Quatermass (20 page)

She drove on, skirting the no-go area, guided by sinister graffiti. At the far end of one street she saw things like green cocoons dangling from the overhead wires. Three of them, and five in another. She knew what they were.

When at last she saw occasional lights, and the clumsy shapes of Food Distribution trucks on the move, she knew she was safe. Safer, at least.

Then she came upon the hospital.

They tried to send her away. They had only a skeleton staff left, they said. They had patients bleeding to death and no plasma or even dressings. The emergency generator was giving out.

She shouted and threatened, shook her special-entitlement pass in the face of the junior administrator—there seemed to be no senior—shivering in his overcoat in a chilly little office. Yes, they had an intensive-care unit. It was never used, even for emergency cases. There was a sterilization problem.

She won.

She carried the child from the Land-Rover herself, picking her way carefully between the stretcher cases left moaning in the passages. She saw what they meant about the intensive-care unit. The glass of the door was cracked to pieces and stuck with tape. Plaster was hanging out of the ceiling and walls. There was rubbish in the corners. It looked as if it had been abandoned to the staphylococci.

But there was apparatus there, too.

Two slatternly nurses removed Isabel’s coverings. They were amazed by the hideously puffed limbs.

A doctor came, a gaunt creature in a blood-streaked coat, who gave his name as Kelso. More amazement, and then indignation. Annie found herself being accused. She had no business to bring in a case of severe infection, unidentified, without warning. It ought to go to an isolation ward but there wasn’t one. He would use what measures he thought fit. Drastic treatment—

Annie screamed at Dr. Kelso. He would do nothing unless authorised. No attempt at treatment, life support only—and that clean and effective. The nurses to scrub their hands for a start, and he too—and change his bloody coat!

She demanded exclusive use of a telephone for a time. It would be a long time, she knew.

Isabel trembled inside a covering of transparent plastic. Vital tubes were connected. The heavy eyes of the attendant nurse noticed a curious sparkle on the surface of the distended limbs, like a formation of tiny crystals. She called Dr. Kelso to see. Still angry, he made notes to prove his attentiveness to any later interested party.

He peered closely. Yes, there were minute crystalline structures everywhere in the skin surface . . .

Quatermass watched old Jack buckle his harness on. It was cleverly made, layer upon layer of huge canvas pockets. He grinned as he tightened the straps.

“I can carry near a hundredweight in this. Most regular runs I can ’ardly waddle meself ’ome. Eh, Jane?”

Jane smiled as she helped him with a greatcoat that completely covered everything up.

“What do they sell you?” asked Quatermass. “Loot?”

Jack nodded. “What else? Now listen, guv, don’t count on this.”

“Just do your best.”

“Can’t promise no more.”

He moved off towards the ladder. A moment later his feet were thumping up the rungs.

Edna was sitting beside Quatermass, applying soaked rags to the sprain.

“Jack’s a thief, you know that?”

He had wondered. He hoped the watch had gone to its intended use.

“Done a lot of time, he has, in his day,” she said. “But that couldn’t be helped, could it? Went with the job.”

“Does he still do it?”

“Of course. But he’s getting a bit slow. So he buys as well.”

“Dunno what we’d do without Jack,” said Winnie.

Jane was preparing to stitch the rents in Quatermass’s jacket when she made a discovery. “Oh, look here! Pocket full of photos!” She pulled one out.

“Who’s that?” asked Edna.

“My grand-daughter.”

“Well! You giving them away or something?”

Winnie nudged Jane. “I bet she run off. It’s what they do.”

Quatermass nodded.

“I
thought
you was married, love,” said Edna.

“My wife died.”

Hardly hearing the clucks of sympathy, he thought of her suddenly and quite vividly before the last bad time, the pain time, came. For a moment he greeted her in his mind as sometimes happened and was always refreshing when it did. She smiled at him, surprised to find him here in a tin catacomb of old cars with crones for company.

“There, love.” Edna tucked in the edges of the bandage. “That’ll start feeling better in a bit.”

Winnie and one of the other women had begun some curious task, he saw. They were polishing metal cylinders. For a moment he wondered what kind of machine these could be used in, before realizing that they were food cans. There were no labels on any of them.

“We keep ’em shined,” explained Edna. “Then they can’t go funny.”

She showed him their store—a whole tunnel crammed with gleaming cans. “We write on ’em what’s inside,” she said, “but it gets rubbed off again so we never know. It doesn’t really matter. We eat it up whatever it is.”

Over a frugal meal later, he took the point. It seemed to consist of rice pudding, fish, peas and fruit salad, to judge by the bits, but since it was all mixed up and heated together, it was hard to tell.

Arthur had lost some of his ill-will. It was he who explained the running of the place. It had started by accident, a few old folk finding themselves cut off inside a no-go area. They had managed to fend for themselves. One by one, others had drifted in. The old choosing to die in their own way and time, in each other’s company. The car dump supplied many needs, but in winter there were miseries too. The damp, floods, sanitary breakdowns. There were often distressing weeks. To become ill was to give up hope, but it would have been the same outside, and outside they would have been alone. Here they could cling together. A few old couples in the cubicles, widows, widowers . . .

“Funny you being a scientist,” said Edna.

“Why?”

“We got one here.”

“Who?” asked Winnie.

“Mr. Chisholm.”

Winnie nodded to herself. “Oh yes, Mr. Chisholm.”

A scientist . . . in this place . . . somebody they understood to be a scientist, at any rate.

“Where is he?”

Edna lit a tin lantern. She and Arthur helped him across to one of the branch tunnels. It was too narrow and low for all three, so Edna went in front and he steadied himself between the metal walls.
G. Simpson Fruiterer, Telerent
read the van doors,
Gee-Dee Engraving, Mario’s Ices
and
Fastkleen Ltd.
He was able to bear a little weight on his foot now.

Edna stopped at a curtained cubicle. “Mr. Chisholm,” she called out. “You awake, love? It’s Edna.”

A feeble voice answered: “Come in.”

The lantern picked out a huge heap of covers and a face so old that it seemed to have settled into a system of wrinkles instead of features. Mr. Chisholm must be far over ninety.

“Somebody to meet you,” said Edna. She seemed hardly to raise her voice so his hearing must still be surprisingly good. “He’s a professor. He’s called Mr. Quatermass.” She put the lantern down and turned. “I’ll leave you with him.”

“He’s been here in the dark?”

“It’s what he wants, most of the time. He’s had his dinner. Haven’t you, love?” There was an empty plate. “The professor’s wondering what you do here on your own?”

“I think.”

Edna went, feeling her way along the passage.

Quatermass peered at the waxy, ancient face. The mouth opened in a faint, saurian smile. A thin tongue worked. The eyes were sharp and they focused on him with an almost malicious intelligence.

“They tell me,” said Quatermass, “that you too were a scientist.”

“Oh, yes. For many years I worked in . . . research.”

Quatermass felt his heart lift. However old this man was, they had something in common. He might be able to talk to him sensibly.

“Research?” he asked. “What area of—?”

“I was with Greeley and Prosser.”

Quatermass tried to frame the names, to find a context for either one. Greeley . . . could that be Claude Greeley, the enzyme man? Surely his great days at Cambridge would have been even before Chisholm’s time? Perhaps F. H. Greeley, the son, not quite so impressive a figure but still . . . and as for Prosser, that could only have been Sir Charles, of the early lysozyme discoveries. He had him now.

“You must tell me about your colleagues.”

“Colleagues?”

“Greeley. Prosser.”

The saurian smile widened. “Oh dear, no. The firm I worked for. You must know. It was famous for quality.” Suddenly Quatermass did know. “Greeley and Prosser,” said old Chisholm proudly, “made the best soap in the world.”

“Soap.”

Quatermass sagged against the wall.

The oscilloscopes, now they were working, displayed feeble but regular blips. Dr. Kelso had finally got over his fears or scruples or whatever they were, thought Annie Morgan. He had wired Isabel up to follow every function. He was actually watching over her with keen interest as she lay hardly moving inside her plastic covering. Kelso had changed into sterile garments, clean anyway, and had gone so far as putting a mask on his face. He was peering over it to make minor adjustments to the oxygen supply.

Isabel stirred. The traces on the screens jumped. Kelso watched them settle again as the girl settled. Now she was calm. Even the tremors seemed to have quietened.

“I’m sure she’s not in any pain,” Kelso said.

“If you can just keep her alive—”

The telephone bell started to ring in the adjoining room and she ran to answer it. It could only be for her, after all the hours of trying.

“Have you found him yet?” Kelso heard her shout into it. “Has anybody tried?” Then the cracked door swung shut.

Kelso observed the encrustation on the patient’s huge lower limbs. It had advanced, no doubt about that. A crystalline formation in the epidermis. It was most interesting, a welcome change from the hopeless wounds and infections that filled most of his days. He had offered to make a full investigation of it himself, but it had been indignantly refused. This woman had some power, or thought she had. Behaved as if she had. He could see her mouth moving in there, raging as it had raged at him. Somebody else was getting it.

He listened. He turned again to the transparent covering. After a moment he put his ear close. A faint crepitation in there, a tiny clicking, as if he were hearing the crystals form themselves.

He looked at the oscilloscopes. The traces were busier.

“
Now
can you hear me?” Annie shouted into the phone. The voice at the other end should have been treated with respect, but that was in the past. “I’ve heard what’s been given out officially—but
you
know and
I
know! Please listen! I’ve got a survivor here from the Ringstone Round disaster—I managed to get her into intensive care, if you can call it that—yes, I said
disaster
!”

She was nearly weeping with anger. No way of telling what was the matter with the man at the other end, stupidity or fear or drugs.

She said again: “I’m afraid Professor Quatermass may be dead. So it’s up to us. Can you
please
authorize an immediate investigation—send a top-level team if there is such a thing—send
somebody
!—here to make a start? There may not be much time. It may be the only chance to find out how this dreadful—process—! What did you say?”

He was talking at last.

He was telling her what her ears did not want to take in. Places . . . times . . . as if it was a relief to him to rid himself of them. Ringstone Round was only one of many. There were reports and rumours coming all the time. Carnac . . . Glendalough in Ireland . . . the Isle of Man . . . Hungary . . . Egypt . . . The phone connection crackled as usual but an additional incoherence came from the distracted voice. Once started, it seemed unable to stop its stream of names.

Kelso threw the door open.

He was beckoning to her and shouting something through his mask. Annie could hear warning buzzers.

She put the phone, still talking, down on the table and ran after the doctor.

People were hurrying into the intensive-care room, alerted. A couple of staff nurses, an unshaven houseman. Dr. Kelso wanted witnesses.

On every screen the monitoring blips were jumping wildly, as if the functions they registered were going out of control. Heartbeat and brain activity were declaring themselves at quite abnormal levels.

Yet the girl in the plastic covering was almost still. Only a barely perceptible tremor ran through the frail body.

Click . . . click . . . click,
went something inside there.

“What is it? What’s happening?” asked Annie.

Kelso said: “Crystals.”

She took a step closer to the bed but the houseman pulled her out of the way. The oscilloscope was flickering in eccentric patterns. Fibrillation, it read, disordered twitching of the heart muscle with collapse imminent. Kelso grabbed a pair of electrodes.

Isabel sat up.

It was like the initial movement of a sleepwalker, slow, oddly controlled. The plastic hampered her but she was clearly not aware of it. Her sightless eyes seemed to stare straight out through it.

She raised both hands. Her whole body seemed to lift slightly from the bed.

The thought shot into Annie Morgan’s mind that something wonderful was about to occur, a miraculous transubstantiation. Images of praying saints caught at her. She could actually see clear space between the child’s body and the bed. An inch or so . . . then two inches. She saw light pass beneath it, under the sagging plastic.

Nurses fell back in frightened awe. Kelso swore as he collided with an oxygen stand.

Isabel was floating clear of the bed by a hand’s span.

There was a sudden buffeting in the room, a thudding and whipping like the sound of a slack sail caught by gusts. The plastic was swelling, tight as a bladder.

Inside it the slight, suspended shape was altered. Starting from the monstrous feet it ballooned all over, sparkling like a huge cluster of diamonds.