Quatermass (36 page)

It was the giant cable roller.

A forklift had collided with it and sent it teetering. People scrambled clear as it crashed over flat on the rails. When nobody seemed hurt there were laughs of relief. Then they saw Jack pinned under it. Hands heaved at the roller till he could be dragged clear. The old thief’s face was grey. He was in a bad way and he knew it. He had heard his bones crack. All round him there were anxious faces, murmured distress. It was as if they were being struck at for being old. Then Misru was shouting: “Keep on! Keep on with it! Don’t stop now!”

Kapp listened.

“Why are they all so old?” he said.

Quatermass told him: “We’ve got to be.”

“Old and crazy! You think you can destroy that with a bomb?
That
?”

Quatermass shook his head. “I know I can’t.”

“Eh?”

“No question.”

Kapp looked baffled. “But you said just now—”

“Sting it, send a shock back through its ganglia. It’ll be like a man who’s stepped on a hornet,” Quatermass said. “That’s all.”

Kapp took a few steps in silence. Then he nodded. “And somewhere . . . on the other side of the universe . . .” He nodded again.

They were close to the huts now.

Kapp’s bandage was coming undone. He ripped it from his head. His eyes were on the rusty shell, a tin shanty on the point of collapse.

“The bomb,” he said. “What fires it?”

Quatermass did not answer him for a moment. Then he said: “No more malfunctions. This has to be kept simple.”

“Manual?”

“Yes.”

“Who, then?”

Put it lightly. It was a light enough thing after all, a man in the eighth decade of his life. He said: “It’s my idea. My game.”

Kapp turned from staring at the hut. He shook his head and said: “This is my place.”

Nothing light about that.

“Besides,” Kapp said, “I’m older than any of you.”

They were waiting.

All work had ended. The silence was so complete that every small sound rang out magnified. The chink of a cup on a saucer, a tool being put down.

People sat and sprawled in small exhausted groups along the platform, wherever it was not blocked by apparatus. The sappers were clustered on their own, puffing at their special handout of cigarettes. The section leaders from Dean’s Yard had separated from their teams and were comparing final notes in whispers.

Quatermass stood looking along the empty track.

It was time they came.

He glanced up at the antenna above him. He could see Kapp there, spreadeagled on the lattice, checking the work that had been done.

“Another cup of tea, love?”

It was Edna. She and her helpers had set up a trestle table and covered it with a cloth and had served out many cups from a big canteen pot, refilled again and again. And food they had made. Towards the end it had taken on a curiously sacramental quality.

He felt grateful to her but he wanted no more. He shook his head.

Now they were clearing away. He saw Gurov come out of the control room from his final checks, and Edna offer him too a last cup. Gurov merely looked offended, finding some vulgarity in it. He was an oddly unproletarian person.

He was glancing at his watch as he crossed the platform.

“Well, Quatermass?”

“I know. They’re late.”

“Perhaps they find some technical fault.”

“Perhaps.”

“The focal mechanism,” said Gurov. “It is most ingenious but our people did have certain criticisms.”

“Where the hell is it!”

Gurov was watching him now, uneasy at having said the wrong thing, ready to show his true feelings.

“Quatermass, this should not be for you to do! I say once again, one more time, please—!”

Head him off quick.

“You can trust me, Pavel Grigoritch. I won’t make a mess of it.”

“I did not mean—”

“I’ll manage, I really will.”

“Quatermass, I did not intend to imply—”

“Besides, I’ll have help.”

He nodded at Kapp on the antenna.

And now he saw that Kapp was clinging to a support rail up there, very still, as if he had seen something. He started waving. He shouted.

Far down the line there was a plume of white steam.

People were stirring to their feet. Misru appeared from the control room. The sappers were finding their gear.

Very slowly, as if driven with extra care, the steam engine approached. It was pushing a flat truck. On the truck was a bulky shape covered with tarpaulin.

“They’ve got it,” said Quatermass.

People started moving down the platform, the sappers forming into some kind of military semblance. The train was close now, the engine exhausting steam as it slowed. Couplings clanking, it slid the truck along the rails to stop neatly, precisely, just short of the first antenna bogey.

That shrouded shape was it, the focal bomb.

There were coaches behind the engine. Doors were being flung open. An officer came hurrying along the platform. Quatermass recognized him. The lieutenant-general, accompanying his charge in person, his worn uniform smartened up as if for a parade.

“Well, there you are,” he said. “I only hope to God you know what you’re—”

“Thank you,” said Quatermass.

The man took in the bulky shape nearby. “Forgive me,” he said, “is this by any chance—?”

“Academician P. G. Gurov,” said Quatermass. “He’s been explaining to me exactly how it works.”

Gurov made a stiff bow.

“Well, I trust there’s no question of his taking charge?”

Even now. Incredible.

“None,” said Quatermass firmly, before Gurov could be tempted to offer.

When it was stripped of its tarpaulin, the object looked even less like a bomb. It was a device of eccentrically joined cylinders. As Gurov immediately explained, it was designed to fit inside the nosecone of a Poseidon missile. Now it lay in a roughly welded cradle. A cable ran from it to the firing mechanism on the platform.

“The simplest arrangement we could give you,” said the lieutenant-general.

It was as crude as a box. On top of it was a small cage, which he unlocked with a key. There was a broad red button. He mimed bringing his gloved hand down on it. “Just thump it,” he said. “It’ll do the trick.” He closed the cage and locked it and handed the key to Quatermass. “Quite foolproof,” he said.

There was a kind of embarrassment in the air. The chuffing engine had been carefully uncoupled from the flat truck with the bomb on it. Down the platform, the weary sappers were boarding the coaches.

The table on the platform had been arranged neatly. A field telephone was set ready. An oil lamp was lit. Two canvas chairs were placed nearby, with rugs to keep out any night chill.

“I’ll confirm the moment our patrols are clear,” promised the lieutenant-general. “About half an hour.”

“What about civilians?” Kapp asked.

“Done our best. And by the nature of the weapon there shouldn’t be too much—that is, the fireball isn’t—I mean—” He became tongue-tied. “Sorry, gentlemen, I don’t know how to—”

Quatermass said: “We’ll probably see you in the morning.”

“Yes. Yes, I dare say.” He stood to attention just the same, and gave them his best parade-ground salute. Then he went off briskly down the platform.

“Bye, love,” said Edna.

She was standing fastening her belt. For a moment it seemed as if she was going to kiss Quatermass goodbye, but she was pre-empted. Gurov suddenly appeared from the control room and plunged forward to seize him in a bear-hug. Then without a word he rushed off towards the train.

“I made some sandwiches.” Edna nodded at the table. “They’re there.”

She followed the others.

Doors slammed along the coaches. A rush of steam and the train pulled slowly away.

The line was so perfectly straight there was little sense of it moving, only shrinking. A trail of smoke went up from the funnel and was left behind to hang and spread and fade. There was a flash of dull sunlight from the cab window as the engine started into the bend. In another moment it was out of sight.

A last, distant toot on the whistle.

They turned. The bomb lay there on its truck, a presence now. A third person. Later, one of them must always be close to it, within a yard of that button. In hitting range.

“By the way,” Quatermass said. He brought a creased paper out of his pocket. “Our military friend left this. The latest statistics.”

Kapp took it. A glance at the sickening list was enough.

Quatermass had found something else in his pocket. The photographs. He brought one out and propped it against the Thermos flask that Edna had left with the sandwiches.

When Kapp saw it he wondered.

That face . . . where had he seen it before, and had he really seen it at all? Considering everything, he had probably imagined it. He was almost sure he had. So there was no point in mentioning it. Not now.

Soon the foul sunset was fading.

Quatermass was turning up the oil lamp when the phone rang, startling him. The reminder of other people.

The crisp, annoying voice was reporting from the perimeter bunker.

“All clear? Right, general, thank you.” He put the phone down and turned to Kapp. He took a deep breath and said: “Time to start.”

They went together to the control panel. It was a makeshift thing, with many labels stuck on it and scribbled instructions in pencil, but every function had been tested a dozen times. And it would only be used once.

Power first. They heard the whole station yard, with its generators, roar into life. Needles stirred on the panel.

“This build-up through a full hour.” Kapp was impatient. “D’you think we really need so long?”

“A million kids mustn’t get here too quickly.”

“Does it matter?”

“It might,” Quatermass said. “We’re giving a performance.”

It was Kapp who set up the sequence. It gave him particular pleasure to do so. As he pressed switches and servos hummed, the whole station began to burst alive. The first arc-lamps surged and bathed the platforms in reflected light. Their beams pointed up at the sky, through the silver lattices of the antennas. They too faced the sky.

“Our Planet People are starting to arrive,” said Quatermass. “Let’s hear them. Monitor?”

He found the control. From the loudspeakers burst the huge yammering chant: “Leh-leheh-leheh!”

Kapp reached to cut it off. “Save it,” he said. His hands were trembling.

“Just one thing to do now,” said Quatermass.

He fished the key from his pocket. He went to the firing box and unlocked the cage. He laid it open, exposing the red button.

The hour went slowly by.

For the sake of something to do they tried Edna’s sandwiches. They were cut thick and it was hard to tell what she had put in them. They left them.

Every few minutes the signals strengthened. More arc-lamps switched on. Laser beams shot up, steady as rods. And above all the great dishes were pouring out their lie, the analogue of Mr. Chisholm’s long-dead girl, the breath and warmth of a million who did not exist.

For what it was worth, the loudspeakers added their quota, taking the chant far beyond the range of human hearing, so the two on the platform were spared it.

They were on full power.

The million had arrived, were in noisy, excited possession. Eager and expectant.

It was enough, it had to be enough. The biggest, most concentrated target on the Earth’s surface.

The phone on the table rang.

A check call from the perimeter bunker. Anxious voices on the line, then Gurov taking over, spluttering and emotional. Were all systems at maximum output? Everything functioning? All correct? His English started to break down—he wanted it to work as planned, he wanted it not to happen—he did not know what he meant. The thick accent became incoherent.

Then the crisp voice.

“No, general,” said Quatermass. “The build-up’s complete but that’s all. As you’ve guessed. Oh yes . . . would you tell Edna we enjoyed her sandwiches?”

He put the phone down.

It was growing cool and he was glad of the rug to pull round his shoulders.

Kapp was standing on the edge of the platform beside the firing box. “It’s like waiting for the last train,” he said. “There weren’t so many out this way, a small branch line. I once found a time-table in a drawer, written out in ink to copy on the notice-board, I suppose. The last one was the 8.14 to Castle Compton.” He shivered.

The moon began to show through the bare trees.

The sour khaki moon.

Quatermass was worried.

He could feel a nightmare forming round him, that he had got every single premise wrong. That it was not going to work.

Joe Kapp was huddled beside the firing box. He had not moved for an hour.

“What was worst,” he said, “there was nothing to show they’d ever existed.”

Quatermass hardly listened. His mind ran feverishly on concepts.

“We were always going to go to the seaside,” said Kapp. “Some day when things get better, we said.”

He glanced round at the man in the chair.

“I can make them exist. D’you know that? I mean, not by magic or crazing yourself or anything. Just by thinking.” He looked down at the rails. “I can carry Debbie down to the water’s edge and . . . she dips her toes in. And she’s pleased because she’s been afraid of it and now she isn’t. And she sees little bits of weed moving there. And the colours. And the shine. And then Clare, with Sarah by the hand, paddling and splashing. I can touch them.”

He looked up at the sky.

“I know what evil is!” Kapp cried out. “That’s evil!”

It was as if he was really seeing it at that moment. It pulled Quatermass round in his chair.

“Satan,” muttered Kapp. “The enemy.”

Quatermass got up. He tried to focus on that outburst for a moment. Perhaps evil was always something else’s good, perhaps that was a cosmic law . . .

Then the anxiety surged back.

He turned the monitor control, to sample the sound and be assured that it too was functioning, like the lights and the lasers and the rest.

“Leh-leheh-leheh-leh-leh!” chanted the loudspeakers, bringing it in at human level.