Kronk

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Gabriel was the first to return to consciousness. Through the uncurtained windows he saw the sun low in the sky. It was late afternoon. Memories came flooding back into his mind. He looked at Camilla, lying by his side, a pale crumpled doll. He tried to rouse her gently, but failed. In the end he had to shake her.

“Wake up. Wake up, darling! For crysake, wake up!”

She opened her eyes and rolled them vaguely, not focussing. Then she went back to sleep.

He shouted at her and shook her, and eventually it paid off.

“Go away,” she murmured. “I want to die in my sleep.”

“You can’t. There isn’t enough time. If we don’t want trouble in large helpings, I think we

“I ache,” she protested. “My legs ache, my breasts ache, my back aches… I got raped have to get out of here fast.”

somewhat. Remember?”

“In case you didn’t notice, I started a small rapefest myself. But there isn’t time to complain.

We have to be elsewhere.”

“Why?”

“Because whoever snatched the animals may suddenly get interested in us.”

She sat up and thought about it. “I can’t go anywhere until I’ve had a bath,” she decided. “I am an old woman of ninety-seven, I have been trampled upon by elephants, and there are certain private injuries about which I do not care to speak.”

“Then we’ll both take baths,” he exploded. “And if the goddam Security wallahs come we’ll ask them to wait nicely outside the goddam door.”

Camilla burst out laughing. “Be sensible, love. We don’t know who took the animals. Or why. If it was a Security jape, I’m sure we would have already been trolleyed… A bath I must have. A bath we must have. And while we are having it let’s try to think.”

Gabriel accepted defeat. But in order to speed matters up a little he ran to the bathroom and turned on the taps. Then he and Camilla struggled out of their crumpled clothes.

He looked at her, noting the bruises and the scratches. He put his arms round her and kissed her gently. “You were absolutely right about the bath. I’ll comfort you properly later. As a penance, I will take the shallow end.”

The bath was excruciatingly luxurious. Gabriel had added lacings of foam, and he and Camilla sat gazing solemnly at each other across miniature alpine ranges of bubbles.

“How much money have we got?”

“The NaTel scrip, for a start,” said Camilla. “That is thirteen thousand. And there is the five thousand Eustace gave me on signature. I never touched it. So we are really quite rich.”

“Good. Enough to enable us to lift off and become two lost people. You will probably have to dye your hair, and I will probably have to grow a beard.”

Camilla pouted. “I don’t see why. I don’t see that we have done anything really wrong -

unless you count the St. Paul’s fiasco.”

“I do count St. Paul’s. But what is more important is that we are still in possession of stolen bacteria, the property of MicroWar.” He grinned. “And so, probably, after last night’s efforts are a lot of other people.”

Camilla was trying to sculpt a sexy torso in the bath foam. “I don’t see that we can be blamed, really. It’s all Eustace’s fault. He shouldn’t have shot me full of P 939.”

“Eustace is dead. We are alive. Therefore we can be blamed — especially since we didn’t trot along to MicroWar and tell the whole story.”

Camilla was silent for a moment or two. Then she said somewhat irrelevantly: “I’m very much in the prommy phase… I keep wanting it. You would think I’d have had quite enough for a day or two, but I keep wanting it… Have you reached the prommy phase yet, Gabriel?”

He considered carefully. “Yes, I must have. I did quite a job on those NaTel bitches, but I still want some more.”

“Good!”

“If we go on like this,” he said gloomily, “we’ll kill ourselves.”

“Can you think of a better way… Mind you, I also feel terribly hungry. Perhaps I’m beginning phase two.”

Gabriel sighed. “Let’s try to concentrate on immediate problems. Did Eustace ever mention the possibility of an antidote?”

“No. He tried to make it resistant to all known antibodies etcetera. He seemed to think he’d done a good job.”

“Shit! We are probably stuck with it for ever, then.” Suddenly he brightened. “But so, of course, is everyone else.”

Camilla giggled. “Through no fault of our own, we’re off to a good start. Eustace claimed that the incidence of infection was almost one hundred per cent… Surely it can only have a good effect. After all, its purpose is to stop people being nasty and violent to each other.”

“For it to have a good effect,” Gabriel pointed out, “the spread will have to be rapid and universal.”

“Human nature,” said Camilla solemnly, “will take care of that. The point is, what about us?”

“We certainly don’t stay here. We take whatever things you need, then we close the place up to make it look as if you have gone away for a long holiday — which you will have. We must find ourselves an apartment somewhere — probably in London until we have worked out long-term plans. And then, God for Harry, England and St. George, we just have to do our tiny duty.”

Camilla’s foam torso collapsed and she splashed about with her hands petulantly. Small blobs of foam floated about the bath, some settling on Gabriel’s hair and face.

“I think I know what you mean,” said Camilla. “It’s going to be hard work — but not uninteresting.”

Gabriel shrugged. “We ought not to waste any more time here. It’s too dangerous. Let’s get moving.”

Reluctantly, they both stood up and got out of the bath. Gabriel looked at Camilla, steaming and half covered in blobs of foam, and reached for a towel. Then a look of confusion came over his face, and he stared down at a somewhat sudden erection. He dropped the towel.

“Camilla,” he said thickly, “I’m sorry. I really am in the prommy phase! What a nuisance!”

He held her close, letting their wet foamy bodies shake and arch with a terrible urgency.

“I thought,” panted Camilla, “I thought you said we were not to waste any more time.”

He laid her gently down on the bathroom floor. Then he lay on top of her, savouring the first warm, strong, compulsive movements of coupling. It felt like the first time for days and days and days.

“This… isn’t… wasting time,” he managed to say almost reasonably. “It’s… it’s… simply…

keeping in training!”

He began to talk to Ilyich.