Dagger of the Mind

CHAPTER NINE

The night hard passed like an episode from one of his dreams.

Having rushed Leila off in the direction of London, he had thought about spending the night in her flat, but had decided against it on the grounds that a chance call or visit from almost anybody could lead to awkwardness. He had then set out to walk to his own place on Disley High Street, then had come the realisation that the wound in his midriff was still bleeding copiously and looked like continuing to do so. As far as he, the essential John Redpath, had been concerned it was nothing more than a minor irritation—he could have endured the pain and the sopping coldness of his clothing almost indefinitely—but another voice had warned him that he needed to preserve his strength and resources for a contest that lay ahead.

He had detoured to the casualty department of Calbridge General Hospital, where his arrival—soon after the closing tune of the town’s bars—had created the impression that he had been injured in a brawl. Only his patent sobriety and a display of jocular respectability had persuaded the young doctor to forget about the police and accept his story about an accident with a woodworking chisel. He had been cleaned, stitched, dusted with powders, bandaged, injected against tetanus, lectured, issued with a treatment card and sent home in an ambulance. In the blessed neutral tranquillity of his own apartment he had crawled into a cool bed and, against all the odds, had slept soundly until dawn.

Wakening to a world of grey light, with the ghosts of sensory impressions beginning to crowd in on him from all over the building, he knew at once that the E.S.P.-enhancing effects of Compound 183 had not yet diminished.

He also knew that on the previous night he had unwittingly, through exhaustion and cerebral overloading, hit on the best tactic for coping with his present situation. The trick was to avoid thinking graphically about his plans, to move like an automaton, to exist like a zombie. The thing in the cellar in Raby Street, the Once-born, was still linked to him in some way—as had been proved by the awesome moment of triple existence, with all its revelations—but the contact would never be as complete as the alien would wish because the necessary interfaces could not exist between minds that were so dissimilar.

Rapport was the word for the missing element, he decided. There was a kind of communication on some levels, but no rapport, and as long as that was the case he could continue to be himself, to think with one part of his brain and let his actions be guided by another. Always presuming that he retained control over his actions …

The family wants me back. They might be out looking for me! What the hell could I do if Albert appeared right here in the room?

How much time is left, anyway? How much time before the megadeaths come?

Galvanised by the urgency which had haunted him the night before, Redpath rolled sideways from under the sheets. He froze as he felt the pain from the knife wound returning with something like its original intensity. Moving more cautiously, he stood up nursing his side and got dressed in a lightweight polo-neck sweater and a fresh pair of slacks. It was rapidly growing brighter outside and the clatter of a milk float in the distance told him the town was coming to life. He took his simulated-leather hold-all from a cupboard, dropped five handkerchiefs—all he had—into it and closed the zip. Without taking time to eat or shave, he picked up the hold-all and Leila’s television set—it wouldn’t be too heavy to carry, he felt—and let himself out of the apartment.

The small section of the district he could see from the corridor windows looked indomitably normal, as always. The plane trees, the cindery car park, the builder’s yard with its stacks of concrete lamp standards, the semi-detached houses and assorted garages—all seemed to project the same message, that this was the real universe, secure and unchanging, and that to think otherwise was insanity. Redpath averted his eyes, hurried to the central stairway and went down to the street. Traffic was sparse at that hour—consisting of little more than a few steelworks employees heading in the direction of the plant by cycle and car—and he felt unusually conspicuous carrying a television set.

He turned into a sidestreet as quickly as possible, and that was the beginning of a day of drifting, loitering and trying to merge into his surroundings.

At mid-morning he bought a gallon of two-star petrol at a garage which charged him a twenty-pence deposit on the loan of a dented can which had once held engine oil. A little later he bought a disposable cigarette lighter and four large bottles of lemonade. Short of money and now too heavily loaded to keep on the move, he opted for spending the rest of the day in a public park. Churchill Gardens was the nearest, but if Betty York and the others were looking for him that was one of the places they were likely to try, and he had no wish to meet any of them until he was ready.

He walked to a smaller park which was favoured by pensioners largely because it did not incorporate a children’s playground. The day was warm and pleasant, well suited for sun-bathing, and when he had established himself with his possessions at the centre of a grassy area he felt reasonably certain of attracting no undue attention from passers-by, police included. He took off his jacket and sweater, and rested for a while to ease the throbbing in the region of his stomach, then sipped some of the lemonade. His thirst quenched, he surreptitiously emptied the four bottles into the grass and filled them with petrol from the can. He replaced the stoppers and put the bottles back into the hold-all, wrapping them in the handkerchiefs which were later to serve as fuses.

That done, his modest arsenal assembled, he lay down and tried to blank out his mind—a task which proved exceptionally difficult.

The blue lens of the sky looked exactly as it had always done, but now he was acutely aware of the fact that it was a window into space, a window through which other eyes could peer downwards. His brief communion with the alien hunter had let him know it was close to the Earth, but how close was close? And was there a possibility that, even as he lay there, those ethereal blue arches could become the scene of the first interstellar battle in human history? The hunter, the thing which thought of itself as the Thrice-born, seemed to have a total disregard for life forms other than its own, and it might therefore be surprised to find orbital defences screening its quarry. Redpath doubted if laser-armed killer satellites—if such things existed—would be effective against a starship, but if the vessel came within range of nuclear warheads events might take an unexpected turn, unless it was able to make itself invisible to radar, perhaps by absorbing all incident radiation.

Too many unknown factors to evaluate—and I don’t even read Aviation Week. And I’m thinking about-things I wasn’t going to think about…

Late in the afternon he saw a jetliner climbing high into the west, sowing a thin line of ice crystals across the sky, and he wondered how Leila was faring. It occurred to him, belatedly, that he should have arranged for her to telephone him somewhere and report on her progress. As it was, he would have to go ahead on schedule with his half of the operation and trust she had been given enough time to reach Gilpinston and…

I’m doing it again! Make out a list—ten film stars whose names began with the letter A. Bud Abbott. They don’t need to be stars—John Abbott. John Agar. Brian Aherne. Woody Alien…

Soon after six o’clock the air cooled noticeably and a bright-rimmed canopy of cloud advanced from the direction of the Pennines, heralding an overdue break in the weather. Redpath donned his sweater and jacket, and delayed quitting the park for a further hour. While preparing to leave he made the cheering discovery that he had enough money in hand to buy a cup of tea. He walked slowly in the direction of the town centre, with an unseasonal leaden darkness gathering on the horizon behind him, and bought tea in an otherwise deserted cafe. The brew was too strong and too sweet, and he nostalgically savoured everything that was wrong with it.

By the time he reached the Woodstock Road the first drops of rain were dappling the pavement, filling the air with the smell of dust. The children who used the streets in the district as a playground were rapidly moving indoors, possibly grateful for the weather change which was forcing a return to neglected pursuits which would be their mainstays through the winter. When Redpath left the main road and began cutting through sidestreets he saw warm glimmers of coloured light behind many of the windows and he knew that fires were being lit, television and radio sets switched on, kettles brought to the boil. The people were doing one of the things they did best, obeying racial memories, withdrawing into the cosy fug at the back of the cave. It was a good night for closing the curtains, wheeling the armchairs round to the fire and sitting with the rest of one’s family, perhaps chatting, perhaps singing…

There’s something wrong here. I should be afraid, but I’m not. Can it be that I’m actually looking forward to being one of the family again?

There was a slithering behind Redpath’s forehead.

If its control grows stronger the closer I get, if it’s an inverse square thing, how am I going to…?

He turned the corner into Raby Street and, laden with his hold-all in one hand and the television set in the other, trudged its length to number 131 like a son of the house returning from a harrowing day at work. Large drops of rain were pipping like airgun pellets into the accumulation of paper scraps in the front garden, scoring diagonal beaded lines on the dusty windows, encrusting the green moss caterpillars with liquid jewels. The curtains were drawn across the bay window of the front room, but Redpath knew the house was alive again. There was a coiling and uncoiling in his head. He walked up the short red-tiled path to the door, but as he was about to set his bag down the door was opened by Wilbur Tennent, who was sleek and splendid in a dove-grey checked suit. Betty York was visible beyond him, standing at the entrance to the living-room, still wearing her crimson T-shirt, low-waisted denims and sandals.

“Nice to see you, John boy.” Tennent ushered Redpath into the hall amid eddies of cologne and after-shave, and turned back to Betty. “I told you he was coming home again.”

She came forward, smiling with plum-coloured lips. “I see you’ve brought your things, love. Let me give you a hand with them.”

“I can manage,” Redpath said, tightening his grip on the hold-all. “I’ll just put this stuff up in my room, if you don’t mind.”

“You do that, then come down to the parlour—I’ll be making the supper soon.”

“Nice little television,” Tennent commented. “John and me can watch the races on that.”

“Leave him alone.” Betty pushed Tennent into the front room, opening a way for Redpath to reach the stairs. As he was passing the doorway he glanced into the room and saw that all its furniture had been put back in position. Miss Connie and Albert were in their accustomed places. They were gazing at the glowing rectangular element of the gas fire, and neither showed any awareness of his arrival.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” he told Betty. “Just these things to get rid of.”

“All right, love.” She went into the room and closed the door, leaving him alone in the hall.

Redpath carried his bag and the television set up to the shadowy top of the house, past all the watchful doorways, and entered the room to which Betty York had shown him on his first visit. Everything was exactly as he remembered it, right down to the brown-ruled pink oilcloth on the floor. He put the television down on a tallboy, set his bag on a chair, opened it and stared for a moment at its contents, frowning.

Four bottles of…petrol. Dangerous stuff that. Perhaps I should warn Betty, ask her to get rid of it. Don’t want to risk a fire. Especially not here, where I’m safe. Listerine Leila deserved everything I gave her, but the police won’t see it that way. When they find her body they’ll start hunting for me, but I’ll be all right here. I’m safe here…with my family.

An unexpected giddiness touched Redpath, causing him to shuffle slightly to retain his balance. He palmed his eyes, pressing inwards on them to assuage a pain that was not quite a pain, and for an instant he glimpsed a montage of conflicting images. There was Leila’s slim, tapering back—naked and disfigured with stab wounds; there was another image—comforting and disturbing at the same tune—of Leila holding a black booklet which looked like a passport; and overlying everything was a transparent checkerwork of coloured panels in which lights flashed briefly and died, creating intricate, urgent designs which danced across his vision with the speed of wind patterns skimming a field of grain. There was a sense of imminence, of terrible danger, but the feeling passed as quickly as it had come. He lowered his hands, looked around the room, nodded in satisfaction, and walked down the dark stairway to where the others were waiting for him.

I’m all right here, he thought. I’m safe here with my family.

CHAPTER TEN

A day of waiting and worrying in the international building at Heathrow Airport had left Leila Mostyn feeling more tired than she would have thought possible.

There was a superabundance of passengers bound for the United States, many of them youngsters who gave the impression of having decided to go on the spur of the moment, and the trade in stand-by tickets had been brisk. She had failed to get a seat on a morning plane to Chicago, and had turned down some indirect possibilities in favour of an extra 747 flight which had been laid on to depart at noon. The difference in time zones meant that it would have got her into Chicago’s O’Hare field at around three in the afternoon, local time, leaving her with a reasonable four hours in which to reach Gilpinston. It would have been better to have a greater margin, especially as she knew that getting through the U.S. immigration checks could be a time-consuming process, but at that stage she still felt she could cope with the situation. There was, she had felt, enough time.

Then things had begun to awry.

First had come the announcement that a fault in the traffic control radar at Frankfurt was going to delay the arrival of her aircraft at Heathrow by two hours. Leila had been dismayed to find her reserves of time cut in half at a stroke, but by then it had become too late even to consider an indirect flight, and she had settled down with a taut, fluttery feeling in her stomach to adapt her thinking to a new and much more pressing schedule. She had eaten a light meal in the snack bar and was trying to relax afterwards with a glass of vermouth when a delay of a further hour was announced, wringing an ironic cheer from some of her fellow passengers.

It had been almost three o’clock before they had been able to board the aircraft, and by that time she had entered a state of sick, nerve-thrumming anxiety. A bespectacled man in the next seat had tried to strike up a conversation with her, but on receiving her tight-lipped, abstracted replies had turned his attention to a magazine. A few minutes later the captain of the 747 had come on the address system and, with evident embarrassment, had explained that the late arrival at Heathrow had caused problems with the fuelling service and that there would be a wait of forty-five minutes before the aircraft would be tanked up and ready to go. The news had roused a further cheer and, through some kind of reverse psychology, had strengthened the holiday spirit among the younger passengers, some of whom left their seats and stood in the aisles loudly swapping witticisms with their friends.

Leila had withdrawn into a bubble of loneliness, separating herself from an environment which was rapidly beginning to seem meaningless and hostile, a daunting melange of shouts and bellowing laughs, unfamiliar sights and smells, pneumatic hisses and hydraulic whines. It was a world of normal people doing normal things, and she was no part of it. She had been afraid to think too much about what she was doing, and right up to the moment when the heavy doors had been pulled into place, sealing the fuselage, she had been plagued by urges to leave her seat and quit the aircraft. Only when the engines had been started, sending expectant tremors through the floor and the arms of her seat, did she allow the mental floodgates to burst apart.

What have you done to me, John? The things 1 took to be evidence last night, when I was thrown completely off balance, aren’t evidence at all. A scrap of newspaper with the wrong date, a couple of odd coincidences…

My God, what am I doing to myself? Putting myself in jail, that’s all! I’m planning to go to the United States and burn down a house with Molotov cocktails. They’ll lock me up and throw away the key!

Leila was staring straight ahead at two male members of the cabin staff who were struggling to fit a large aluminium container for hot meals into its closet-like storage compartment. So great was the turmoil in her mind that perhaps ten minutes had gone by without any progress being made before she realized that the saga of hitches and delays for that particular flight had not yet ended. The alloy meal container was still blocking an aisle and the aircraft had not yet moved away from the embarkation bay. A stewardess tried to give the two men some advice and was sent away, pink-cheeked and angry. The men renewed their efforts to stow the container, now making a considerable noise as they hit it with fists and shoulders, and a minute later were joined by a senior steward and a member of the flight crew. A whispered argument developed, during which Leila’s sensitively attuned ears picked up the words “engineer” and “unseal”. Her heart began a slow, steady pounding.

The captain’s eventual announcement that there was to be yet another delay brought a round of derisory applause which Leila ’ scarcely heard. She undid her seat belt, stood up and took her coat and bag from the overhead locker, and was walking up the aisle within seconds of the mid-fuselage door being opened. A tall steward in a half-sleeved white shirt stepped in front of her as she tried to squeeze out past a mechanic who was entering with a box of tools.

“Sorry, miss,” the steward said. “You can’t go through there. Is there something wrong?”

“I’ve changed my mind about flying today.” She made her voice firm and self-possessed. “I want to leave the aircraft, and I believe I’m entitled to do so.”

The steward shook his head. “Passengers aren’t permitted to disembark after the luggage has been put on board. It’s a security regulation, miss.”

“I don’t care about your regulations.”

“If you would care to return to your seat I’m sure we can…”

“I don’t care to return to my seat because this aircraft was supposed to take off more than four hours ago, and I’ve missed an important appointment because of the delay, and now there’s no point in my going to the States—so I’m not going.” Leila increased the level of her voice, attracting the attention of passengers in the nearer part of the cabin. “If you try to keep me on board against my will, while your so-called engineers try to load the sandwich box, I promise you I’ll kick up the loudest, longest and nastiest fuss you’ve ever heard.”

“You don’t understand, miss,” the steward said unhappily.

“If you were to leave now we’d have to unload all the luggage and…”

“You are the one who doesn’t understand,” Leila countered. “If I’m obstructed from leaving at once I’ll go to the newspapers at the very first opportunity and I’ll tell them there was a four-hour delay over the packed lunches on this flight. I’ll make sure that everybody in the country hears about the kind of service this airline offers.”

The steward spread his hands. “Please wait here—I’ll let you speak to Captain Sinclair.”

The ensuing thirty minutes were among the most difficult and embarrassing of Leila’s entire life, especially as her abrupt change of mind about flying had aroused the suspicions of the customs, immigration and security staffs, but she weathered the period with an icy composure which did not crack until she had driven out of the airport grounds and was travelling north in the vicinity of Uxbridge. She pulled in to the side of the road as tears blurred out her vision, and sat with her forehead resting on the upper rim of the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry, John,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I did try, in spite of what you’ll think—but tonight you’re on your own.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The family was united again, all its members sitting in a semi-circle in the downstairs front room.

Betty York sat nearest the wall on the left of the fireplace, with flecks of red lacquer on her toenails and nacreous brown lacquer on her fingernails. Next to her was Redpath, and then came Wilbur Tennent, plump and handsome, sitting upright and leaning forward slightly in an attitude which might have been designed to prevent his lustrous suit from creasing. Beside him was Albert, nodding and sniffing, massive hands interlaced across his stomach, clad as always in his brown boiler suit and scuffed work boots. And closest to the wall on the right of the fireplace was Miss Connie, with ivory-coloured hair and ribboned glasses, her angular but broad-shouldered figure draped in a grey cardigan and ankle-length black dress. She was knitting industriously, adding another irregular section to the dimly seen mass in the corner behind her.

“Before I forget, John.” Tennent reached into his pocket, took out a thin bundle of banknotes which were secured by an elastic band, and dropped them into Redpath’s lap. “We connected with Parsnip Bridge, just like I told you.”

“Thanks,” Redpath said, belatedly realising he had no idea of what had happened to the previous winnings he had received in a like manner. He wondered briefly if Tennent had managed to take the money back again without his noticing, or if for some reason Miss Connie had spirited it away from him.

Tennent rubbed his hands, boyishly gleeful. “We’re going well, John boy. I’ve got a double lined up for us tomorrow, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll put…”

“Leave him alone,” Betty cut in. “I’ve told you before that John isn’t interested in your get-rich-quick schemes.”

“Why shouldn’t he be? Everybody likes a bit of extra loot. Isn’t that right?” Tennent turned to Redpath for support, showing his small regular teeth in a companionable grin. He gazed at Redpath for a few seconds, his look of pleasure slowly fading, and a hint of perplexity came into his eyes. “John? You like it here, don’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t do anything to…”

“Leave him be,” Betty snapped. “How can he rest with you going on at him the whole time?”

Tennent subsided into his chair in silence, shooting Redpath an occasional thoughtful glance. Redpath, feeling oddly relieved, set the bundle of money in a neutral position on the arm of his chair. There followed a long period during which nobody spoke, but in which the room was full of small sounds—the popping and muttering of the gas fire, the ticking of the clock, the clicking of Miss Connie’s needles, odd little snuffles and snorts from Albert. The curtains breathed steadily in the bay window. Redpath allowed his gaze to roam the walls and it came to rest centred on something small and dark that was clinging to the wallpaper. It was a crane-fly, possibly the same one he had noticed two nights earlier, seemingly still in the same place, still vibrating to the same mindless rhythm.

Oh Christ, what makes them do that? I thought it would have been dead by this time. How long can a daddy-long-legs go on living, anyway? A frog can live for forty years. Just think of it! It’d be bad enough being a frog for one year—but to have to keep it up for forty years! Leila, how can you be dead if you…?

“I know what we need,” Betty York said, getting to her feet. “A nice cup of tea and something to eat.”

That’s not what I need. I need to drink some water, a hell of a lot of water, and to watch some television.

“The sandwiches are ready, love, and the tea won’t be long,“Betty said to Redpath as she crossed the semi-circle of chairs in front of him, momentarily filling his field of view with long black hair, taut blue haunches and copper rivets. “You like Plumrose, don’t you?”

Redpath nodded, thinking bemusedly about his sudden thirst for water and the urge to watch television. Jack Haley isn’t on tonight, is he? I saw him last night—but who was I with?

Betty returned in a surprisingly short time and Tennent moved his chair to let her wheel the laden trolley into the centre of the group. She poured five cups of tea from a huge glazed pot. Miss Connie set her knitting aside, took a sandwich and began to eat with a zest which seemed inappropriate for her age and meagre build. The sight of the thick-cut, pink-tongued layers of bread brought it home to Redpath that he had had no food all day.

He put four sandwiches on a plate and was biting into the last of them when he realised that Albert, two seats away on his right, had not taken anything to eat or drink. Mildly curious, he leaned forward to see past Tennent and observed that Albert had not changed his position in anyway since he had entered the room. The little man was sprawled in the chair with his legs extended and his hands still clasped across his middle. His enormous chin was jutting more than ever, his eyes were staring straight ahead—opaque as those of a hospital patient under the heaviest sedation—and almost continual tremors coursed through his limbs. Lentils of perspiration dotted his brow.

The other members of the group, seemingly oblivious to what was happening, continued to eat in silent concentration.

Redpath set his plate down, frowning, and twisted in his seat to be able to see Albert more clearly. The inarticulate sounds Albert had been making grew louder and his eyes turned in Redpath’s direction—pained, pleading, desperate. They seemed to hold a message for Redpath, to be trying to remind him of some terrible responsibility he had once undertaken. He began to feel afraid.

“Isn’t this nice?” Miss Connie said in her scratchy voice, smiling, showing her antique dentures.

“Very nice,” Tennent and Betty said in unison.

Redpath turned away from Albert, looked at the clock above the fireplace and saw that its filigreed hands stood at almost ten-thirty. Far in the back of his mind there was an uneasy flickering, a sense of time going by too quickly. He picked up his partly-eaten sandwich, found he no longer wanted it and settled back into his chair. His thoughts began to wander and, for some reason he was at a loss to understand, he became acutely conscious of the house, not as a conceptual unity, but as an assemblage of various architectural elements. The room was still a room, but he also saw it was a roughly cubical volume of space, artificially contrived and bounded. Instinctively he tended to equate a floor with solid ground, but the solid-seeming floor of the room he was in was in fact a kind of platform or bridge. It was a structural sandwich consisting of an upper layer of boards, a central filling of timber joists, a bottom layer of laths and plaster, and beneath that…beneath that was the cellar of the house…a kingdom of darkness that began only inches below his feet…and there was something …

He blinked, taken aback, as he discovered that Tennent had turned in his direction and was pointing at him with an expression of twinkling exuberance on his plump-cheeked face.

“Keeee…pright on to the end of the road,” Tennent chanted, “keeee…pright on to the end.”

“That’s the spirit,” Betty said, joining in the song.

Redpath glanced at Miss Connie, who nodded encouragingly, and he heard himself begin to sing in a low, tentative voice. The members of the family had begun to enjoy themselves, like any other group of normal people in Calbridge, and if Albert had no wish to join in that was his own affair.

Some time later Redpath noticed the clock again, and was obscurely jolted to realise that there were only fifteen minutes to midnight. Again there was a curious shifting and slithering behind his eyes.

I know what’s happening to Albert, he thought, making an intuitive-cum-telepathic leap. He’s putting up a fight. He’s fighting my battle. He knows that time is running out, and he’s trying to help me—but what are we fighting?

Redpath rose slowly to his feet and addressed Betty with a frozen smile. “The bathroom’s just at the head of the stairs, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, love.” She eyed him soberly. “Don’t be too long.”

“I won’t.” He left the room and went out into the pitch darkness of the hall. It took him some time to locate a light switch and when he depressed it a small fitment glowed in the high ceiling, emitting a weak radiance the colour of moths’ wings. The kitchen door was visible a short distance away as a rectangle of sentient blackness. He turned away from it, went up the stairs and into the bathroom, pulled the cord of the ceiling switch and tried to bolt the door behind him. The paint-clogged shoot-bolt was so badly aligned with its keeper that he was unable to drive it home.

Abandoning the attempt, he went to the washbasin, turned on the cold tap and stooped to put his mouth under it. The water jetted out faster than he had expected, taking his breath away, but he swallowed it and kept on swallowing. Within seconds his stomach felt tight and swollen. He raised his head to snatch some air, almost gagged, and began to drink again.

Do you know, he could almost hear Dr Myall’s voice, that in the darker days of medicine one of the standard tests to determine if a person had epilepsy was to give him a few pints of water to drink?

A sudden spasm of nausea forced Redpath to straighten up. He gripped the rim of the basin with both hands, fighting to control the upward thrusts of his diaphragm, and knew there was less than no point in trying to go on, that taking another mouthful of water would result in a violent spewing of all that was in his stomach. It was time to watch some television.

And be careful when you’re near a faulty television set, Dr Hyall was saying, smiling benignly at him through a tunnel into another time. If something needs adjusting, specially the vertical hold—let somebody else do it. Never kneel in front of a TV set that has a rolling picture.

He opened the bathroom door, went out onto the landing and turned towards the front of the house. The main part of the landing and the stair to the upper floor were on his right; the stair leading back down to the hall was on his left. He was veering to the right when the living room door opened down below and Betty York came out into the hall. She was joined at once by Tennent and Miss Connie. All three eyed him intently.

“Are you all right, love?” Betty said.

“Couldn’t be…better,” Redpath replied, fighting to put words together, to think and not to think. “Jack Haley…television.”

He gestured in the general direction of his room and went towards the upper stair. There was the sound of footsteps on the stair below him. He quickened his pace, reached the top landing and stumbled through the dimness into his room. Closing the door and turning on the light in one movement, he saw that the lock was of the type that incorporated a small brass bolt. He stared blankly at the bolt for several seconds, then thumbed it into place just as somebody tried the handle.

“What are you doing in there, John boy?” Tennent pleaded. “Open the door.”

“You don’t understand,” Redpath mumbled. “Jack Haley…television.” He removed the television set from the bed, carried it across the room and knelt at a power point in the skirting board.

“Come on, John, you don’t know what you’re missing,“Tennent said in a wheedling voice and began to sing. “Keeee…pright on to the end of the road…” The words of the song were lost in a violent pounding on the door, a sound which could only have been produced by two or more pairs of fists beating on it at the same time. Women’s voices joined in the din.

Redpath shook his head, panic-stricken. “Favourite film. They don’t make them like that any…” He tried to ram the connector at the end of the television’s power lead into the socket, but the two components refused to mate. He tried twice more before realising what was wrong. The connector had modern rectangular pins and the socket was of the old-fashioned round-pin type.

“They don’t make them like that any more,” he repeated dully, staring at the useless plug.

The hammering on the door behind him ceased and was replaced by a measured and powerful thudding which signalled that Tennent was trying to break it open with his shoulder. Redpath glanced back and saw that the wooden jamb was curving inwards with every blow. The three on the landing no longer sounded like human beings, and at least one of them was making strange, wet, sucking noises.

“Slughhh, slughhh, slughhh.”

His face crumpling with despair, Redpath wrenched the connector from the end of the television flex, exposing the bare wires. He spread the wires with his fingers and crammed them into the holes of the socket, heedless of his skin touching metal. There was a sputtering crackle, a spiky blaze of purple, and he was hurled backwards into a gloating and greedy blackness.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sadness preceded the enormous composite entity that was the ship, sadness over the preparations for death.

The emotion had nothing to do with the knowledge that a member of the First Race was soon to be dispersed—he was a renegade who had threatened the very foundations of his own society and there could be no place for him in an orderly continuum. Nor was there any concern that a considerable area of the seventh planet, counting inwards from the rim of the system, was to be rendered sterile. Its inhabitants belonged to that almost-universal class of beings, the simulacra. They did not possess the ability to commune with the Star-that-lives, and therefore could be regarded as accidental association of cells, pseudo-beings whose existence or annihilation was without relevance to the great scheme.

The sadness that affected the conglomerate entity of the ship was due to the fact that a part of its own structure would have to die, to be sacrificed in order to bring about the dispersal of the Once-born.

Remains of the outer portions of the fugitive ship had been detected through their lingering life-echoes, and the location pinpointed on an island close to one of the major land masses. A section of the living skin of the hunter ship had detached itself, painfully, from the main shell and had reformed in a shape suitable for high-speed atmospheric penetration. Within it, a portion of the ship’s body matter had already undergone voluntary degeneration to the viral state. In that condition, on exposure to oxygen, it would rapidly eliminate all life forms over a wide area before reaching the inactive phase.

Those losses to the ship’s corpus had been unwelcome enough, but the real tragedy was that a fragment of the Thrice-born, a member of the First Race, had been required to separate from the parent body and make ready to die. Lacking many of the primitive psi-powers of a Once-born, the hunter was unable to deliver or even control the pod by psychokinesis. It was necessary for him to sacrifice a portion of his own being to drive and guide the living bomb which was to be the instrument of justice. And the sense of bereavement was all the more keenly felt because the death it was to experience would be final—under the circumstances there could be no ingestion, purification and renascence.

The duty had been assigned and the responsibility accepted many years earlier, however, and there was to be no turning back.

Gently, and without remorse, the pod moved away from the vast bulk of the ship and began the long descent to Earth.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Redpath awoke to a silence that was both external and internal, a blessed sense of his own personal humanity. He felt sane and untainted, privileged simply to be alive. The feeling, the modest joy, sustained him for the space of a dozen heartbeats, then he looked at his watch and saw there were only six minutes to midnight.

Where has everybody gone? Was the door too much for them? Have they gone away, or are they on the landing waiting for me to come out?

He sat up and looked around the quiet bedroom, and at that moment a blizzard of memory fragments imploded upon him, clicking into place, reassembling a terrible picture in his mind. Time was running out! Leila would be outside the house in Gilpinston at that very minute; the megadeaths were coming; and he had an appointment with something that waited in the cellar.

He stood up, almost retched and fought to control the quivering weakness of his limbs. Anvil blows were ringing through his temples. He looked down at the stripped wire lying beside the power point and realised he had been lucky not to electrocute himself or perhaps precipitate a full-scale grand mal which could have stretched him on the floor for hours. As it was, he was unable to decide if he had suffered a very minor epilepsy or had simply been shocked into unconsciousness. The physical aftereffects were ambiguous—but the vitally important result was that for the tune being he was his own man again, released from outside control, free to act and think independently. And precious seconds were flittering away into eternity.

The hold-all was still sitting on the chair where he had left it. Redpath opened the bag, took out one of the four bottles it contained and twisted the cap. It was moist with seeping petrol which combined with the sweat of his palms to reduce his grip, and the metal cap refused to turn. Swearing with Impatience, he glanced at the bedroom door, grateful for the fact that it had been strong enough to resist Wilbur Tennent’s efforts to burst it open. In that instant there was an appalling crash and an upper panel of the door was caved inwards by a massive metal object which revealed itself to be the head of a sledge-hammer.

Redpath stared at the door, momentarily paralysed, as the hammer was withdrawn from the gaping hole. Tennent’s hand appeared in its place and began groping for the lock.

Acting without conscious thought, Redpath snatched a handkerchief from his bag and used it to improve his grip on the bottle cap. This time it turned immediately. He removed the cap and wadded the handkerchief into the neck of the bottle with his forefinger. Holding the improvised bomb in the crook of his left arm, he reached into the bag and took out another bottle. Again he had to struggle to remove the cap, and had barely suceeded when the bolt on the door emitted a sharp metallic clack.

Tennent opened the door and sidled into the room. He was carrying the big hammer at the ready and his eyes were those of a corpse.

With him came Betty York and Miss Connie, both of whom were holding hand-picks, the type of tool used by masons to chip out mortar, sharp-pointed and easily capable of penetrating a man’s skull. One part of Redpath’s mind, escaping into irrelevancy, noted that all three tools were brand-new and thought, Good old Miss Connie—she always delivers the goods.

“Stay back,” he ordered, dry-mouthed, wondering if the three flesh-puppets before him could still be reached by human speech. “I don’t want to hurt you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Miss Connie bulged her eyes at him and said, “Slughhh, slughhh, slughhh.” And then, in spite of the fact that the bed was between her and Redpath, she came walking straight towards him, stepping up on to the mattress with unnatural litheness.

Tennent and Betty moved round the end of the bed. Redpath backed away, flailing the air with the opened bottle of petrol, hurling its contents across the room in wavering zigzags. The three paused for a moment as the volatile fluid splashed across their bodies, then resumed their advance. Tennent was shifting his grip on the sledge-hammer, preparing to commit murder with it, and the two women were making little clawing movements with their picks.

“I’m warning you,” Redpath breathed, dropping the empty bottle and dragging the cigarette lighter out of his jacket pocket. Betty hissed and darted forward. Redpath flicked the wheel of the lighter and his whole hand caught fire, sheathing itself in a gauntlet of pale yellow flame. He pushed Betty away from him, simultaneously igniting her clothing, and she staggered against Tennent. Miss Connie came swooping down on Redpath from the direction of the bed, like a falling scarecrow, and he felt a stabbing pain in his left shoulder. He hit her with his burning fist, saw her topple sideways, and sprang across the bed towards the door. He reached it in a single leap and hurled himself out onto the landing, peripherally aware that Tennent had already stripped himself of his jacket and was using it to extinguish Betty’s clothing. Miss Connie had bounded to her feet like a champion gymnast and was tearing at her black dress.

The comparatively cool petroleum flame which had enveloped Redpath’s hand had blown away in the rush of air, leaving a stinging sensation. Fearful that the bedroom was about to explode, he ran to the stairs and plunged down them, still cradling his firebomb. He reached the middle landing, sprinted along it and was half-way down the stairs to the hall when he saw something that brought him to a slithering, bumping halt. The door to the living-room was open, creating a foreshortened dark aperture, and projecting from the bottom of that aperture he could see the toe of a workman’s boot.

Albert’s waiting for me! I could get by him all right, but there are all kinds of bolts on that front door, and while I’m trying to get them open he’ll have lots of time to come up behind me. And with hands like his he doesn’t even need a hammer or a pickaxe…

“Slughhh, slughhh,” said a voice from above him, shockingly close, and a white-headed, skeletal figure, clad only in a silvery grey petticoat, lunged at him over the bannister of the landing. He warded off the clutching hands with a swing of his arm, heard footsteps thundering on the upper stairs, and launched himself to the bottom of the stairs in one dangerous bound. The newel post creaked as he swung round it and hurled himself towards the kitchen.

Nearly there, old son! Get the cellar door open, light the bottle and smash it on the steps, then sail out through that kitchen window. You’ve seen it in the flicks a hundred times, and if somebody like Randolph Scott can do it…

Redpath burst into the dark kitchen, turned to the right and pulled open the red door that led to the cellar. A greater darkness yawned at him from below, exhaling its warm breath. Ignoring the unmanning sense of dread that tried to buckle his knees, he raised the cigarette lighter and thumbed its rough-rimmed wheel. It failed to ignite. He tried again, aware of pounding footfalls in the hall, and again the flame was stillborn.

The valve! I forgot to hold down the frigging valve!

He thrust the lighter into the chilly wetness of the handkerchief-fuse and was in the act of spinning the wheel when somebody hit the kitchen door at speed from the other side. The door swatted Redpath on to the first of the cellar steps. He lost his footing and slid down several more steps in a sitting position. The bottle of petrol flew from his grasp and bounced down the steps into the blackness, with louder impacts each time.

Once, twice, thrice…silence.

It should have smashed! There’s a concrete floor down there—so the bottle should have smashed!

An electric light came on, and in the same instant the sledgehammer whirred past Redpath’s head and battered a huge cake of plaster out of the wall at his side. Wilbur Tennent—stripped to his vest and jockey shorts—was standing over him, glaring with his terrible corpse’s eyes, already making another swing with the hammer. Redpath escaped him by leaping the rest of the way down into the cellar, and was committed to the descent, totally unable to turn back, when he saw that most of the walls and floor were covered with a shifting, glistening reddish-brown sludge. The mass, which was like a slurry of clotting blood and fragments of liver, was on the move. It was flowing away from the bottom of the steps, leaving a clear area at the centre of which lay Redpath’s petrol bomb.

Dear God, my first nightmare was right!

I’VE WALKED INTO THE HOUSE’S STOMACH!

His capacity for terror exhausted, his mind saturated with dread, Redpath snatched up the bottle and backed into the corner nearest the bottom of the steps. The obscene tide ceased its retreat and began to flow towards him, reaching out with yearning stalks and tendrils which gorged and fattened on internal fluids before being reabsorbed into the main body.

At the same time Wilbur Tennent slowly came down the rest of the steps with his hammer, followed by Miss Connie and Betty York, who both were carrying their lethal little picks. Betty had pulled off her outer clothing, revealing the angry pinkness of burns on her stomach and thighs, and her hair was shrivelled into cindery lumps on one side of her head. Her eyes were like Tennent’s, blobs of lifeless jelly.

Redpath, moving with the mechanical precision of a robot, thumbed the wheel of his lighter, this time remembering to hold down the gas valve. It produced a spear of blue flame which he touched to the bottle in his other hand, creating a flaming yellow torch which threw out light and heat. The edge of the creeping brown mucus immediately stopped moving. Redpath raised the bottle higher and by the extra illumination it provided saw that, far back in the amorphous mass, there was the suggestion of a central structure, a rounded hummock of protoplasm containing something which might have been a sunken eye. The sight of it began to draw the life from his body, threatening to turn him into an immobile assembly of levers and joints without volition of its own.

It’s taking me again, Leila, and so quickly this time!

I’ve got to throw the bottle before it explodes in my face—but I’ve just realised why it won’t work.

There’s nothing down here to burn!

The petrol alone might injure the Once-born, but it’s too big to be killed this way. I didn’t expect it to be so big. It doesn’t make any difference, anyway, because…because…

Even the capacity for thought deserted Redpath as he saw that Tennent had reached the bottom of the steps and was coming towards him with the hammer poised at his right shoulder. He tried to shift his weight in preparation for evasive action, but a total paralysis had been imposed on his body. It was impossible for him even to open his fingers and drop the petrol bomb. Tennent moved closer, raised the hammer above his head and halted in that attitude, teetering, as the brown-clad figure of Albert materialized directly in front of him.

The appearance was instantaneous, magic, stupefying.

Although Redpath had deduced that the little man had the ability to teleport himself, actually seeing the power in action produced a pang of wonder which affected him significantly even though his perceptions were already overloaded by the imminence of death and the hideous encompassing presence of the alien creature. He stared in something like superstitious awe as Albert spread his arms, turning himself into a protective crucifix which stood between Redpath and the upraised hammer.

“Get out of the way,” Tennent said in an inhuman monotone. “If you don’t get out of the way I’ll have to kill you.”

“That would be a good idea,” Albert replied softly, “but you can’t do it. You see, I’m the only one here that the gaffer still needs. It’s all happening, Wilbur—just the way Prince Reginald told us it were going to happen.”

“He was lying.”

“No! He told us the God’s truth. It’s been going on for ten minutes and more. The gaffer’s been trying to make me take him to the other house. And I’ve been fighting him off, Wilbur. I’ve been resisting, Wilbur. For the first time in twelve years I got up enough spunk to resist the bugger.”

The living brown walls of the cellar heaved once, like a chamber in a beating heart, and Albert staggered as though he had been struck. He turned to face Redpath. His face was pale, streaked by rivulets of sweat, and his eyes were flakes of ice.

“I owe this to you, lad. The gaffer’s scared and he’s getting old, so he can’t keep me down like he’s used to—but you gave him the most trouble. The harder he had to try to keep you down, the easier it was for me to come back up.” Albert paused to swallow painfully. “You’ve got to keep fighting, lad. Don’t pack up now. If you can throw that there bottle you’re holding, that should do the trick. I can get us out of here…end this thing for good an’ all.”

Redpath was aware of the bottle becoming dangerously hot in his hand, threatening to turn him into a human torch, but he was unable to hurl it away from himself. “I…I…Can you get me out, as well?”

Albert gave him a strange, sad smile. “You’re not part of us yet, lad—you’re still clean.”

“Clean?”

“That’s what I said. You see—you never had to help us feed the gaffer.”

“Oh!” Redpath looked into Albert’s eyes and saw something there that went far beyond ordinary pain, something he shrank from knowing.

“Aye, lad, it’s as bad as that.” Albert turned away to face Wilbur and the two women. “Don’t leave it all to me and John! For pity’s sake, give us a hand to get this thing over and done with at last.” His voice was tortured, each word like the shattering of a bone.

Tennent opened his mouth, made a harsh rattling sound far back in his throat and swung the sledge-hammer. It slid from his grasp at the high point of its arc and went tumbling through the air to come down near the central mound of liver-like plasm. It disappeared below the surface in a dark welter of flying jelly.

A silent scream furled through Redpath’s mind, drowning out his senses.

He was only distantly conscious of the loathsome brown tide surging forward, moving with appalling swiftness, reaching out with blind tentacles. It engulfed his own ankles and he felt pain there, but the sensation was numbed by his blurred awareness of what was happening to Tennent, Betty and Miss Connie. Where the slime touched the bare flesh of their legs the skin dissolved on the instant, leaving the musculature exposed and red, glistening with all the awful clarity of an anatomy chart. Miss Connie fell to her hands and knees in the slurry, then struggled up again with hands that seemed to be encased in crimson gloves.

Only Albert was untouched. He stood in a circle of clean concrete, unmoving, his eyes searing into Redpath’s soul.

Redpath, humbled and inspired, made a supreme effort to throw the petrol bomb. His left arm gave a spastic jerk. The bottle slipped from his grasp and landed in the writhing brown ooze near his feet. It did not break, but there was an immediate spillage of burning petrol. The slurry retreated radially, like an iris springing open, and another soundless scream yammered through Redpath’s head.

He clapped both hands to his temples and tried to focus his gaze on Albert. The little man had closed his eyes. His face, in spite of its acromegalic deformities, was that of an ancient high priest. Redpath had a final fragmentary vision of him—uniquely heroic in his scuffed boots and stained brown overalls with the pack of Lucky Strikes projecting from one pocket—then the image was blasted away in the incredible white heat of a furnace.

He existed no more.

The three capering crimson figures that had been with him existed no more.

The mass of sentient, brown protoplasm that had been with him existed no more.

Redpath felt the death of the Once-born. He sank to his knees in the pure, peaceful emptiness of the cellar and for an instant, with the last vestiges of the telepathic facility which had been foisted upon him, he experienced the surprise and satisfaction which coursed through the composite entity of the alien ship. He even picked up echoes of the smaller joy, faint as starlight in the noon-time sky, of the invisibly falling pod as it was recalled from the brink of non-existence.

Then the third eye of his mind closed for ever.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

There remained a lingering sadness, an intense pity for four human beings whose lives had been blighted by something worse than any disease, who had lived in dreadful captivity, and whose deaths had come in a climax of pain and terror. And there must have been many others throughout the years—people like Prince Reginald and the Rodgers, the unfortunate owners of the house in Gilpinston. Who was to say how many flayed bodies of humans and animals and birds, perhaps still alive, had been spirited out of the cellar and disposed of by Albert or Miss Connie?

Redpath knelt for a time on the clean white concrete of the underground floor, wondering if he would ever again know a peaceful night of sleep, then it came to him that he, at least, was still alive—and was faced with all the practical responsibilities of the living.

He went through the silent house from top to bottom, turning out all the lights, making sure there were no smouldering scraps which might later create a full-scale blaze. His progress was slow—largely because the pain from his ankles and injured left shoulder had combined with that from the older wound at his stomach to impede or complicate his every move—and it was past one o’clock when he let himself out through the front entrance. He made certain that the lock on the outer door had engaged properly, then picked up his hold-all and the portable television set and went along the short, red-tiled path to the street.

The rain was still falling steadily, producing yellow candy floss haloes around the street lamps, and the windows were dark in every house. There was no sound except for the lapping of water in the cast-iron downpipes and gutters. It’s beautiful, he thought, gazing about him in deep contentment. If my hair was black, and if I had bullet holes in me instead of odd punctures, this could be a great old Francis Lederer movie.

He squared his shoulders and, without a further glance at number 131, set off in the direction of the blue-green aerial glow which marked the course of the Woodstock Road. Before he had taken a dozen paces the wetness of the pavement had penetrated what remained of his shoes, but he was in a mood to enjoy any kind of natural sensation, and he continued walking steadily, undismayed.

On reaching the first corner he turned right and was angling across the street when a cherry-coloured mini came into view a short distance ahead. His immediate recognition of the vehicle had nothing to do with any kind of prescience. Blinking with gratitude, he stopped under a street lamp and waited until the car had drawn to a halt beside him. When Leila opened the near-side door he raised the television set as a signal for her to lower the back of the passenger seat, then stowed it with his bag on the rear seat, all without speaking. He maintained his silence while he got in, sat down and closed the door.

“Just tell me one thing,” he said, after what seemed a suitable pause, “did you bring me a stick of Chicago rock?”

“Oh, John!” She blurted his name with a mixture of evident concern and relief. “I’ve been so worried about you. Last night you were so…”

“I know what I was like last night, but I promise you I won’t be like that ever again. It’s all over.”

“I did try to go to the States,” she said quietly, huddling into her coat. “But I ran out of nerve.”

He shook his head. “No—you ran out of conviction. You couldn’t really believe any of it, could you?”

“I’m sorry, John.”

“It isn’t your fault.” He smiled his reassurance. “I want you to do me a couple of favours, though. The first one is that I want you to listen to me while I go over the whole thing right from the start. There’s nobody else I could talk to about this, and I need to spell it all out just once, just to get it clear in my head, just to separate the nightmares from the reality before I bury the whole episode. Is that all right?”

“I’m listening.” She returned his smile, put her hand on his shoulder and quickly withdrew it as he flinched away. “What’s the matter, John?”

“That reminds me of the second favour I was going to ask— would you please drive me to the hospital?”

“What have you done to yourself?”

“What have I…?” The simple, natural question—with its implication that, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, his various injuries had to have prosaic causes—gave Redpath a sudden clear insight into how his story was going to sound.

This hole in my shoulder? Why, quaint old Miss Connie did that with a pick just before I set fire to her.

This burn on my hand? Oh, I got that because the Once-born paralysed me and made me hold a blazing petrol bomb a bit too long.

That skin missing from round my ankles? That’s where the Once-born started to eat me. It lives on keratin, you see. That’s right—the protein you find in skin and hair and nails and feathers and claws. It’s a good job for me my socks are nylon and my shoes have plastic uppers. Otherwise I’d really have been in a mess! Yes, sirree!

Redpath reviewed the account of the past three days which he had been going to present to Leila. It began at breakfast time on Tuesday, with his hindsighted belief that Albert had appeared briefly on his doorstep with the intention of warning him, and had himself been frightened off by a vision of how the Once-born could repay treachery. Albert featured prominently in the mid-part of the story, too—whisking Redpath off to America on the instantaneous magic carpet of psychokinesis and deliberately letting him see what the Once-born did to human beings. And, of course, Albert had played the most important role of all in the final climactic scene. Everything had hinged around the handicapped, doomed, heroic little man—but where was Albert now? Was there any point in telling Leila that Albert and the others had probably been consumed in the huge open-hearth furnace of the Calbridge steelworks, but that it might have been in a volcano or at the centre of the Earth or at the centre of the sun?

How could she believe what he had to say? Looking back on the entire nightmare, how could he believe it himself?

“John, I asked you what you’d done to yourself,” Leila said.

He looked at her abstractedly for several seconds, coming to a decision. “I jabbed my shoulder on a spike that was sticking out of a wall, and after that I spilled some acid around my ankles.”

“Then I’d better get you to the hospital.” She put the car into gear and accelerated away from Raby Street. “Some people shouldn’t be allowed out alone.”

“I’m one of them. What do you think we could do about it?”

“That is the most inelegant proposal I’ve ever heard of,” Leila commented, keeping her gaze on the road ahead. “I suppose I should consider it on those grounds alone.”

“Do that,” Redpath said, easing himself down in the seat, turning his thoughts away from a past which was growing more unreal with every fleeting second, and towards a future whose realities had yet to emerge from the haze of shifting probabilities.