sway and lurch against the dim dark sky.

The thundering grew to a high screaming note as if the earth itself had split, and among shell-fire crashes of falling brick the great tower slowly toppled over and down, burying the streets where they had stood moments before. At the same time the city wall, twenty yards from their feet cracked and shuddered and keeled over outwards as if it were paper blown by the wind. The street-lamps flickered and went out. They felt again the gentle, awful ripple of the earth beneath them, and in the faint light left by the moon Queston saw the long black arm of an open fissure, running out from the cathedral close to the wall. It opened narrow jaws as he watched, and then closed; and the road buckled and bulged over the place where it had been. Falling masonry still rumbled and crashed unseen in the town.

He heard Beth’s voice beside him, high with fear.

‘Where can we go?’

‘Outside. Nothing’s worse than this. Where’s Oakley?’

‘Here.’

‘Come on then. Carefully. Watch where you tread.’

They scrambled over the fallen wall and out on to the road, with the recklessness of despair. For a hundred yards the way was clear, and they did not turn to look at the wailing chaos behind their backs.

Then Queston sensed that some obstruction lay ahead. He called out in warning, stopped, and reached for Beth; but it was too late. The blinding white of a spotlight flashed into his eyes, and there were suddenly dark running, shouting figures all around. Hands seized him; he heard Beth scream, and struggled fiercely, lashing out with his feet. One heel connected hard with bone; a man gave an agonized, gulping gasp, and he felt savage satisfaction bubble within him.

Then there was the crash of a blow on the back of his head, brilliant light behind his eyes; and the darkness came in.

Darkness, and the noise of silence; an utter confusion, as if he hung between heaven and earth and outside time. And then he was awake. He was lying on a bed, with blankets rough against his chin. The back of his head ached; his mouth was stale. He tried to open his eyes, and found that they were already open. Panic rushed into him, and he remembered the earthquake, and he knew that it had come again while he slept, and buried him alive.

He jerked the bedclothes away, wincing at a quick pain in his upper arm; swung his legs off the bed and found his feet on the crisp fur of carpet. With the darkness driving in on him, he felt for a wall behind the bed-head with his left hand; touched one, followed it round, cursing as he crashed against an invisible chair. Short walls, a small room. A window—he saw a faint chink of light as he gripped the sill, and felt relief surge in over the creeping fear that he was blind. But the window was shuttered outside the glass, and would not open. Round farther to the right, along the wall—and in the next wall, a door. He gripped the handle, knew that his knees were unsteady, did not know whether the shaking came from fear or sleep. He opened the door.

The glare of daylight struck at his eyes, and as he blinked and staggered senses and memory came fully back in a rush: Gloucester, the medium possessed by a voice; the women, thunder, and shrieking… and Beth. He called out suddenly: ‘Beth!’

He came forward into the room, and saw that he was wearing pyjamas. He felt his chin, and it was smooth. He looked round, puzzled. The room was large. No one was there. It held a heavy sideboard, three easy chairs, vast and sagging; a table, chairs, a lamp. Windows in the far wall, and through them bare treetops and a blue sky; he crossed the room quickly and saw below him a wide sanded road bordered by a line of great trees, silent, empty, and beyond it a wide green field. He turned back again.

‘Beth?’

There were two other doors; he tried one, and it was locked. Panic began to rise again. He ran to the other door, opposite the room where he had slept, and heard a small noise from inside. In quick hope he turned the handle; and the light followed him into another tiny dark bedroom as cramped and shuttered as the first; and he saw the fair head of the journalist Oakley snoring in slack-mouthed sleep on the pillow.

He wanted desperately to find Beth, to know that she was safe.

‘Oakley!’

The man still snored: a throbbing, animal sound. Ques-ton pulled back the bedclothes and shook him by the shoulder. Oakley gurgled, groaned, and jerked away suddenly clutching at his arm. ‘Ow! ’ He opened his eyes, and gazed resentfully at Queston. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘Don’t do that.’

Queston looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Funny—’ He rolled up his own sleeve and went back into the brightness of the big room to study his arm. Where the flesh was tender there was a faint redness, and a minute dark spot.

Queston padded after him in dark-blue pyjamas; he lurched unsteadily, and clutched at the wall. ‘Someone’s given us a jab. Pretty ham-fisted, too. How long have we been out? Where the hell are we, anyway? ’ He shambled over to the window and stood looking out. ‘High up.’ The American accent gave his voice a laconic flatness. He scratched his head, and yawned.

‘It reminds me of something—’ Queston stared round the room, frowning, then shrugged. ‘D’you know Gloucester well?’

Oakley said, still looking out: ‘I do know there isn’t a field inside the city limit.’

Queston looked up sharply. ‘Then where—? ’ He shivered. ‘God, it’s cold.’ He went back into the bedroom, ripped the blankets from the bed, and came back wrapping one round his shoulders. He tossed the other two to Oakley. ‘Here. We don’t seem to have any clothes.’

‘What!’ Oakley turned quickly, the pyjamas flapping round his thin shoulders; with his pale face and hair he looked like a wiry white bird. He shot into the bedroom and came back looking concerned. ‘God dammit, they’ve got my notebook.’

‘Is that bad?’

‘It won’t do me any good, if they can decipher it.’

Queston’s head spurted with pain; he fingered it tenderly. ‘They were on the road…’

‘I saw you go down. Then someone slugged me.’

‘Did you see Beth?’

‘Struggling—someone had hold of her. Don’t know if they hit her.’

Queston stood very still. Then he rushed at the locked door and crashed at it with his fists. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Hey!’

‘Don’t worry,’ Oakley said flatly, but with compassion. ‘They can see us O.K.’

‘See us? ’ He let his hands drop, and clutched the blanket round him, feeling ridiculous. A middle-aged man in pyjamas, banging on a door.

‘The Ministry are very efficient,’ Oakley said. His bright pale eyes flicked round the room. ‘They showed me this game once, when they thought I was for them. A picture, usually. Or a ventilator.’ There were three large murky pictures on the walls, dismal landscapes in oils; he went from one to the other, peering closely. At the third he exclaimed in triumph, and pulled it down. The picture cracked and creaked and came away, revealing a network of wires and three dark protuberances jutting from a cavity in the wall. Queston blinked.

‘Three lenses,’ Oakley said. ‘Each angled slightly, to give a good field. The glass on the picture is whole, see? But three holes behind it where these babies fitted in to the landscape—it’s such a god-awful picture you wouldn’t notice. And the boys just sit at the other end waiting for us to wake up. The mike’s probably built in. Stand clear a minute.’

He dragged a chair across and clambered on to it, with the picture in his arms; then thrust his face forward at the lenses with an enormous imbecilic grin. ‘Bye-bye,’ he said sweetly, flapping the fingers of one hand. Then he raised the picture at right angles to the wall and smashed at them savagely with a corner of the heavy frame, again and again, until glass splintered and metal snapped and wires hung loose. He climbed down, panting, and grinned at Queston; his hair was standing up in tufts, and he looked like a schoolboy after a dormitory fight. ‘I guess we’ll have visitors soon.’

‘I suppose it was the Ministry?’

‘Who else?’

‘I don’t know… ’ Queston wandered about uneasily. ‘Has it occurred to you how easy it would be, with the whole country hypnotized, for a detached outsider to come in and take over control?’

Oakley stared at him, and grinned mockingly. ‘I suppose you mean the Soviets?’

‘Well—’

‘Can you really imagine them bothering, after all that?’

‘After all what?’

‘Jesus,’ Oakley said, and his smile widened, tilting his dark eyebrows up towards the pale hair. ‘What were you doing before Gloucester?’

‘We were on our own, for a couple of months. And I was roaming around alone for about six weeks before that.’ He ached for Beth again, and looked at the locked door. ‘And before that, two years.’

‘You were tucked away writing for two years?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you must have had some idea of what was going on in Britain.’

‘Well—’ Queston said, half-way between irritation and defensiveness. ‘I knew Mandrake was getting a lot of power. Obviously he wasn’t altogether popular, because when I first saw him someone had just tried to knock him off. That was at Kennedy. I never did find out who it was.’ He stopped, remembering the shout: Murderer! ‘I met him then, and he tried to get me to work for the Ministry. I said no, but it wasn’t because I thought there was anything sinister about him. I just didn’t want to be at all involved in politics… And the book wasn’t written about him, or about Britain. I didn’t care much what was happening here. All my ideas had grown out of the cave people, and that Tristan volcano back in 1962—things where you got the earth’s physical violence tied in with a community who had really fierce bonds with the place where they lived.’