Quatermass (9 page)

Sarah was subtler. She ran to find the old Kate Greenaway book that had been her mummy’s when she was little. And snuggled up to Alison.

They found the rhyme. It was accompanied by a pallid illustration of two Victorian children in trouble with a breeze in front of some staid standing-stones.

“That’s what it looks like,” said Sarah.

“I expect so,” Alison said. She read out: “ ‘Huffity, puffity, Ringstone Round—’ ”

Debbie grizzled: “I don’t like this book.”

Quatermass sat in the back seat of the waggon and listened.

“It’s even older than Stonehenge,” Clare was saying. “Three or four hundred years older, by radiocarbon dating. Cruder, of course, and not so big. It might have been the prototype.”

“For Stonehenge?” Quatermass kept trying to picture it but all that came to mind was the sticky face with ice-cream round its lips.

“That was one theory. It’d have been them again, the Beaker Folk.”

“Five thousand years.”

A meaningless number, too far outside human span. Plus or minus so many hundreds, bristle-cone corrected. Symbolism, the attempt to extend the brain beyond its own life. He suddenly remembered clearly what his wife had worn that hot day. A New Look dress, that’s what it was called. Long, almost to the ankles, and she was ridiculously pleased with it, so full and lavish after the war years. A flash of total recall. It was June 1948. Plus or minus a week, bristle-cone corrected.

And the sticky little person who had clutched his hand . . . it would be another twenty-five years before a tiny egg would descend her Fallopian tube and turn into Hettie . . .

“Oh, look!” cried Clare.

Planet People on the road just ahead, marching fast, their ponchos swinging. Quatermass looked out as the waggon passed them. He saw no faces he recognized. They were not the weary creatures who had stumbled through Kapp’s station. Those could not have come so far in the time. And they looked fresher. Even moving uphill they kept to a jerky, swift jog.

Then he saw what had made Clare cry out.

There were half a dozen other troops of Planet People in the distance, some of only a few running figures, others in columns so long that whole sections were lost in dips or clumps of trees. But whether running or faltering, they all moved in the same direction.

“Talk about lemmings!” Kapp swung the wheel to avoid a wandering group.

“It’s like the old pop festivals,” Clare said. “Remember all the thousands jamming the roads?”

“I remember pictures on television.”

“You never went to one, did you?”

“Not my scene, as they used to say.”

“I did, twice,” she said. “I don’t really know why.”

Round the next bend Kapp braked suddenly. Planet People were streaming obliquely across in front of him, reckless as deer. They knew the way better than the road did. They tore at the hedge to drag themselves over. Hundreds of them, milling and shoving.

Soon the waggon was down to short bursts of speed between the trotting columns. It was no better behind. Kapp’s temper rose. He was sure there was a track leading off to the right, and he would take it, get clear away out of all this. It had been a mistake. Just to satisfy their curiosity about lunatics behaving like lunatics.

There was no sign of the track. Soon Kapp was no longer sure there was one. He was down to walking pace.

Then the hedges fell away and the road was running across open ground. Flat moorland with the long strings of scudding figures weaving across it, closing.

“Hold on now!”

He bounced the waggon off the road. Holding the horn button down, he accelerated across the turf, cutting through the panting columns and scattering them. They were on rising ground now. From the low hill ahead, he judged, they would be able to take in the whole idiotic scene and then get out.

“There it is!” Clare cried.

Ringstone Round. The great cluster of standing stones was only a few hundred yards away. Quatermass had forgotten the impact they made. He felt it again now. It was like encountering huge grey beasts that had momentarily frozen in their tracks.

But it was different this time. The entire area round them was crammed with swaying figures.

“They’ve swarmed,” said Kapp.

That was it. No longer lemmings running blind. The very form of their excitement had changed. A cluster of bees Quatermass had once seen—where could it have been, on a lamp post or a telephone pole?—like a single pulsating organism, a crawling, concentrated multitude. A man had come to remove the swarm. He had heavy gloves and a net over his face that made him look like a veiled woman. Watching, little Bernard Quatermass had marvelled at the bees’ fierce energy and purpose.

“We’ve seen it,” Kap said. “Let’s go.”

“Not yet!” Quatermass was surprised at his own certainty.

“What d’you want to do—show them your photographs?”

Cheap. Kapp knew it. He was worried. “I’m going to try and break back. If I can. I saw another track—”

“Wait!”

Something was going on among the tall stones. Waves of ponchoed figures were sweeping forward and back, leaping so frenziedly that it was impossible to see. Now and again the swirling eddies seemed to break.

Quatermass saw a clear space opening. He thumped Kapp on the shoulder.

“Quick! Go through!”

There was no time to argue. Kapp drove.

The crowd parted. Excited painted faces leapt up to peer in at them. Hands pattered on the metal sides. The huge panting exhalation closed all round.

“Hah! . . . hah! . . . hah!”

Kapp jabbed at the pedals. “Under the bloody wheels! They don’t see!” It would have been impossible to keep direction but for the towering stones. They were close now. They passed a wooden ticket office, boarded up and swaying under the weight of Planet People on its roof.
(“No charge for the little girl, sir.” “Daddy, can I have the tickets?”)

All in a moment they were through.

Kapp swerved the waggon past a clifflike trilith with its lintel slab looming above them. Skidded into clear space and managed to pull up just short of another stone monster.

“Pay cops!”

A squad of them in full riot gear, with carbines and heavy machine guns, were crowded there in the middle, in the shadow of the great hanging sarsen. There was a black truck, too, half hidden.

One of them came running. He had the rank flashes of a captain painted on his helmet. He flung the door of the waggon open.

“Where is it?” he yelled. “The gas?”

“What gas?”

“Haven’t you got it,
domkop
?” Again the clipped twang. “Who the bloody hell are you? Come on out of it—quick!”

He was waving his gun at them. As they tumbled out Kapp found himself saying: “Captain, I—let me explain—we just wanted to see—”

“We thought we could help,” said Quatermass.

“Shut up, man!”

He turned and yelled back to his squad: “They’re nothing! No gas!” Behind his visor his face was streaming with sweat. He waved his gun at the Planet People who had pushed through after the waggon. “Get back there! I warned you,
verdomde opstokers
!” And to his men: “Knock ’em back—they’re busting through! Quick!”

A clumsy rush and the cops were hitting out with their gun butts. There were yells of pain.

“Oh, stop!” It was Clare. “They’re doing no harm!” She grabbed at the captain’s arm. A side-swipe from his studded gauntlet sent her spinning into Kapp.

“Take care,
mevrou
!”

“Don’t hurt them—”

The cop’s eyes bulged at her behind the plastic. “Listen, I got a riot here! I got a contract to stop riots! Finish and
klaar
!”

“He’s making it happen—Joe!”

She was frightened now, clinging to Kapp. Frightened too, as she had not expected, by the Planet People. These must have been the early arrivals. Their eyes were completely glazed from hours of breathy chanting. The P-marks showed bright against ghastly pallor.

Many of them were shaking. Heavy tremors, visible yards away, shook all their flesh.

There was a huge, rolling pressure from behind. Some of those in the front were being pushed to their knees. Over them all hung an uneasy, bubbling quiet.

“Kickalong!”

The word, if it was a real word, ran suddenly among them. Excitement came back.

“Kickalong . . . Kickalong!”

It was a name.

Attention was shifting, rippling. A huge man came pushing his way through.

“Look out, he’s back!” shouted the captain.

The man was swinging a plumb-bob, but it was like no other Quatermass had seen. It was contoured, worked in brass, circling at the end of a leather thong. He wore leather garments, and his patchworked poncho was thrown back like a cloak. He was close enough to see that the letter P on his face had been elaborately tattooed there, not merely painted. His hair was wild.

“Lah! Hahah! Lah! Hahah!”

He roared out the chant from the bottom of his throat. All those round him picked up the rhythm, driving hoarse, cracked voices in the same barks.

The captain lifted his visor and yelled to his men: “Get set up now!” His words were drowned. He grabbed a loudhailer and bellowed through it: “Get set with the big stuff! Hold your positions! Ready to fire!”

A scramble round the great hanging stone. Gun barrels glinted. The captain swung round to Kapp. “You too, man, get yours under cover! You want ’em killed, hey?”

“Killed—?”

“Can’t you see,
domkop
? They going to rush us!”

No doubt about it, he was going to provoke it. He was spoiling for a slaughter, and with those guns, it would be.

“Can I talk to them?” asked Quatermass.

The captain turned quickly, and he caught the flash of contempt. “You? Talk to
them
?”

“With that thing.” He pointed at the loudhailer.

The cop was annoyed. But they were witnesses. With them here he had to make some show of conciliation.

“You some kind of guru? They’d listen to you? Okay, I give you one minute.”

Quatermass took the loudhailer.

He looked at the faces round him. It was the centre of the insect swarm. Hardly one that seemed rational or responsive. The chant seemed to thump in the air, led by the big man Kickalong.

He raised the loudhailer. The mouthpiece was wet, he saw, blobbed with the pay cop captain’s spittle. He shouted into it.

“I’m on your side!”

The words seemed to clatter among the stones. The captain was at his side, objecting, but he went on.

“I agree with you!” The loudhailer snatched the words from his lips and sent them echoing away. “I say what you do about the state of the world! It’s poisoned and it’s sick! You want out of it!” He paused and listened. The chanting had quietened. “You want to go to another planet.”

Almost dead silence.

They were waiting. He could feel the force of their expectation, the faces all round him, blank as the sucker-pads of some great encircling creature, pulling at him. It was an orator’s moment. From the distance, as if his own words were bouncing back, came faint ecstatic cries: “We’re going! Now! The Planet!”

“No!”

He yelled the word into the microphone, and it echoed from the standing stones.

“It can’t happen! Not now, not any time! There is no such planet!”

A shuddering wail burst out.

For an instant he thought he had them, that he had broken the spell and got through to them and that it was shock. Then he heard the shrillness in it and he saw the heads shaking.

He tried again. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen! You’re going to be disappointed—and then you’ll get angry and you’ll get hurt!” He pointed at the crouching pay cops. “By them!”

But the moment had gone, he knew it. He shouted: “There is no planet! Go away from here! Go!”

He had lost them. The chanting rose at him like a solid wave. He could feel the aggression in it, feel it hitting, hurting.

The loudhailer was suddenly torn from his hand.

It was the big man Kickalong. He ran, waving the thing, and leapt up like a giant spider. And there he was on the flat top of the hanging sarsen.

He raised the horn to his mouth.

“We go!” howled Kickalong. “We go to the Planet!”

Frantic screaming from the crowd. It was what they wanted, all they wanted. A shock wave of energy passed through them like the movements in a tide, spreading back and driving forwards at the same time. Those in front were hit by the surge. Some fell on their knees.

The pay cops ducked behind their riot shields. The captain was waving his arms, spluttering some order. Guns swung up.

Quatermass felt acutely sick. It was going to happen just as he said, but sooner, any second now. He could see Joe Kapp pushing Clare aboard the waggon.

“Soon!” screeched the black-clad figure from the stone. “We’re going to leave them in the muck they made! They bust it all so they’ve got it!” They—they—they—the ancient blame-word, hammering. “We don’t want it, they can have it! We’re getting out! Soon!”

It was a promise.

“Soon!” they screamed. “Soon! Soon! Soon!”

A plastic bullet hit Kickalong in the face.

Quatermass saw the captain do it, aim a short thick barrel and fire. The heavy slug struck the loudhailer and sent it spinning. The man was flung down off the sarsen.

Pay cops grabbed him instantly. His mouth was a bloody mess. A couple of Planet People who ran forward to help him were clubbed down and dragged with him over to the black truck.

“Got him!” The captain was almost jubilant. He slammed the truck doors and yelled at the driver. “Get him out of it!
Maak gou! Maak gou!”

He turned to Kapp. “You too, man! While you got the chance!”

Quatermass found himself bundled into the waggon beside Clare. He could feel her shivering. Then Kapp slammed the door, fired the engine, swung the wheel, all in the same movement. The pay cop truck was already on its way and they would have to keep close behind.

Clare moaned: “I didn’t know—I didn’t—”

Yammering, chanting faces on both sides of them, pressing close. The chant seemed sharper now, more fast and feverish, like the sound of some gigantic pack of dogs that had learnt to bark in rhythm. Fists thumped the metal body.