Quatermass (30 page)

“It’s nothing to do with me—”

“Oh, yes, it is, professor. I want you help us with your special knowledge of the risks we got to take. You’ve seen ’em for your own self! You were by Ringstone Round, not so? You seen my boys there, busted by that Russian dingus!” He grabbed up sheets of flimsy typing from his desk. “But look at this, look at this! There’s a clause there, it makes me
kotch
on the floor! If they think they can slip that one in again—in the new contract—well, they’ve bloody well got to—got to—”

He seemed to forget what he was talking about. His black-ringed eyes were staring in front of him. Quatermass pulled himself together. This was ludicrous, he had to get out.

“Commandant, if you’ll just show me the way—”

As he turned he saw what Van Gelder was staring at.

Beside the door there was a red lamp, and it was flashing steadily.

“What does that mean?”

Van Gelder seemed paralysed. Somewhere deep in the building a klaxon started to hoot. A second joined in and then others in a sudden chorus.

“It’s on,” said Van Gelder.

“Commandant—”

“Your bloody Russians!”

For a moment Quatermass could not believe it, but then he could. There might be somebody over there mad enough.

“The ones you weeping over,
toppie
! Well, here they come!” The commandant grabbed Quatermass by the arm, hauled him out into the passage. Red lamps were flashing every few yards. The klaxons had blended into a great howl that filled the building.

It’s a trick, Quatermass kept telling himself, it’s some kind of insane trick to convince me. But then he saw the sweat beading out on the little man’s face and it wasn’t acted.

“Kom! Kom!
” Van Gelder shouted at the lift doors. When one of them opened he bundled Quatermass in against a load of frightened clerks. They started down. At each floor more bodies forced themselves in and the lift sagged and there was more information. “Radar positive!” . . . “Early warning says it’s a strike!”

“The nukes!” Van Gelder gasped.

He was trying desperately to keep up some show of calm. At the ground floor he personally shoved out three pay cops who tried to batter their way in. “Use the stairs, men!” he bawled at them. “
Loop! Loop!
” They obeyed his uniform and went running.

The lift hit bottom so overloaded that it bounced. Everybody scrambled out.

“Down here we’ve got a chance,” said Van Gelder. The huge cellar was swarming with people already, most of them pay cops still in their plastic armour—that must be an instruction, Quatermass thought. More were appearing every second, pouring in from the lifts and stairs. The klaxons stopped. Whistles blew, as if for a final call-in. There were shouts. Then a rumble of blast doors closing.

Van Gelder led the way to where a small crowd had gathered. There was a switchboard manned by a couple of pay cops with headphones. One of them turned and rapped out: “They’re over the coast!”

“Missiles?” asked Quatermass. If so it could only be a mattter of seconds.

“No . . . I don’t think so.” The cop seemed not to know what he was getting through his headphones.

“Aircraft?”

“I dunno, sir, there’s such a lot of
twak
—”

“Give it here!” Van Gelder tore the phones off the man’s head and listened himself. He scowled and frowned. The other switchboard cop kept repeating requests for information but was not getting any either. Somebody else started kicking a loudspeaker.

“It’s planes!” the commandant shouted suddenly. “It’s a confirm, positive!”

“How many of them?” Quatermass asked.

Van Gelder shook his head. He was listening to the headphones and now he started picking his nose furiously, poking and scraping about in his nostrils with his bitten nails.

The cellar was growing quiet, everybody pushing towards the switchboard. Beefy faces were set grim. Heavy eyes were alert at last.

“They kept low, trying for under the radar screen,” reported Van Gelder. “They didn’t manage it.”

That was something at least. Sneakiness detected. Red faces nodded with the satisfaction of having scored a point.

Word came in fast confusing driblets. The enemy planes were few in number. Quick contradiction: only two of them. Contradiction again: the force consisted of a single aircraft. It seemed to be on a direct heading for London.

Quatermass felt despair. Even one would be enough. And if the antiquated defences were as vague as that—

“Our planes have made contact!” shouted the commandant.

There was a great stir in the cellar.

“They’ve got him in range, the
bliksem
! I tell you, it’s their chance now! They can knock him down!”

He waited for the report that they had done so, getting more and more frantic as he listened, scratching his face and peeling rinds out of his nose.

“Why don’t they do it, the
domkops!
”

It grew more puzzling. The invader was still coming, but on an accepted flight path. It sounded as if he had accepted defeat. He was reported to be making conciliatory signals, wheels down and lights flashing. The fighters were escorting him.

“It’s a bloody trick!” cried Van Gelder.

Now there was precise identification. The Russian was a Yakovlev 36-B, codenamed Forger, an aircraft with vertical takeoff and landing capability but otherwise undistinguished. He appeared to be unarmed. There was no visible sign of bombs or missiles. He was answering radio messages in English.

“Bloody simple
backvelders,
if they let him through!” wailed the commandant.
“Ag! Ag! Domkops—donder hom!”

Four minutes later the Russian VTOL was landing in Hyde Park. They even had the precise location—the open northeastern sector, the part where the old Speakers’ Corner had once been.

There were pay cops in the area!

Van Gelder grabbed a microphone. He gave rapid orders. “Get these trucks in there—take the
bliksem!
No, there isn’t any danger, men—not if you’re quick!”

But he knew there was. So did the whole cellar. Nobody stirred a toe out of it until the confirmation came through. The Russian jet had been captured without resistance. Its crew were in the hands of the pay cops!

“We got ’em!”

The cellar went wild. Cops hugged each other and cheered, armour clashing against plastic armour. Quatermass found himself being thumped bruisingly in the back like everybody else. A rich taste of victory in everybody’s mouth, just when needed most. Over by the lifts there was an outburst of singing, a Voortrekker march. Red faces beamed congratulation at their little commandant.

Van Gelder was still listening to the headphones, one finger picking again. He was puzzled.

“Yes, yes, of course I can get him but I don’t see why he—” He turned to Quatermass with some annoyance and said: “It’s you they want there!”

Once again he was bumping along in the back of a Contract Police truck. Commandant Van Gelder was sitting beside the driver ignoring him.

Through the window-slit showed the dark expanse of Piccadilly Circus as they swung through it, past the fire-twisted little figure of Eros in the middle. On through the ravinelike length of Piccadilly, past the bombed-out Ritz, the checkpoints and gun posts that guarded the inner city.

Then they were moving through the overgrown thickets of the once royal park.

Quatermass caught glimpses of the distant shanty town, its crooked roofs even uglier in the sour light. There was no sign of life there. They must have all joined the wandering columns.

“Look!” said Van Gelder.

There was the shining jet plane with the red stars on it. Pay cop trucks stood parked all round, at least a dozen of them. Some more of them must have got in on it, no doubt to make a claim later.

There were cops everywhere, in full armour, a confident press of huge cockchafers brandishing guns and shouting. Commandant Van Gelder joined his captains to enjoy their full report.

“Professor Quatermass? This way,
meneer.
”

Quatermass followed a sergeant.

The Russian pilot had been divested of his helmet and other specialized kit. He was still standing in his under-garments with his hands in the air, being carefully searched.

“It’s the other one,
meneer.
The civilian.”

A thickset man with white hair, wearing a heavy coat. He was sitting wearily on a split old wooden rostrum painted with faded words about the Wrath of God that must have been a relic of Speakers’ Corner. As a gun barrel prodded him he rose and turned. An ugly, intelligent face that Quatermass had last seen, fuzzy and streaked, on the monitors of the Tittupy Bumpity studio. He looked nervous.

“Pavel Grigoritch—”

“Quatermass.”

Gurov’s voice was husky. The gun barrel pointed at him again. “Professor, can you put a positive ID on this man?”

“I can. This is Academician Pavel Grigoritch Gurov.” Quatermass turned to the Russian. “Were you sent here officially?”

“Niet!”

The shaggy head shook hard. Gurov straightened himself up and cleared his throat. He was so obviously about to launch into some kind of prepared statement that Quatermass moved in to clap a warning hand on his arm. “It’ll keep, Gurov.”

“Now you are witness, I have duty to explain—”

“Later. I want to get you out of this.”

Gurov blinked. He pointed at the aircraft, which was now being proudly inspected by Commandant Van Gelder and his men. “First,” he said, “I must remove a device.”

That word was enough.

“Commandant!” yelled the sergeant. “Stand clear, they’ve set a dingus on it!” The pay cops scattered. Van Gelder was pulled to safety by burlier men. Marksmen threw themselves to the ground and pointed their guns.

“Gurov!” shouted Quatermass.

The Russian was blundering obviously towards the plane. His broad figure was a plain target. “Don’t fire, don’t fire!” Quatermass yelled to the cops, and ran after him. He had to take the man on trust. When he got to him he was already busy beneath the belly of the aircraft.

“For God’s sake, Gurov! What is that?”

It was something small and unmilitary. Something that looked to Quatermass, well used to experimental sights, like a typical lash-up. Misshapenly fashioned by thick clumsy fingers, probably Gurov’s own. It had been secured to one of the empty missile racks with many turns of wire. Gurov grunted as he unwound this.

Whistles were being blown. Cops were running to take up firing positions on every side.

“All right,” Quatermass yelled, “it’s not a bomb!”

Gurov had freed it.

He had it in his hand now, holding it as if it was precious. Quatermass saw a hopperlike opening, tubes, a bulbous container—

“In here,” said Gurov, “particles.”

“What of?”

“Sky. Sky as we flew, sky that is gone sick.”

“You took atmosphere samples—”

Gurov nodded. “It is not efficient, this enemy. It makes great waste.” He was checking his contraption, closing tiny valves and clips. He said: “Particles of earthly personnel.”

As if he could not longer bear to hold the thing with its contents, he pushed it at Quatermass. “Take it! Please take!” His eyes had started to stream copiously, and then his nose. Gurov rubbed at his face. Quatermass realized that what was bursting out of him in such a physical way was grief.

“My son!” shuddered Gurov.

He steadied himself against the plane’s nosewheel unit, struggling to get control of his feelings and not succeeding. “Yuri was major, Soviet Forces, Far Eastern Sector. With special duty to prevent these great crowd gatherings. But they run . . . they run with the rest. Even Red Army, they are being taken!”

Quatermass put a hand on the shaking shoulders. So that was what had done it.

He held up Gurov’s collecting device to let them all see it and demonstrate its harmlessness. The pay cops warily let them pass as he steered the shambling Russian along. Gurov stood by, still choking and rubbing tears away, while he made a brief explanation to Van Gelder. He would take responsibility for the man. It would have been a case of political asylum in the days when asylum could still be effectively offered. In any case they had the pilot and the plane. Honour for the pay cops was satisfied today.

It was going to be all problems, he felt as they made for the truck. This shapeless, even mentally shapeless man for an ally. For that was what he had clearly appointed himself to be.

They drove away through the wild park.

Half an hour later one of the pay cops, happily drunk on Kaffir-beer as they called their potent home-made brew, was fooling about in the cockpit when he hit a real device. It was the plane’s self-destruct mechanism. The aircraft exploded instantly, with him and several of his companions who were sitting drinking on the wings. Also Commandant Van Gelder, who was peering up into one of the jet orifices at the time.

The Big Bunker was even gloomier than before. Its unreliable electrical supply had been replaced by hissing paraffin lamps which shone with shifting strength on the white heads below.

There were only a few cabinet members present.

“We’re the Rump,” pronounced Helen Peacher grimly, but that was as far as she went in Cromwellian fantasies. Sitting in the late clown’s chair, she was already proving more effective than he had ever been. They would face facts now, all the facts that could be got.

Quatermass ushered Gurov in.

The Russian looked surprised. He must have expected something more impressive than this haggard little group.

“Mr. Gurov has come here at great personal risk,” he said. “He has brought us his own special knowledge. Also some experimental material now under analysis.”

Gurov was pulling papers from his pocket.

“He has a statement to make,” said Quatermass. He wished he had not but Gurov insisted.

“I will read.” Gurov cleared his throat. “What is this force that attacks us? Mass destruction of personnel in Soviet Union, and also in associated Democrat Republics of Eastern Europe . . . as well as other places . . .”

He has a gift for it, thought Quatermass, he hasn’t changed.