Snow White and the Giants (21 page)

In the autumn, Anne died. She fell off a ladder and broke her back.
Chapter Eleven
Dina was still asleep. She changed her position easily, regularly,
without fuss and without making a noise.
Around us now, beyond the stasis, was a red glow. It would be many hours
yet before it would be possible for Dina and I, unless wearing one of
the giants' suits, to leave the spot. But the fire had consumed nearly
all there was to consume.
The Great Fire of London had burned for days. Wartime fires started by
incendiaries had often been blazing still when the bombers returned the
following night. Shuteley, however, was annihilated in a relatively small,
exceedingly fierce, shockingly rapid fire. What remained would glow for
a long time, but little or nothing remained to blaze.
And there was one suit in the stasis. As I understood it, just before
dawn the stasis would disappear and Miranda would be plucked back to
her own time. But anyone not of her party would simply be left suddenly
without the protection of the stasis, to die.
Certainly to die. There would be enough heat left to char the ground, to
burn Dina and me apparently as all the other victims had been burned --
more slowly but no less surely, so that when people from outside first
reached the village green (that afternoon? Next day?) there would be no
indication that the stasis had ever existed, or of the identity of the
two blackened skeletons in it.
But I was still oddly unconcerned about this. There was one suit, and
there was still plenty of time. Anyway, I did not believe I was going
to die. Dina could have the suit. Dina, whom I expected to recover
consciousness soon, could make her escape . . . and I wouldn't die.
"What are you telling me?" I asked Miranda.
She shrugged. "I've been careful not to tell you anything. You're
telling me."
"But I'm remembering what you tell me to remember. That Mr. Sylvester
was a nuisance to Jota, and he died. That Jota quarreled with me, and I
nearly died. That the two boys who led the mob against Jota died. That
Squire Badgeley beat Jota, and he died. That Anne Badgeley -- "
"You're missing out some very important things. About all those girls,
schoolgirls mostly, but older girls too. Particularly Anne. She could
have had anyone in Shuteley, you said. Why did she pick a kid barely
into his teens?"
"You're saying Jota did all this. Any man he wants out of the way
dies? Any girl he wants says yes?"
She nodded. "He has the Gift. And you're wrong to say any
man
. What
about Anne? When he'd finished with her, he made her die."
"Why would he want rid of her?"
"The oldest reason, probably. She was pregnant. With others he was more
careful. With her he was too impatient, too reckless. And it seemed to
Jota that it would be better for him if Anne died."
"You're saying he condemned all these people to death?"
"No," she said thoughtfully. "Not that. I imagine that at first, he simply
thought, perhaps not even consciously: 'Everything would be fine but for
Mr. Sylvester.' And soon Mr. Sylvester wasn't there. But after this had
happened a few times, Jota must have begun to realize . . . There's another
thing he obviously has found out by this time -- with the ability to attack
goes defense. Nobody can kill Jota. No
person
can kill Jota. Of course
he could die by accident, like anyone else -- his power is over people.
Originally he died in this fire -- "
"Wait," I said. "That doesn't jell. I just killed him. Yesterday Greg
killed him. You say that before you intervened, the fire killed him. Seems
that for an indestructible character he gets destroyed a hell of a lot."
Miranda was following her own train of thought, not mine. "Later, in
adolescence, he found out something else. After any girl refused him -- "
"No girl ever refused him," I said.
"Oh, yes. Time after time. You weren't there. Neither was I, but I
can tell you what happened. The
first
meeting was always as you'd
expect. But later -- a girl who sneered at Jota would come crawling to
him, She'd beg him, as I -- "
She flushed. "I think you heard what Greg and I were saying at the bridge.
You're wrong if you've any idea that people with the Gift are smooth,
practiced lovers. They don't have to be. It's crude, it's bestial. They
say: 'I want. you,' and that's it. Not the first time. The Gift needs
time to work. When Jota or Greg wants a man dead, he doesn't drop on
the spot. It takes time to happen."
The paradoxes and inconsistencies that had bothered me were gradually
melting away.
I could see how Greg could have killed Jota. If two people had this Gift,
presumably it was canceled out. Greg had no special power over Jota,
but then Jota had no special defense against Greg. So the matter was
settled simply with pistols. There was also the cryptic exchange between
them which I now understood better:
GREG: You're a bit like me.
JOTA: In more ways than one.
GREG: Remember . . . I killed you.
JOTA: Remember . . . I let you.
Yes . . . I understood and accepted that. I also understood and accepted
this new explanation of Jota's power over women. He approached them,
they reacted exactly as they wished, free to do as they wished (I now
remembered I had never been privileged to see any of the preliminaries,
only the consequences). Later, when
something
had worked on them,
they became possessed, clay in Jota's hands.
More of the inconsistencies dissolved when I looked at them. Jota had
been brutish toward both Sheila and Dina. That was how it started. Later,
if he persisted, things would be very different. But instinctively wise
in the case of Sheila, I had sent Jota away, unconsciously knowing what
Sheila hated me for thinking, that what she thought or wanted or said
didn't count, only what Jota wanted . . . And as for Dina, there had
not been an Act Two and there never would be.
Then, having prepared the way, Miranda told me about the Gift in her
own world.
I don't remember her words. She spoke for a long time. A lot of what she
said I didn't believe at first, but gradually disbelief was borne down.
Greg and Jota and three percent of the population in 2097 had a Gift which
was quite simply ability to make people die or surrender sexually. It was
nothing else.
It was fundamentally a masculine phenomenon. So few women possessed it
that they were freaks, usually choosing to conceal, abandon, deny their
possession of the Gift.
Those with the Gift, then, were men, and if they didn't rule the world,
they prevented anyone else from ruling it effectively.
Most of them, fortunately, were law-abiding . . . but what could be done
about the rogues like Greg? Virtually nothing. That was why Greg was
present on an expedition aimed at the limitation or even destruction of
his kind, able to sabotage it at will, because nobody could stop him.
Miranda conldn't stop him. If Greg cared to decide at any moment that
she should die, and simply decided it instead of crudely, impulsively
and rashly trying to break her body with one blow, then she would die
in less than two weeks. And the cause of death could not legally be
connected with Greg.
I protested at this. Had no murder charge ever been brought against one
of these people? When the Gift was known to exist, when threats had been
made, when a death duly took place exactly as forecast, surely . . . ?
"Think, Val," said Miranda wearily. "Take the clearest possible case
. . . imagine the clearest possible case, and then think about it. The
detectives who built up the case would have to be immune. The cops who
arrested the accused would have to be immune. The jailers, judge, jury,
and lawyers would have to be immune. And in common justice they'd have
to prove that the accused had the Gift, and had used it deliberately to
end another person's life."
She shook her head. "It can't be done. Especially since the actual
cause of death is always natural -- illness, accident or suicide, with
no physical intervention by the real killer."
So Greg was with the Shuteley party. Some of those who had tried to
stop him had died. Threats were enough to silence the others. Miranda's
attitude, a perfectly reasonable one after all, was that she could at
least keep an eye on him and try to defeat him.
In addition to ordinary people and those who had the Gift, there were
some who were simply immune. They did not possess the Gift; but those
who did could accomplish nothing against them. Unfortunately there were
fewer of these than those who had the Gift.
The Gift, and immunity, were hereditary. This did not mean that the Gift
was often passed on. It merely meant that it could be passed on.
Miranda's world, the world of the giants (women of five feet four were
as rare in her world, she told me, as women of four feet eleven in ours)
was a good world on the surface, and a seething cesspool of fear and
chaos and self-destruction underneath.
And all because of the Gift.
The sexual side of it, she pointed out, was virtually unimportant. That
was merely a by-product, a side issue. It existed, probably, because sex
as well as survival was basic. Anyone who could control life and death
could also control the sex impulse.
That was nothing. A small minority of Casanovas could be a nuisance,
but they couldn't push a whole world over a precipice.
The threat of death was another matter altogether. There was no need for
any Greg to be educated, clever, handsome, careful, obliging, efficient
or self-respecting. Anyone who said or did anything a Greg didn't like
could be rubbed out and forgotten. It was senseless to be brave when
faced with a Greg. After he had eradicated you, he could quite easily,
on the merest whim, eradicate your wife and family as well.
As far as anyone knew, the Gift was a chance mutation. Immunity was
probably allied to it, though no one could be sure. Immunity might have
existed always, unrecognized, purposeless, until the Gift emerged.
Twisting of time was only one of the desperate measures tried in an
attempt to restore sanity to the world of 2097. Miranda hinted at others,
refused to tell me about any, and said that anyway, they had all failed
miserably, sometimes tragically.
I started to suggest one angle that occurred to me, the arrangement of
accidents, since Gregs could be killed in accidents like anybody else, and
she cut me off rather impatiently. Such attempts were the most disastrous
of all. They made all people who possessed the Gift, including those
who steadfastly refused to use it, band together for their own survival.
So we came to the purpose of the Shuteley operation.
Clearly if everybody possessed the Gift, or if everybody was immune,
or if everybody was one or the other, the problem would cease to exist.
According to the river-of-time theory, the people of 2097 would continue
to exist no matter what was done to the past, short of a major diversion
which would force the flow into a completely different course. But their
capacities might be changed. Miranda might, after certain changes had
been made, find herself immune. Or she might have the Gift. Or nobody
might have the Gift.
It was a desperate scheme, born of desperation. It was carried out in
a manner little short of insanity, in a completely useless attempt to
get the whole thing done under cover.
It was entrusted to an ordinary history class in an ordinary school
under an ordinary teacher.
A history class would go back and see the Great Fire of Shuteley, 1966
A.D. They would do nothing to alter the flow of events except remove
Garry Carswell . . .
That was the cover: a minor operation like many others (none of them
directed against possessors of the Gift), of no particular interest to
anyone not directly concerned. Miranda knew all about it, but none of
the students did. As far as they were concerned, the rescue of Garry
Carswell, and a few others, was all that was involved, apart from the
opportunity to see the Great Fire.
It might possibly have worked.
But three percent possession of the Gift meant that one in thirty-three
adults, teenagers or children had it. So no school was free of it.
Greg was in another class, a lower class. He applied to join the expedition
to 1966. The headmaster, the far more important people behind the headmaster
and the less important people below, all knew that the inclusion of Greg
would ruin everything.
But Greg had made up his mind, and nothing else mattered. It wasn't even
possible to cancel the scheme. Greg, if he felt like it, could easily
block the cancelation.
Greg went with the party.
"Now Jota," I said. "Tell me why you want Jota."
She hesitated. "It's only a theory that if we saved Jota the situation
might improve. Perhaps it would be worse . . . You've been baffled in the
last twenty-four hours by what we know and what we don't know, Val. We
knew that Jota would arrive at your office at 3:10 this afternoon,
but I didn't know Dina existed. We had pictures of you, so I knew you
when I saw you in the bar, but we had no picture of Jota, and that's
why I came to your office -- to see him, to be able to recognize him,
so that there would be no possibility of mistaken identity later. We
didn't know, of course, that you and he would go to the camp, because
that was a new train of events altogether."
"Why didn't you do some preliminary scouting?"
"For several reasons, but the main one was to try to rush this through
without attracting the attention of people like Greg. It wasn't supposed
to be a big, important operation, just -- "
"Just a sight-seeing tour," I said.
"Well, yes. Anyway, one thing we do know for certain is that around
you here in Shuteley in 1966 there were important elements in the
Gift-immunity hereditary lines. Some were strong, some weak . . . it's
possible that the whole situation developed from a single latent mutant
who lived here thirty or fifty or eighty years ago. But we haven't been
able to trace any such person."
"You hoped saving Jota would give more people in your time the Gift.
Or better still, immunity without the effect."
"That's it exactly. Leaving Jota to die, as he did originally, obviously
didn't stop the spread of the mutation. Historiaus believe that saving
his strain may do what you just said. One thing we are sure of is that
the immunity strain is here too, if we can somehow develop it. But all
we can do, all we know about to try, is to save Jota. He was the first,
by far the first, to possess the Gift complete. Decades were to pass
before anyone appeared with the power so fully developed -- "