Quatermass (14 page)

A
real once-upon-a-time place, thought Caraway. That’s what it looked like, something out of a tale beginning “Once upon a time there lived in a beautiful little cottage’, etcetera, etcetera.

Because it really was sort of sickly cute to look at, even now. You just left the road and went down this little winding, crazy path with grass sprouting between the stones, and there it was. A tiny little house with red chimneys and a neat garden plot for flowers. You could see where there’d been roses growing all round the front door.

Now there were just a few scraps of dead rose twigs caught there. And there wasn’t any front door because it had been bricked up. All the windows were covered over with boards and corrugated iron and even pieces of tree trunk. The garden wall had been knocked flat to widen the field of fire.

A slit had been left in the brickwork where the front door had been. And right now a shotgun came poking out of it.

Caraway ducked.

The shot tore a lump out of a tree.

It made a hell of a bang. Some of the People in the ditch jumped at the sound. It must have been a lot worse for the guy inside that had fired it, though, all cooped up like that. Caraway took a look and saw smoke drifting round the slit. The gun had been pulled in and the voice called to them again.

“Y’see, I mean it! Now you git away from ’ere or I’ll give you a real taste!”

Caraway winked at Sal. The guy was dead scared, he could tell. He shouted back: “You got food in there! We need some!”

“I ain’t got nothin’!”

That was a filthy lie. People that holed up always had supplies, or what would be the point? It made Caraway furious to hear the bastard lying like that. Just the same, he kept his calm and even managed to sound meekish.

“Come on now. Please give us a bit. We’ve been walking a long, long way and there’s a lot of us.”

That last touch was good, he thought. It worked too. It was a moment before the man answered, as if he was having trouble with his nerves. When he did, it sounded like moaning. “I told you, let me be.”

Caraway nodded at Sal. It was time for her to do her bit. She called towards the cottage: “My baby’s hungry!”

“Lift it up, Sal—let him see it.”

But Sal wouldn’t do that. Caraway made an angry grab at the baby and she hit him away. They scuffled.

“Get out, the lot of you!” the man inside shouted. “I’m not bluffin’—I’ll shoot to kill!”

The shotgun came waggling out through the slit again.

Caraway slid back into the ditch. He sighed. He was tired. They had spent most of the night at Ringstone Round and he had not slept much. He had stayed crouching close to one of the huge sarsen stones with Bee. They had watched the crystalline dust sift and move in the moonlight as if it was alive. Bee said it was like watching ghosts. They wondered about those People who had not quite gone, down there by the edge. They had looked spoiled but they must have got away somehow, must have followed, because when Caraway went down to look at first light, they had all gone. Sal thought they might have just melted but Sal was a fool. Like a minute ago there, with the baby. You could never get Sal to do anything properly.

Christ knew how many miles they had wandered looking for food.

They were only a little bunch of People, and they had hardly anything left in their bags to eat. After all, they had not reckoned to need much more. If things had worked out.

“I’m goin’ to count up to ten!” shouted the holed-up man. “D’you hear me?”

There was a fast rustle along the ditch.

It was Bee, keeping low. She had found Kickalong. He was following behind her. He had kept the big machine gun he had found at Ringstone Round. The weight of it nearly wore him out but he wouldn’t throw it away. He had gone off foraging on his own, but it didn’t look as if he had found anything.

He was panting as he scrambled to join the other People. He had the long ammo belt still draped over his shoulder and now he grinned.

“One . . . two . . . three . . .” the hidden man shouted, counting very slowly. He’d taken his time over starting it, too. Pure bluff.

Kickalong lifted his head to take things in. Then he kept low and yelled, sharpish: “Come on, now! Open up!”

“. . . five . . . six . . .”

“Pick up sticks!” Kickalong mocked him.

The quavery voice came back: “I mean it! I’ve got more guns ’ere, a whole lot of guns all ready loaded! You haven’t got a chance! Go away!”

Kickalong smiled at that.

“All right, you win,” he shouted. “Tell you what, just give us a bit for the kids. Just one tin of food. Beans, anything.”

He winked at Caraway and Caraway winked back.

The voice from the cottage was uncertain of itself. “You mean that? You’ll go then?”

“Bible oath, mister.”

“Well, all right.” The shotgun was pulled in.

Kickalong pulled his ammo belt tighter. He wriggled aside, keeping low. In hardly any time at all he was at the side of the cottage.

The People peered over the edge of the ditch to see.

“ ’Ere you are,” called the man inside. A tin of food was pushed out through the slit. It dropped to the ground and rolled.

Instantly Kickalong moved. He rammed his gun muzzle through the slit and fired a long burst. Inside there was a crash of falling things. He waited.

Caraway was trembling slightly with the excitement. He wanted to dash and see. Then he listened. He saw that Bee was listening to the same thing. There was an engine noise up there on the road, getting louder.

“There’s something coming,” he shouted.

“It might be cops,” said Bee.

Sal got frightened, of course, the way she always did. “Oh, let’s get away quick!” she started whining, flopping all over the place in the ditch and grabbing her old baby tight.

Kickalong glanced round towards the road. Then he grinned again, as if he wasn’t going to be put off. He turned and fired another burst through the slit, to make sure.

The sound of it reached Annie Morgan and Quatermass above that of her rough-running engine.

“That was gunfire all right,” he said.

“When you hear it keep going,” said Annie. “The only rule. If they jump in front of you, drive faster.”

“You’d really do that?”

“I’ve done it.”

He had to take a quick glance at her face. She meant it.

“Shocked?”

He managed to shake his head. Being shocked at things like that belonged to a softer time.

There was a snuffling whimper behind them.

Quatermass turned in his seat and took hold of the thin, flailing hand. Isabel, if that was really her name. Named and nurtured by somebody, anyway. Now she was tossing about with her blank eyes wide.

“Poor little wretch,” said Annie.

“I want her just to last out till—”

“Poor all of them. That’s what I used to feel when I still went in for feelings.” Annie’s face trembled. “All those lost children wandering the roads, dragging
their
children. Their babies. Oh, sometimes I’ve seen them and I’ve just wanted to gather them all up in my arms and hold them tight and . . . love them. Even the gangs, would you believe? Badders and Blue Brigades and anything else. So long as they didn’t come after me, of course.” She managed a smile. “I could feel for them all, I could. Isn’t compassion cheap?” Then even the smile broke up. “Oh, I’m a mess—”

Quatermass pushed the radio button. The roar of extraneous noise was thinner, as if they were starting to get out of range of it now. Even a voice could be heard, though not any words. He leaned forward to listen but in a moment the voice stopped and music followed. Pop Tchaikovsky. The usual.

“What did you expect,” said Annie. “Facts?”

She slammed her foot down and the ride grew bumpier. “What went wrong?” she sighed. “What happened? Was it the kids? Oh, Professor—Bernard—what got into them all? The blind rage, in every land. As if we had to have it. Yet when I was a girl—”

“Years,” he said. He was staring at the road ahead.

“It really was different then. You could walk in the open and not be afraid. You didn’t have to hide your face from strangers.”

“All these years—”

“Dreadful years,” Annie nodded. “From smashing things to smashing people. We tried to find explanations but all we got were excuses. The faults of the system, the contradictions of society! Cant produced by boobies for other boobies to swallow, before they got zapped or kidnapped or—”

“It could have been!”

“Of course it was.” She glanced at him. Excitement in his voice and now in his face. He was not listening.

“On its way,” Quatermass whispered. She could hardly catch the words. “Homing in.”

“What?”

“And these years would be nothing, just the final stage . . . if it came far enough . . . locating and probing and beaming. What did you say just now? What got into them? Well?”

She almost brushed the hedge. “
Caused
it? Is that what you’re—?”

“Immense power, approaching through decades. Decades to us, a few seconds in some different, inconceivable time scale.”

She drove in silence, assimilating this. He was frowning, chewing at his lips as if he was feverishly running it all through in his mind, testing it.

“I don’t want to believe that,” she said. “It’s even worse.”

“Just suppose, suppose, suppose! It would be the most vulnerable human organisms, always the most recently formed, the youngest. The things they kept saying. You don’t understand us, they said—”

“Oh, yes! That was self-obsession!”

“Was it?” He was fumbling in his pockets. “Or did they sense something that we didn’t? And then the anger because we hadn’t?” There were photographs in his hand now, and he was waving one in front of her. “Look, look, isn’t it there in the eyes? That strangeness, what is it? There all the time and I couldn’t read it!”

“Who is she?”

“Mine. My grandchild.”

Couldn’t read it because I didn’t see it, didn’t see it because I didn’t look.

“I’m too old,” he said, “If I could miss that what else am I missing—now, this moment?” He was awed by his own speculations as they started to run in his head again. “All the rage of the world . . . !”

A scuffling behind. Isabel, if she was Isabel, was twisting about among the blankets.

“Hold on to her,” said Annie.

The girl broke free. She rolled over, a fierce effort against the mass of the distended legs. In a moment she was beating and scrabbling at the side window. Exactly like a trapped bird. A rasp came from her mouth. It was only as it hardened into a feeble rhythm that he recognized an attempt at a chant. He got hold of her arms, felt muscles thin as cords.

“See if she’ll take a drink,” Annie said. “In a box back there.”

But Isabel’s lips stayed shut when he put the cup to them. She was not refusing, just unaware.

“It’s no good.”

She still turned blind searching eyes to the Land-Rover’s side. A hand reached out like a tendril. She was only a quarter alive but she still seemed able to sense it. And to want it.

Then the brief surge was spent and she sank back. He tucked the covers round her.

In a while they were on the old motorway.

With no other vehicle to catch the eye, it was just an endless unwinding, the only variation the broken patches that rumbled occasionally, treacherously, beneath the wheels.

In the distance a strange shape showed, moved, became two shapes. Armoured knights, figures out of history or imagination. They could not be real. Yet they were. Annie drove steadily towards them, both men and horses caparisoned in glittering armour. Plastic and heavy padding.

“We must be getting near London!” Contempt in Annie’s voice as they passed.

“Pay cops?”

“They don’t show their noses far afield! Oh, I hate them! Their contracts and their brutality! Remember the good old bobbies? “Morning, officer, can you help me? My kitten’s got stuck up a tree.” And they
would
help. But we lost them, let them go. Of course they weren’t all good, there were some bad ones amongst them, of course there were, but . . .”

He was not interested in cops, good or bad. He was adding pictures in his mind. Those huge gatherings and assemblies, they were a feature of the times. Enormous mindless throngs waiting, always waiting in surrender, always with an ostensible reason. To hear some political leader or pop star, but in fact it was just to crowd together. To swarm, as Kapp had put it. It all fitted the pattern.

“Did you ever go to Portugal?” Annie asked.

The question took him aback. “Portugal?”

“On holiday in the old days? I did, a couple of times.”

What was this supposed to be? Chat? Small talk, distraction?

“I actually learned the language, as much as I could, beforehand. You know, to enjoy it more, talk to the people. But I’ve forgotten it. D’you know any?”

“Portuguese?”

“It’s what they speak in Brazil.”

He swallowed.

“I’ve been trying and trying,” she frowned. “That place where it happened . . . O Papões . . . I can dimly remember trying to read stories to children, on a beach somewhere. Printed in Portuguese, story books. I fancy it means giants. Or ogres.”

Of course, of course. There’d been no sign of any on the screen but the helicopter picture had been bad and besides they might not have been in that particular shot. Hidden by undergrowth. Fallen over.

“Megaliths.”

“It might be the same, mightn’t it?”

Not could be, must be! For a moment he felt sick at the obviousness of it, that he could have missed it. If that really was the connection . . . but it was
too
crude, too simple. Megaliths. Anything from the huge Breton sites with thousands of the stones in rows . . . down to threes and fours in some remote place. And all of them planted there by men’s hands, erected God knew how but with human sinews on the job and human graves nearby. Always. It was a spurious connection, the coincidence of a name and nothing more.

“I may not have got it right,” she said.

Just the same, at this moment he found himself most passionately wishing one thing. That he could talk it over with Joe Kapp.