The Seeds of Time (11 page)

The small man wilted. ‘Er – yes. I guess so.'

The big man looked round the living-room, counting heads.

‘Okay. Let's start,' he said.

A silence fell on the rest. They gazed at him with uneasy fascination. They fidgeted. One or two nibbled at their fingernails. The big man leaned forward. He put a space-helmet, inverted, on the table. In his customary leisurely fashion he said:

‘We shall draw for it. Each of us will take a paper and hold it up unopened until I give the word.
Un
opened. Got that?'

They nodded. Every eye was fixed intently upon his face.

‘Good. Now one of those pieces of paper in the helmet is marked with a cross. Ray, I want you to count the pieces there and make sure that there are nine –'

‘Eight!' said Alice Morgan's voice sharply.

All the heads turned towards her as if pulled by strings. The faces looked startled, as though the owners might have heard a turtle-dove roar. Alice sat embarrassed under the combined gaze, but she held herself steady and her mouth was set in a straight line. The man in charge of the proceedings studied her.

‘Well, well,' he drawled. ‘So you don't want to take a hand in our little game!'

‘No,' said Alice.

‘You've shared equally with us so far – but now we have reached this regrettable stage you don't want to?'

‘No,' agreed Alice again.

He raised his eyebrows.

‘You are appealing to our chivalry, perhaps?'

‘No,' said Alice once more. ‘I'm denying the equity of what you call your game. The one who draws the cross dies – isn't that the plan?'

‘
Pro bono publico
,' said the big man. ‘Deplorable, of course, but unfortunately necessary.'

‘But if
I
draw it, two must die. Do you call that equitable?' Alice asked.

The group looked taken aback. Alice waited.

The big man fumbled it. For once he was at a loss.

‘Well,' said Alice, ‘isn't that so?'

One of the others broke the silence to observe: ‘The question of the exact stage when the personality, the soul of the individual, takes form is still highly debatable. Some have held that until there is separate existence –'

The drawling voice of the big man cut him short. ‘I think we can leave that point to the theologians, Sam. This is more in the Wisdom of Solomon class. The point would seem to be that Mrs Morgan claims exemption on account of her condition.'

‘My baby has a right to live,' Alice said doggedly.

‘We all have a right to live. We all want to live,' someone put in.

‘Why should you – ?' another began; but the drawling voice dominated again:

‘Very well, gentlemen. Let us be formal. Let us be democratic. We will vote on it. The question is put: do you consider Mrs Morgan's claim to be valid – or should she take her chance with the rest of us? Those in –'

‘Just a minute,' said Alice, in a firmer voice than any of them had heard her use. ‘Before you start voting on that you'd better listen to me a bit.' She looked round, making sure she had the attention of all of them. She had; and their astonishment as well.

‘Now the first thing is that I am a lot more important than any of you,' she told them simply. ‘No, you needn't smile. I am – and I'll tell you why.

‘Before the radio broke down –'

‘Before the Captain wrecked it, you mean,' someone corrected her.

‘Well, before it became useless,' she compromised. ‘Captain Winters was in regular touch with home. He gave them news of us. The news that the Press wanted most was about me. Women, particularly women in unusual situations, are always news. He told me I was in the headlines:
GIRL-WIFE IN DOOM ROCKET, WOMAN'S SPACE WRECK ORDEAL
, that sort of thing. And if you haven't forgotten how newspapers look, you can imagine the leads, too: “Trapped in their living space tomb, a girl and fifteen men now wheel helplessly around the planet Mars …”

‘All of you are just men – hulks, like the ship, I am a woman, therefore my position is romantic, so I am young, glamorous, beautiful …' Her thin face showed for a moment the trace of a wry smile. ‘I am a heroine …'

She paused, letting the idea sink in. Then she went on:

‘I was a heroine even before Captain Winters told them that I was pregnant. But after that I became a phenomenon. There were demands for interviews, I wrote one, and Captain Winters transmitted it for me. There have been interviews with my parents and my friends, anyone who knew me. And now an enormous number of people know a great deal about me. They are intensely interested in me. They are even more interested in my baby – which is likely to be the first baby ever born in a spaceship …

‘Now do you begin to see? You have a fine tale ready. Bowman, my husband, Captain Winters, and the rest were heroically struggling to repair the port laterals. There was an explosion. It blew them all away out into space.

‘You may get away with that. But if there is no trace of me and my baby – or of our bodies –
then
what are you going to say? How will you explain that?'

She looked round the faces again.

‘Well, what
are
you going to say? That I, too, was outside repairing the port laterals? That I committed suicide by shooting myself out into space with a rocket?

‘Just think it over. The whole world's press is wanting to know about me – with all the details. It'll have to be a mighty good story to stand up to that. And if it doesn't stand up – well, the rescue won't have done you much good.

‘You'll not have a chance in hell. You'll hang, or you'll fry, every one of you – unless it happens they lynch you first …'

There was silence in the room as she finished speaking. Most of the faces showed the astonishment of men ferociously attacked by a Pekinese, and at a loss for suitable comment.

The big man sat sunk in reflection for a minute or more. Then
he looked up, rubbing the stubble on his sharp-boned chin thoughtfully. He glanced round the others and then let his eyes rest on Alice. For a moment there was a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

‘Madam,' he drawled, ‘you are probably a great loss to the legal profession.' He turned away. ‘We shall have to reconsider this matter before our next meeting. But, for the present, Ray,
eight
pieces of paper as the lady said …'

‘It's her!' said the Second, over the Skipper's shoulder.

The Skipper moved irritably. ‘Of course it's her. What else'd you expect to find whirling through space like a sozzled owl?' He studied the screen for a moment. ‘Not a sign. Every port covered.'

‘Do you think there's a chance, Skipper?'

‘What, after all this time! No, Tommy, not a ghost of it. We're – just the morticians, I guess.'

‘How'll we get aboard her, Skip?'

The Skipper watched the gyrations of the
Falcon
with a calculating eye.

‘Well, there aren't any rules, but I reckon if we can get a cable on her we
might
be able to play her gently, like a big fish. It'll be tricky, though.'

Tricky, it was. Five times the magnet projected from the rescue ship failed to make contact. The sixth attempt was better judged. When the magnet drifted close to the
Falcon
the current was switched on for a moment. It changed course, and floated nearer to the ship. When it was almost in contact the switch went over again. It darted forward, and glued itself limpet-like to the hull.

Then followed the long game of playing the
Falcon
; of keeping tension on the cable between the two ships, but not too much tension, and of holding the rescue ship from being herself thrown into a roll by the pull. Three times the cable parted, but at last, after weary hours of adroit manoeuvre by the rescue ship the derelict's motion had been reduced to a slow twist. There was still no trace of life aboard. The rescue ship closed a little.

The Captain, the Third Officer, and the doctor fastened on their spacesuits and went outboard. They made their way forward to the winch. The Captain looped a short length of line over the cable, and fastened both ends of it to his belt. He laid hold of the cable with both hands, and with a heave sent himself skimming into space. The others followed him along the guiding cable.

They gathered beside the
Falcon
's entrance port. The Third Officer took a crank from his satchel. He inserted it in an opening, and began to turn until he was satisfied that the inner door of the airlock was closed. When it would turn no more, he withdrew it, and fitted it into the next opening; that should set the motors pumping air out of the lock – if there were air, and if there were still current to work the motors. The Captain held a microphone against the hull, and listened. He caught a humming.

‘Okay. They're running,' he said.

He waited until the humming stopped.

‘Right. Open her up,' he directed.

The Third Officer inserted his crank again, and wound it. The main port opened inwards, leaving a dark gap in the shining hull. The three looked at the opening sombrely for some seconds. With a grim quietness the Captain's voice said: ‘Well. Here we go!'

They moved carefully and slowly into the blackness, listening.

The Third Officer's voice murmured:

‘The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills …'

Presently the Captain's voice asked:

‘How's the air, Doc?'

The doctor looked at his gauges.

‘It's okay,' he said, in some surprise. ‘Pressure's about six ounces down, that's all.' He began to unfasten his helmet. The others copied him. The Captain made a face as he took his off.

‘The place stinks,' he said, uneasily. ‘Let's – get on with it.'

He led the way towards the lounge. They entered it apprehensively.

The scene was uncanny and bewildering. Though the gyrations of the
Falcon
had been reduced, every loose object in her continued to circle until it met a solid obstruction and bounced off it upon a new course. The result was a medley of wayward items churning slowly hither and thither.

‘Nobody here, anyway,' said the Captain, practically. ‘Doc, do you think – ?'

He broke off at the sight of the doctor's strange expression. He followed the line of the other's gaze. The doctor was looking at the drifting flotsam of the place. Among the flow of books, cans, playing-cards, boots, and miscellaneous rubbish, his attention was riveted upon a bone. It was large and clean and had been cracked open.

The Captain nudged him. ‘What's the matter, Doc?'

The doctor turned unseeing eyes upon him for a moment, and then looked back at the drifting bone.

‘That' – he said in an unsteady voice – ‘that, Skipper, is a human femur.'

In the long moment that followed while they stared at the grisly relic the silence which had lain over the
Falcon
was broken. The sound of a voice rose, thin, uncertain, but perfectly clear. The three looked incredulously at one another as they listened:

‘Rock-a-bye baby

On the tree top

When the wind blows

The cradle will rock …'

Alice sat on the side of her bunk, swaying a little, and holding her baby to her. It smiled, and reached up one miniature hand to pat her cheek as she sang:

‘… When the bough breaks

The cradle will fall.

Down will –'

Her song cut off suddenly at the click of the opening door. For a moment she stared as blankly at the three figures in the opening as they at her. Her face was a mask with harsh lines drawn from the points where the skin was stretched tightly over the bones. Then a trace of expression came over it. Her eyes brightened. Her lips curved in a travesty of a smile.

She loosed her arms from about the baby, and it hung there in mid-air, chuckling a little to itself. She slid her right hand under the pillow of the bunk, and drew it out again, holding a pistol.

The black shape of the pistol looked enormous in her transparently thin hand as she pointed it at the men who stood transfixed in the doorway.

‘Look, baby,' she said. ‘Look there! Food! Lovely food …'

When I called round at Sally's I showed her the paragraph in the
Westwich Evening News
.

‘What do you think of that?' I asked her.

She read it, standing, and with an impatient frown on her pretty face.

‘I don't believe it,' she said, finally.

Sally's principles of belief and disbelief are a thing I've never got quite lined up. How a girl can dismiss a pack of solid evidence as though it were kettle steam, and then go and fall for some advertisement that's phoney from the first word as though it were holy writ, I just don't … Oh, well, it keeps on happening, anyway.

This paragraph read:

MUSIC WITH A KICK

Patrons of the concert at the Adams Hall last night were astonished to see a pair of legs dangling knee-deep from the ceiling during one of the items. The whole audience saw them, and all reports agree that they were bare legs, with some kind of sandals on the feet. They remained visible for some three or four minutes, during which time they several times moved back and forth across the ceiling. Finally, after making a kicking movement, they disappeared upwards, and were seen no more. Examination of the roof shows no traces, and the owners of the Hall are at a loss to account for the phenomenon.

‘It's just one more thing,' I said.

‘What does it prove, anyway?' said Sally, apparently forgetful that she was not believing it.

‘I don't know that – yet,' I admitted.

‘Well, there you are, then,' she said.

Sometimes I get the feeling that Sally has no real respect for logic.

However, most people were thinking the way Sally was, more or less, because most people like things to stay nice and normal. But it had already begun to look to me as if there were things happening that ought to be added together and make something.

The first man to bump up against it – the first I can find on record, that is – was one Constable Walsh. It may be that others before him saw things, and just put them down as a new kind of pink elephant; but Constable Walsh's idea of a top-notch celebration was a mug of strong tea with a lot of sugar, so when he came across a head sitting up on the pavement on what there was of its neck, he stopped to look at it pretty hard. The thing that really upset him, according to the report he turned in when he had run half a mile back to the station and stopped gibbering, was that it had looked back at him.

Well, it isn't good to find a head on a pavement at any time, and 2 a.m. does somehow make it worse, but as for the rest, well, you can get what looks like a reproachful glance from a cod on a slab if your mind happens to be on something else. Constable Walsh did not stop there, however.
He
reported that the thing opened its mouth ‘as if it was trying to say something'. If it did, he should not have mentioned it; it just naturally brought the pink elephants to mind. However, he stuck to it, so after they had examined him and taken disappointing sniffs at his breath, they sent him back with another man to show just where he had found the thing. Of course, there wasn't any head, nor blood, nor signs of cleaning up. And that's about all there was to the incident – save, doubtless, a few curt remarks on a conduct-sheet to dog Constable Walsh's future career.

But the Constable hadn't a big lead. Two evenings later a block of flats was curdled by searing shrieks from a Mrs Rourke in No. 35,
and simultaneously from a Miss Farrell who lived above her. When the neighbours arrived, Mrs Rourke was hysterical about a pair of legs that had been dangling from her bedroom ceiling, and Miss Farrell the same about an arm and shoulder that had stretched out from under her bed. But there was nothing to be seen on the ceiling, and nothing more than a discreditable amount of dust to be found under Miss Farrell's bed.

And there were a number of other incidents, too.

It was Jimmy Lindlen who works, if that isn't too strong a word for it, in the office next to mine who drew my attention to them in the first place. Jimmy collects facts. His definition of a fact is anything that gets printed in a newspaper – poor fellow. He doesn't mind a lot what subjects his facts cover as long as they look queer. I suspect that he once heard that the truth is never simple, and deduced from that that everything that's not simple must be true.

I was used to him coming into my room, full of inspiration, and didn't take much account of it, so when he brought in his first batch of cuttings about Constable Walsh and the rest I didn't ignite much.

But a few days later he was back with some more. I was a bit surprised by his playing the same kind of phenomena twice running, so I gave it a little more attention than usual.

‘You see. Arms, heads, legs, torsos, all over the place. It's an epidemic. There's something behind it.
Something's happening
!' he said, as near as one can vocalize italics.

When I had read a few of them I had to admit that this time he had got hold of something where the vein of queerness was pretty constant.

A bus driver had seen the upper half of a body set up vertically in the road before him – but a bit too late. When he stopped and climbed out, sweating, to examine the mess, there was nothing there. A woman hanging out of a window, watching the street, saw another head below her doing the same, but this one was projecting out of the solid brickwork. Then there was a pair of
arms that had risen out of the floor of a butcher's shop and seemed to grope for something; after a minute or two they had withdrawn into the solid cement without trace – unless one were to count some detriment to the butcher's trade. There was the man on a building job who had become aware of a strangely dressed figure standing close to him, but supported by empty air – after which he had to be helped down and sent home. Another figure was noticed between the rails in the path of a heavy goods train, but was found to have vanished without trace when the train had passed.

While I skimmed through these and some others, Jimmy stood waiting, like a soda siphon. I didn't have to say more than, ‘Huh!'

‘You see,' he said. ‘Something
is
happening.'

‘Supposing it is,' I conceded cautiously, ‘then what is it?'

‘The manifestation zone is limited,' Jimmy told me impressively, and produced a town plan. ‘If you look where I've marked the incidents you'll see that they're grouped. Somewhere in that circle is “the focus of disturbance”.' This time he managed to vocalize the inverted commas, and waited for me to register amazement.

‘So?' I said. ‘Disturbance of just what?'

He dodged that one.

‘I've a pretty good idea now of the cause,' he told me weightily.

That was normal, though it might be a different idea an hour later.

‘I'll buy it,' I offered.

‘Teleportation!' he announced. ‘That's what it is. Bound to come sooner or later. Now someone's on to it.'

‘H'm,' I said.

‘But it
must
be.' He leaned forward earnestly. ‘How else'd you account for it?'

‘Well, if there could be teleportation, or teleportage, or whatever it is, surely there would have to be a transmitter and some sort of reassembly station,' I pointed out. ‘You couldn't expect a
person or object to be kind of broadcast and then come together again in any old place.'

‘But you don't
know
that,' he said. ‘Besides, that's part of what I was meaning by “focus”. The transmitter is somewhere else, but focused on that area.'

‘If it is,' I said, ‘he seems to have got his levels and positions all to hell. I wonder just what happens to a fellow who gets himself reassembled half in and half out of a brick wall?'

It's details like that that get Jimmy impatient.

‘Obviously it's early stages. Experimental,' he said.

It still seemed to me uncomfortable for the subject, early stages or not, but I didn't press it.

That evening was the first time I mentioned it to Sally, and, on the whole, it was a mistake. After making it quite clear that she didn't believe it, she went on to say that if it was true it was probably just another invention.

‘What do you mean, “just another invention”? Why, it'd be revolutionary!' I told her.

‘The wrong kind of revolution, the way we'd use it.'

‘Meaning?' I asked.

Sally was in one of her withering moods. She turned on her disillusioned voice:

‘We've got two ways of using inventions,' she said. ‘One is to kill more people more easily: the other is to enable quick-turnover spivs to make easy money out of suckers. Maybe there are a few exceptions like X-rays, but not many. Inventions! What we do with the product of genius is first of all ram it down to the lowest common denominator and then multiply it by the vulgarest possible fraction. What a century! What a world! When I think what other centuries are going to say about ours it makes me go hot all over.'

‘I shouldn't worry. You won't be hearing them,' I said.

The withering eye was on me.

‘I should have known. That is a remark well up to the Twentieth-Century standard.'

‘You're a funny girl,' I told her. ‘I mean, the way you think may be crazy, but you do do it, in your own way. Now most girl's futures are all cloud-cuckoo beyond next season's hat or next year's baby. Outside of that it might be going to snow split atoms for all they care – they've got a comforting feeling deep down that nothing's ever changed much, or ever will.'

‘A lot you know about what most girls think,' said Sally.

‘That's what I was meaning. How could I?' I said.

She seemed to have set her mind so firmly against the whole business that I dropped it for the evening.

A couple of days later Jimmy looked into my room again.

‘He's laid off,' he said.

‘Who's laid off what?'

‘This teleporting fellow. Not a report later than Tuesday. Maybe he knows somebody's on to him.'

‘Meaning you?' I asked.

‘Maybe.'

‘Well, are you?'

He frowned. ‘I've started. I took the bearings on the map of all the incidents, and the fix came on All Saints' Church. I had a look all over the place, but I didn't find anything. Still, I must be close – why else'd he stop?'

I couldn't tell him that. Nor could anyone else. But that very evening there was a paragraph about an arm and a leg that some woman had watched travel along her kitchen wall. I showed it to Sally.

‘I expect it will turn out to be some new kind of advertisement,' she said.

‘A kind of secret advertising?' I suggested. Then, seeing the withering look working up again: ‘How about going to a picture?' I suggested.

It was overcast when we went in; when we came out it was
raining hard. Seeing that there was less than a mile to her place, and all the taxis in the town were apparently busy, we decided to walk it. Sally pulled on the hood of her mackintosh, put her arm through mine, and we set out through the rain. For a bit we didn't talk, then:

‘Darling,' I said, ‘I know that I can be regarded as a frivolous person with low ethical standards, but has it ever occurred to you what a field there is there for reform?'

‘Yes,' she said, decisively, but not in the right tone.

‘What I mean is,' I told her patiently, ‘if you happened to be looking for a good work to devote your life to, what could be better than a reclamation job on such a character. The scope is tremendous, just –'

‘Is this a proposal of some kind?' Sally inquired.

‘
Some
kind! I'd have you know – Good God!' I broke off.

We were in Tyler Street. A short street, rainswept now, and empty, except for ourselves. What stopped me was the sudden appearance of some kind of vehicle, further along. I couldn't make it out very clearly on account of the rain, but I had the impression of a small, low-built lorry with several figures in light clothes on it driving across Tyler Street quite quickly, and vanishing. That wouldn't have been so bad if there were any street crossing Tyler Street, but there isn't; it had just come out of one side and gone into the other.

‘Did you see what I saw?' I asked.

‘But how on earth – ?' she began

We walked a little further until we came to the place where the thing had crossed, and looked at the solid brick wall on one side and the housefronts on the other.

‘You must have been mistaken,' said Sally.

‘Well, for –
I
must have been mistaken!'

‘But it just couldn't have happened, could it?'

‘Now, listen, darling –' I began.

But at that moment a girl stepped out from the solid brick about ten feet ahead of us. We stopped, and gaped at her.

I don't know whether her hair would be her own, art and science together can do so much for a girl, but the way she was wearing it, it was like a great golden chrysanthemum a good foot and a half across, and with a red flower set in it a little left of centre. It looked sort of top-heavy. She was wearing some kind of brief pink tunic, silk perhaps, and more appropriate to one of those elderly gentleman floor-shows than Tyler Street on a filthy wet night. What made it a real shocker was the things that had been achieved by embroidery. I never would have believed that any girl could – oh, well, anyway, there she stood, and there we stood …