Quatermass (34 page)

“Where did you hear about it?” asked the general.

“Gurov.” It was like putting a trump card down on the table very quietly. They both stiffened.

“Your Russian defector?”

“I always wondered if they knew,” said the general.

Quatermass had been fully briefed. It was at the Kapustin Yar missile base that Gurov had first heard of the British weapon. Later in Moscow he had seen full specifications of it, even detailed drawings supplied by a reliable source.

The general sighed. But his colleague was still unsatisfied.

“Did he describe it to you?”

“Thermonuclear warhead, thirty-five kilotons. Blast area variable. Can be focused or set to extremely small diameter for maximum takeout of enemy silos and bases, with low fallout. I’ve got full figures with me—”

“No need,” said the general.

Quatermass knew the point had been passed. “Do any of them still exist in reliable condition?”

The officers considered.

“When do you want it?” asked the general. “And where?”

It was Caraway who first recognized Kapp’s waggon.

The thing was standing in the middle of the road and it looked as if it had been there a long time. Dead leaves had drifted all round it and even inside it, because the door was open. Thick on the seats and on the floor under the pedals. Caraway had always been good at cars and this one started getting familiar to him. When he saw the particular way the windscreen was damaged, he knew. That happened at Ringstone Round.

“Kickalong!” he yelled. “Look!”

He had run ahead of the rest. Now they were catching up.

Kickalong was high above them all, of course. He was standing up in the cart, whirling that special plumb-bob of his to make the mule go. The whizz of the bob always scared it. It was stupid and never learned. Kickalong got the bob going so fast you couldn’t see it, only the shining circle it made, but you could hear it drumming in the air and that’s what scared the shits out of the mule. Perhaps it thought he might let go and it would get stung dead. It was that stupid. On the other hand it might have been right.

You couldn’t take your eyes off Kickalong if you once looked. He had a woman’s fur coat on over all the leather gear, and his guitar, and a submachine gun in his free hand. The whole cart was full of loot. It was a totter’s cart really. Kickalong saw some people using it, sort of like refugees, and he took a fancy to it. So he heaved them off it and slung a few shots after them, and after that it was his. Nobody else got a ride, though, even if they were sick. Particularly not if they were sick.

Sometimes he got some real action into that mule. Going down hill, of course, but even on the level if he could throw enough scare into it. Like now.

They all had to run to keep up with him. The People of course, and them that had been gang kids but had forgotten about it and you could only tell them by the remains of dreadlocks that had been mostly washed out, or bits of blue-rag uniform if they had been inclined that way. And young kid soldiers that had slung away their guns and stuff, and a lot of their uniforms too.

And the others. They were a laugh.

There were men and women on bikes or running along shoving looter-prams. One woman they called Batty was wearing a white wedding dress but she was past being any sort of bride, so she must have looted it. It was all torn and muddy. Another woman had her dog with her, some sort of little terrier thing, and she wouldn’t ever let go of it, just carried it in her arms as if it couldn’t walk. Maybe it couldn’t, nobody cared. No worse than Sal with that baby, really, when you thought about it.

There were a whole lot of others wearing coats and overalls and denims, anything. Old people. Not that old in fact, old like your mum not like your grandma. Those just couldn’t have kept up, the real old wrecks. You never saw any of them on the road.

And of course the People. Bee and them. Sal was in pod again or just fat, you couldn’t tell, and probably she couldn’t either. She had a real job keeping up, plodding along. Bee was getting crazier. You found her looking up at the sky and singing.

Singing wasn’t important. It was the place that mattered.

They had gone all through the land again, taking this direction and that. They had found places where it had been. Like now.

“This place was favoured!” Kickalong shouted. “It did come here!”

He was seeing the bareness of everything, and the sparkle in the ground. Everybody got excited. Some of them started jumping up and down just at the feeling that here was special. Kickalong whirred up the mule again and they all had to run. They always did what he wanted. They knew he would lead them to where he promised. They were scared of him, too.

Caraway saw that there were stones standing up out of the earth, a bit like Ringstone Round but quite little. It was always good to see such stones. They sort of proved.

Bee ran among them, yelling and pulling at her hair. Sometimes she pulled bits of it right out.

Caraway saw what she was yelling about, and pointing. It was science stuff. Some old building right ahead. That didn’t matter, didn’t upset anybody. But sprouting right up high were two big round things made of metal, shaped like soup bowls tipped up so if there had been any soup in them it would all have spilled out. But enormous.

Bee hated the sight of anything like that.

She was belting over there like some kind of mad bug, screaming and bawling at it.

Everybody ran. Even the mule, as if he cared about it as much as Bee. Or perhaps Kickalong had given him a thump with the gun.

It was a railway station, Caraway saw now, or it had been once upon a time. A place for the noddies to go and buy their little tickets. A door with
KEEP OUT
written on it.

So they all poured in there.

“It’s him!” Bee screamed out. She always knew faces. Now Caraway saw him too, looking scared and all muddled up as if he’d wet his pants. It was the younger one they’d met on the road that time and then again at Ringstone Round, the one that drove the waggon at them. That bastard!

“We know him!” Caraway shouted.

They all waited to find what Kickalong would do. He came pushing through but he hardly needed to push really, because people always stood back from him.

He said, “Is this your place?”

“Yes,” said Kapp.

“All gone but you?” Kickalong turned to his followers. “We seen this before, haven’t we? Always one or two left crying.”

He seemed to have swollen, thought Kapp. When he flapped the fur coat open it was to display a mass of looted jewellery. He was displaying.

And the others. Kapp stared at them, not at the half-familiar faces of the Planet People bur the ragged creatures that looked as if they had strayed from town gangs, and the middle-aged with their faces daubed P. P. What were they doing here?

Kickalong strutted to the middle of the control room as if he was taking possession. His followers were still crowding in through the doors, men in muddy coats, a woman clutching a dog. They were like creatures under the spell of a shaman.

“Yes, it touched here all right.” Kickalong was inspecting the blown receivers. “All touched with the fingers of the lightning.”

“The lightning,” they murmured. “The lovely lightning.”

Kickalong looked angry as he made for the control desk. “What you been up to? What you been trying to fix here?”

He snatched up a module with bright copper wire trailing from it.

“What’s all this silly stuff? All this wire and stuff? Why don’t you leave things alone?” He ripped a coil out of it and threw it away.

“Don’t!” shouted Kapp.

“Science man, this is no good for anything!”

“I’ve got to use it—I’ve got to try and get through—”

Kickalong swung the heavy module up by its handle as if it were a weapon. “Get through? Get through? What kind of talk is that?”

“Communicate—try and transmit some kind of—”

“Communicate!”

“He’s interfering!” screamed Bee.

“Don’t let him!” shouted Caraway. “Stop him!”

Kapp stood pleading. “Listen, if we can find a way—make ourselves understood, show we
want
to understand, that we’re capable of understanding—”

The module smashed down into the exposed contents of the control panel.

“Bust it all!” yelled Kickalong.

It was what they had been waiting to do for him. Howling like animals, they set about a final demolition. Caraway grabbed a steel chair and slammed it down on a graph plotter. Receiver banks were thrown down from their places. Fused elements were hammered flat.

Kapp went at Kickalong. He was seized in a grip that told him how weak he had become.

Then he was on his back.

He was half stunned, staring up at the blistered ceiling. He could still hear the sound of wrecking but there could not be much left to smash.

Faces looked curiously down at him. Some were faintly familiar. A fat girl who might have been at Ringstone Round. She had had a baby with her then, he fancied. A softness in her. A man in a bowler hat. Another girl whose face was vividly recognizable yet he had never seen her before, and the knowledge of her must come from somewhere else—a photograph—

“Hey, look!” said Caraway.

They had found everything.

Kickalong was squatting on the completely wrecked, collapsed control desk. In one hand he held the menorah and he was lighting a cigar from one of the half-spent candles.

“This is a kid’s toy,” said Caraway. He had the tin bucket that had never been to the seaside. He stuck it on his head and grinned. Bee had the little box. She rattled it and opened it and took out the metal frog and the marbles. “All kids’ things,” she said.

Kickalong turned to Kapp. “Your kids? How many?”

Kapp said nothing.

Sal whispered: “I had a baby.”

Caraway giggled. Anything about that old baby always gave him fits.

“You wanted to be with ’em? asked Kickalong. “Go after ’em, find ’em? That was no way, science man, all them silly wires. The Planet don’t want none of that. It takes you if you’re fit to go.”

The murmuring and nodding started again, all round the walls. “The lightning . . . the lightning comes . . .”

“Fit?”

“Your woman and your kids, were they fit to go? Or did you spoil ’em for it?”

Kapp glared.

“He’d spoil ’em,” said Bee.

“Too much think and too much talk, that’d spoil ’em,” Kickalong agreed.

Caraway shouted at Kapp: “You! You got to know it all!”

“Know it, know it, know it!” screamed Bee.

Kickalong sucked at the cigar. “If you done that, daddy science man—if they’re no good—they just get spilled away.”

Kapp felt his chest tight. “Spilled—?”

“You see the sky all sick? What that is, is spillings.”

Don’t think about what he says! Whatever he says it’s for the wrong reason, to put the boot in, to hurt.

Kickalong was waving at his followers. “All them, they’re fit to go. I picked ’em.” He shouted at them: “I picked you! I walk you and guide you and gather you till it comes for us!”

“Comes for us . . . the lightning . . .” Fervent gratitude all round.

Somebody touched Kapp’s hand. It was the fat girl, Sal. “Come with us,” she said, and her eyes were soft. “Can he come?” she asked Kickalong.

Kickalong was relighting his cigar. He scowled at the menorah in his hand.

“You a Jew?” he said.

So that was it, they had got to it at last, thought Kapp, the question put in a thousand persecutions and pogroms.

“Yes,” he said.

He nerved himself for the threat. But Kickalong was nodding. It was some sort of approval. “Okay, that’s a start,” he said. “It’s religion, it’s believing. But you don’t do it right. You got too much sin.”

“Sin?” Kapp was suddenly lost.

“All this—is sin!” Kickalong waved his hand round the control room. “That’s why it got bust. That’s why we come and bust it too. Your sin is to know things! You always want to know and understand!”

Kapp struggled with it. Something was being turned upside down and he couldn’t deal with it. His head swam.

The fur-clad figure scratched himself. Jewellery twinkled. He blew more smoke. Kapp waited for the next twist. It came.

“You science man—you want to come with us, you got to get it all out of your brain.”

“Get it out?”

“Your sin. All the muck you learned into it.”

Kapp trembled. In spite of himself he was gripped by the sheer lunacy of it.

“You can’t—unlearn,” he said.

“You can, you can! All them words in there!”

“Got to get ’em out!” hissed Bee.

“Get ’em out!” grinned Caraway.

“Words?”

Kickalong nodded. “That’s it, you’re getting the hang.”

“How?” Kapp had to ask.

Kickalong threw the menorah down and turned his full attention. “The same way they got in—at your mamma’s knee. That’s where you went wrong, right at the start. Mamma, what that called? Mamma, is that spoon? Is that arm? Is that leg?”

He beckoned.

They grabbed Kapp and swept him up close. Kickalong slapped himself on the arm. “What’s that?” he said.

Kapp’s mouth went dry. “I won’t!”

“Say!”

“Say, say!” they shouted.

Kickalong repeated the slap on himself and glared into Kapp’s face. Expectant.

“Arm,” said Kapp.

But Kickalong shook his head. He slapped his arm again. In a kind of horror Kapp found himself waiting to hear the right answer. The answer that was no answer.

“Leh-leh-leheh-leheh!” yammered Kickalong.

They all picked it up, the ululation that snatched their breath. “Leh-leh-heheheh-leheheh!”

Kickalong pointed at Kapp. It was an order.

And slapped the arm again, a demand for an answer that had got to be the wrong one. Kapp could feel the hysteria all round him, rushing into him.

“Leh-leh—” said Kapp.

Kickalong nodded. He snatched up a spanner and held it in front of Kapp’s eyes. And told him what it was.

“Lah-lah-lahah-lah!” cried Kickalong.

“Lal-lah-lahahahahah-leheheh—!” The sound came beating out of them all. Kickalong was snatching things up at random—a piece of twisted cable, scraps of metal—and every time the hoarse panting changed a little, naming them with a denial of names.