Matlock's System

1

Matlock looked carefully round the hall as the Chairman’s voice droned on. He had heard the introduction, or ones like it, too many times to listen any more. There had been a time when they flattered him, but that was long ago. Now he used these moments to take in the meeting, look for trouble spots, recognize old supporters, old enemies.

The hall itself was as familiar as his own living-room. There were cobwebs in corners and a smell of damp stained the air. The cream-coloured walls (white originally, he seemed to remember, but now darkened by a patina of cigarette smoke and grime which invited brave fingers to trace slogans and abuse in it) were cracked and rutted. The whiteness of the powdery plaster shone against the dark background.

There will be more cracks tonight, thought Matlock.

The only advantages of this hall were not his. It was in the middle of the oldest, most decaying district of Manchester. It was several narrow, ill-lit streets away from the nearest transport-stop. It was in a curfew area.

There were halls like this available to Matlock in every major population centre. Dingy. Unattractively situated. Scarred. More scarred after every meeting.

Matlock had protested. He always protested. It was good policy to form patterns of behaviour. Sometimes the unexpected could work if the conditioning had been good.

“You’re not suggesting that your freedom of speech is being interfered with, are you?” the Chief Constable had asked. “You’ve never been refused permission for a meeting in my area. This just happens to be the only hall available.”

“Like last time. And the time before.”

“You’ve been unlucky, Mr. Matlock. Still, you couldn’t hope to fill a larger place, could you?”

Matlock had smiled.

“With your own contribution, we might manage it, Chief Constable.”

“I’m sorry you’re not satisfied. We like to co-operate. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll call an early meeting of the Watch Committee and put you on the agenda.”

“That would be kind of you.”

Matlock had halted as he left.

“Do you remember a time, Chief Constable, when Watch Committees gave instructions to the police?”

“Good day, Mr. Matlock. And please remember, no trouble. You’re getting a bad reputation. The Committee will have to take that into consideration as well. For your own sake, keep things quiet. You’re sixty-nine now, aren’t you? You might as well end your days peacefully.”

At the back of the hall, which smoke and the place’s own miasma made an area of almost impenetrable shade, Matlock could dimly make out a row of figures on whose breasts glinted the silver circle of the police. He let his eyes drift slowly forward. It wasn’t a bad audience even when you removed the 25 per cent he knew to be provocateurs, plain-clothes men and layabouts looking for fun. There must be well over a hundred people present. Then he laughed inwardly and humourlessly at his estimate of a hundred as a‘good’ audience.

There were five million living within a radius of thirty miles.

He let his drifting gaze halt when he reached the front row. There were only four people sitting there. Three of them he knew. More than knew. They were his, and he belonged to them. Colin Peters, his agent. Ernst Colquitt his chief assistant and heir-apparent. And Lizzie Armstrong, his secretary. She smiled broadly at him as his eyes paused on her. He drooped an eyelid in reply, then moved on to the fourth.

He had never seen him before, but him he knew also. At least he knew him in general terms. Sitting two or three seats away from the others; dressed in a charcoal-grey suit, brilliantly white shirt, dark-blue tie split down the middle by a thin silver line; holding an elegant leather document case on his lap; he was present at all the meetings and sat as impassively as his fellows had under Matlock’s close scrutiny.

The Chairman’s voice changed gear and Matlock brought his attention back to the figure beside him. Percy Collins was a few years younger than Matlock, but looked considerably older. In this day and age it was strange to see a man looking so old. Matlock’s own hair was still mainly brown, his face relatively unlined, his cheeks full, his teeth sound. Percy on the other hand looked like an octogenarian in the old days. His crown rose in wrinkled baldness out of a few wisps of white hair which clung round his ears and nape. His face skin hung in leathery pouches and his jaw-bone protruded like a loop of wire through muslin. But his eyes were clear and alight with enthusiasm, and as always they reassured Matlock when he felt doubts about the kind of image people like Percy gave to the movement.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Matthew Matlock!”

He had allowed his thoughts to drift again and was not quite ready, but years of experience in public speaking took him smoothly to his feet as applause, enthusiastic from the front rows, rippled back and lapped itself out in the shadows at the back. Matlock’s practised ear told him that things were worse than he had expected. He readjusted his estimate of the sympathetic audience to nearer seventy five than a hundred.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for those kind words,” he began, smiling down at Percy. They were the only occupants of the platform. If I am to be a target, he had said at an early stage, let us at least put a premium on accuracy and award marks only for bullseyes, not for inners, outers and magpies.

“Tonight I want to concentrate your attention on one thing and one thing only. Budget Day. In a few weeks’ time the Government will be bringing in yet another Budget, its thirty-fourth since it first came to power. Since then there have been nine years in which the Government did not feel it necessary to introduce a formal Budget and merely contented itself with using its majority to bulldose through one or two more economically restrictive measures in the normal course of Parliamentary business.”

“We elected them to make laws, Matlock. What’s wrong with that?”

” Matlock nodded genially at the interrupter.

“I shall answer you in a minute, friend. But let me continue. This means that this Government has had forty-two years of uninterrupted power. It is forty-two years since the Unirads first won office. And it is thirty-eight years since the introduction of the measure which has been central to all Budgets since. I mean the Age Bill.”

“That’s history, Matlock!” a derisive voice jeered.

“How did you vote then, Matlock? You were keen enough then!”

“Getting on a bit now, aren’t you?” “Anarchist bastard!”

Something swung through the air and dropped at his feet. It was an egg. Matlock was unmoved. He didn’t mind eggs.

“My friends,” he shouted. “Listen to me. In a few weeks we’ll get a new Age. And you know and I know which way it’s going. It can’t go up. It MUST come down. In a few weeks, Jack Browning, our beloved and ageless Prime Minister, will be covering up his mistakes with years of our lives. OUR LIVES!”

There was a lull in the tumult building up below. For a brief and rare optimistic moment, Matlock thought he might get a hearing.

The neat man in the front row, still impassive, straightened up and half- looked round.

“My friends,” said Matlock in a quieter tone, then gave a gasp of pain and clapped his hand to his face. A marble hurled from the back of the hall had struck him just below the eye. A cheer went up mixed with mocking laughter and suddenly there was a tremendous rattling as a shower of marbles and ball-bearings bounced on the bare boards of the stage. Matlock and Percy turned their backs on the audience and bent forward to protect their heads. This also had the effect, they had learnt from experience, of inviting the missile throwers to aim at their behinds. A politician’s arse can absorb anything, Percy was fond of saying, and besides it puts the audience in a good mood. The English have always found the backside comic.

There was some more laughter now, but things were obviously planned to go further. A couple of dozen men were moving purposefully towards the platform, pushing chairs and their occupants to one side with equal violence. Others were tearing down pro-Matlock posters from the walls. Matlock’s own supporters protested vociferously. The neat man settled in his seat and relaxed.

The hail of marbles eased off as the hecklers found other work to do, and Matlock turned round. Below him in the hall a small riot was developing. Much of it was still verbal and the noise itself was bent and twisted by the warped acoustics of the old room. Here and there pushes were changing into punches and already there was the splintering noise caused by the breaking of legs off chairs.

Matlock took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and blew his nose.

“MY FRIENDS!”

The harsh, ear-shattering, metallic tones cut almost contemptuously into the hubbub and stilled action and noise alike.

“MY FRIENDS, WHILE YOU ARE FIGHTING EACH OTHER, JACK BROWNING IS TRIMMING YOUR LIVES. IT IS NO SECRET THAT IF HE DARED HE WOULD GO BELOW THE SO-CALLED BIBLE BARRIER. EVEN THOSE OF YOU WHO BELIEVE IN THE AGE LAWS MUST BE DISTURBED THAT ALREADY WE HAVE THE LOWEST EXPECTATION OF LIFE IN EUROPE!”

The neat man rose to his feet and looked round at the audience. The hecklers were puzzled, uncertain what to do. One tried a shout but the metallic voice, now clearly recognizable as Matlock’s, swallowed up the sound without trace.

“BUT MORE DISTURBING STILL IS THE CRIMINAL INCOMPETENCE WHICH HAS PERPETUATED THE VERY CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH MADE AGE CONTROL ACCEPTABLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.”

Some of the audience began to sit down again. The neat man nodded to someone in the shadows.

“FORTY YEARS AGO THIS COUNTRY ALONG WITH MANY OTHERS WAS BANKRUPT. THE CAUSE, WE WERE TOLD, WAS OVER POPULATION. THE REAL CAUSE, THEN AS NOW, WAS UNDER PRODUCTION; THAT IS, BAD MANAGEMENT, AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS.”

From the shadows at the very rear of the hall a line of policemen moved forward on a word of command. They wore crash-helmets and carried truncheons.

“Come on now. Break it up, will you. Come on.”

They picked their way methodically through the overturned chairs.

“IT WAS THEN THAT THE PARTY WHICH HAS SINCE SPAWNED BROWNING PUT FORWARD ITS SOLUTION. I KNOW. FOR IT WAS MY SOLUTION.”

Only the hecklers and the police were still standing. Even some of the former were taking their seats. Then Matlock saw one of their number, a swarthy, burly man he had already recognized as some kind of leader, turn to the nearest policeman and knee him viciously in the crutch. His agonized scream rose above even the recording and within seconds the police were full into the seated audience swinging their truncheons indiscriminately.

Matlock rushed to the front of the platform.

“Colin! Ernst! Get Lizzie out of here!”

Even in speaking he saw he was too late. Already the fighting had reached the front of the hall. He reached forward to pull Lizzie up on to the platform but his own arm was seized by a fresh-faced youth who dragged him down to the floor. He lay stunned, his arms instinctively raised to protect himself from the blows the youth was raining into his face.

“You old bastard — you old bastardyou want to live for ever — I’ll show you what you’ll get — what you deserve — you old bastard! bastard! bastard!”

The youth was weak with hysteria, his rosy cheeks stained with angry tears, and his blows were losing force. For a moment Matlock saw Ernst trying to drag his attacker off him, but he in turn was seized from behind and disappeared backwards into the mèlée. Matlock carefully thrust his index fingers up the youth’s nostrils and rose with him, then gently deposited the screaming boy on the edge of the platform. He could hear his own recorded voice still booming out in the background — but very much in the background now.

“Lizzie!” he called, “Lizzie!”

There was no sign of her in the mass of struggling, wrestling, punching bodies. He tried to force his way forward to where he had last seen her, but found it impossible to make any progress. Women were screaming all over the hall and he was certain he recognized her voice in one of the screams. Leaping forward again, he began dragging men out of the solid heaving wall in front of him and casting them to one side. He seized a uniformed figure by the shoulders and pulled him back. The man turned round with great agility and swung his truncheon. Matlock’s arms were trapped against his sides by sheer pressure of bodies and he watched the truncheon’s back swing with helpless horror.

But before it could descend, a delicate white hand touched momentarily on the policeman’s wrist.

“Not this one, thank you, Sergeant. Come along, please, Mr. Matlock.”

It was the neat man, unruffled by the violence. He guided Matlock through the crowd with no more difficulty than he would have found moving through a well-attended cocktail party.

“In here, please, Mr. Matlock,” he said opening a door. They stepped out into the corridor and he closed the door behind them which cut out most of the noise except Matlock’s voice booming out of the hidden loudspeakers.

“WHAT HAVE WE LEFT TO FEAR? WHAT HAVE WE LEFT TO PREVENT EVERY ONE OF US LEADING A USEFUL, ACTIVE, COMPLETE LIFE TILL NINETY? TILL A HUNDRED? WE NEED HARDLY FEAR DISEASE. MEDICAL SCIENCE CAN CURE THEM ALL. WE NEED FEAR ACCIDENTS, I SUPPOSE. BUT CARE CAN PREVENT THEM.

NO. ALL WE REALLY NEED TO FEAR IS… ”

The sound ceased without preamble. The silence fell strangely on Matlock’s ears.

“The recorder must have been well hidden. It has taken us rather too long to find it,” said the neat man with a pleasant smile.

He moved forward along the corridor and stopped outside a room marked ‘Private’.

“After you, please.”

Matlock went in. Seated beside an electric fire, smoking a cigarette, was Lizzie.

“Thank God you’re safe!”

She rose and flung her arms around him.

“How are you?” asked Matlock. “How did you get out?”

“The Inspector kindly removed me.”

Matlock turned to the neat man. “

“Thank you for that.”

The Inspector smiled and nodded.

“It is our job. Now, Mr. Matlock let us get down to business. I have here…” The door burst open and Colin rushed in. His face was bloody and his tunic tom so that it flapped down behind him like a tailcoat.

“Matt,” he said, and staggered against the wall.

Matlock stepped forward and took his arm.

“OK Colin. Come and sit down.”

“No, Matt. It’s not me. It’s Percy. He’s been hurt — badly I think.”

Matlock left the room without a pause and ran down the corridor.

The hall was almost empty now except for the police and one or two casualties. But lying near the edge of the platform, his head cradled in Ernst’s lap, was Percy. His bald crown was a ruin of congealed blood but his face was relaxed and almost content.

Ernst looked up at Matlock and did not seem to see him for a moment.

Then, “He’s dead, Matt,” he said. “He’s dead.”

Matlock looked down at the face which had always seemed strangely old but now seemed strangely young.

“Leave him be, Ernst,” he said, then spun round to confront the Inspector.

The neat man had been handed a chair leg, brown with blood and a few white hairs sticking to it. He examined it unemotionally then returned it to the sergeant.

“I am sorry we could not prevent this, Mr. Matlock.”

“Prevent it?” said Matlock. “I believe you have caused it. Chair-legs, truncheons, they’re all the same, except that one used to go with an honourable profession.”

The neat man reddened, but his voice was still pitched on the same even key as he replied.

“As you will realize, however, this unfortunate death is merely the most serious of a succession of serious incidents, Mr. Matlock, most of which can be traced back directly to the deliberately provocative tone of your own meeting.” He opened his document case and extracted a typewritten sheet.

“I have here an order, signed by the Chief Constable and approved by the Watch Committee, for your removal from the area of his jurisdiction forthwith. Any subsequent visits must be notified within twelve hours to the Central Police Station and any request for permission to hold a further meeting within the area must be preceded by a written request at least three months before the date of the proposed meeting. It’s all in this.” He handed the paper to Matlock who received it wordlessly.

“Now if you please. Seats have been reserved for your party on the nine-thirty Autotrain for London. We must hurry.”

Matlock folded the paper carefully and put it into his pocket.

“Thank you, Inspector,” he said looking at him with emotionless eyes. In the doorway beyond he saw Lizzie’s pale face with Colin’s, still paler, beside.

“Come on, Ernst,” he said abruptly. “Let’s go.”

“Percy?” said Lizzie. “Is he… ? Oh, Christ.”

Matlock led her gently away and Ernst, with Colin leaning heavily on his arm, came behind. Matlock took one look back before he left the hall. Policemen were quietly picking up the overturned chairs and putting to one side those which were broken. On the walls, as he had forecast to himself, fresh scars had appeared in the plaster. The result of missiles. Chairs. Truncheons. Heads. Scrawled along the entire length of one wall were the words Matlock is getting old.

He went out into the night.

There was a hovercar waiting for them outside, as always, and a still corridor of police led them to the open door. Matlock looked up and down the street. Not a spectator in sight, not a face at á window.

They climbed into the hovercar, the door slid silently to behind them, the magnetic-lock clicked.

“Reporters, Colin?” said Matlock.

Tonight he had no interest in reporters but needed the normal political reactions to still his confusion of thought.

“I’ll let them know, Matt, of course.”

The strain in Colin’s voice told the same story.

The opaque glass sheet which separated them from the front compartment of the car filled with a pale blue light then slowly cleared. Sitting beside the driver, but facing them was an ornately uniformed figure.

“I’m afraid we had to declare this an early curfew area this evening. Part of the Watch Committee’s new Social Drive. So it wasn’t worth while letting any reporters in, was it?”

Matlock looked at the Chief Constable with a surprise he did not show.

“You honour us tonight. Why let the meeting start if an early curfew was in force?”

The Chief Constable laughed.

“You had been given permission, Mr. Matlock, and the Committee does not give its word lightly. But I’m afraid that even without the unfortunate interruption, we would have had to bring you to an early halt. About now, I should think.”

As if on a word of command they heard the slow bell of the Curfew Patrol quite close and a moment later the solid bulk of the Curfew Wagon moved majestically by. Matlock had never been in one but he felt his usual tremor of revulsion as he watched the great shape slide past them. He remembered the description given him by a friend who had been inside. A dungeon on wheels.

“Chief Constable,” he said, “we will soon be at the station. What do you have to say to me? You are not here just to keep us company.”

“Nor from choice, Mr. Matlock. Despite what you may think, I am non-political. Merely the instrument of law and order, the organization of which is the politician’s business. I have been particularly instructed to have you removed from my patch this evening. I am merely ensuring that this is done.”

“Your instructions must have been very particular to bring you out in person.”

There was a pause while the Chief Constable lit a cigarette. The hovercar turned onto the brightly lit ramp which coiled its way over the centre of Manchester to the A-Train station.

“Very particular, Mr. Matlock. I will say good-bye now. I am sorry about your friend’s death. That may be a weakness, but I do not anticipate seeing you again.”

“Hardly a weakness in a law-officer,” began Matlock, but the panel was already tinged with blue and in seconds had resumed its former dull opacity.

The hovercar drew to a halt so close to an open door of the A-Train that they stepped from one to another without touching the platform. The train door slid shut behind them and they moved forward into their comfortably appointed compartment. Their luggage was already there, neatly stacked in a corner. The train began to move as they sat down.

For a long time nothing was said. Matlock sat by Lizzie who had not spoken a word since they left the hall.He put his hand over hers and pressed it gently, but there was no response. Finally, Colin, obviously determined to break the silence, said, “I’m sorry they managed to keep the papers away, Matt. Shall I get in touch with the nationals in town?”

Matlock shook his head.

“It’s not worth it. They won’t be interested. Or if any of them are, the news will be stale by the time they get licence from the Committee. Or at best it’ll get a para. It’s not worth it.”

Ernst leaned forward and put his hand on Matlock’s knee.

“Couldn’t that be the point of tonight? That it’s not worth it, I mean?”

They digested this for a while.

“This would mean,” said Colin, “that Percy’s death was planned. A warning. Not just an accident (if that’s the word) in the general fighting.”

“Yes.”

“Why not one of us?”

“Because,” said Matlock, “this way they can shovel us out of the area as a complete, unsullied unit and sweep poor Percy and the rest of the meeting under the carpet. Maximum warning, minimum fuss. I think you’re right, Ernst. It’s a new part in the jigsaw. It’s a different picture.”

Lizzie, who had been staring dully out of the window apparently not attending to a word, suddenly turned and dragged her hand from under Matlock’s. They saw that her face was wet with tears, but it was anger that twisted it now.

“So that’s good-bye to Percy, is it?” she snarled. “A piece in a jigsaw now. He was alive an hour ago. Our friend. Telling everyone how bloody great you were, Matlock. Then someone cracks his skull wide open and suddenly he’s a piece in a jigsaw, part of a game, more significant dead than he ever was alive. Then he was just an old friend we could rely on. Now he’s important. Now he’s dead.”

The tears had started again. Matlock reached out his hand, but she slapped it aside, stood up and flung out of the compartment.

The three men sat in silence for a moment.

They’re waiting for me to say something, do something, thought Matlock. They’re all waiting. Friends and foes alike. All waiting. And I’m no longer ready.

His right hand had involuntarily moved inside his loose jacket till it rested lightly over his heart. He increased the pressure till he could feel the rhythmic beat.

A machine. A machine running down. Ticking off years, days, hours. It is not many years since that was just a metaphor, he thought. It changed in my lifetime. I helped to change it.

The thought made him clench his hand into a sharp-cornered fist. Abruptly he stood up and followed Lizzie out of the door. She was standing staring through one of the observation ports and did not turn as he joined her. He put his arm over her shoulder but she shook it off impatiently.

“Go away, Matt.”

He looked through the port with her. Their own faces, shadowy, transparent, stared palely back at them. He forced his eyes to pass beyond and looked down at the blur of lights which was all that was visible of the Multicities over which the great elevated track of the Autotrains ran.

He did not try to touch her again and she showed no sign of awareness of his presence.

Finally he began to talk softly, monotonously.

“Lizzie Armstrong. Age forty-seven. Height five feet five inches. Weight eight stone two ounces. Blue eyes; brown hair; good teeth; mole on left hip; appendix scar; left breast slightly larger than right. Born Perth, Scotland. Resident in England twenty-three years, eighteen of them spent in the employment of Matthew Matlock. Took English citizenship seventeen years ago. A competent secretary, consistent in her errors. Two ‘m’s in amount. Two ‘c’s in necessary. Has been known to correct an audio-type machine.”

Lizzie’s eyes had come up to meet his from the shadow world in the port. He went on, expressionlessly.

“Loyal to a fault. Has served her master with unquestioning devotion. Intellectually. Spiritually. Sexually. Tends to boast that she knows him inside out.”

Lizzie turned to him.

“I know, Matt. Yet she seems incapable of understanding what he truly feels on the death of a friend. I know what you’re thinking. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t just Percy. It is this whole business. It seems so aimless somehow. Why not make a run for it, Matt? Go for Op. We can afford it. Or at least, duck out. Retire. Marry me. You’ve got six years at the present rate. Let’s make them easy, carefree years. Six contented years.”

Matlock grimaced.

“Less after the Budget.”

“Five then. Or four. Browning won’t dare go nearer the Bible Barrier than that. I’ll settle for four. And who knows? Things may take a turn for the better of their own accord. A boom perhaps. It could be ten.”

“In a free economy it could be twenty. It could be fifty.”

Lizzie stamped angrily.

“It could be none. I’ll settle for five. I think Ernst was right, you know. Percy was a warning. That could be you next time with blood on your head and your head in someone’s lap.”

Matlock shook his head.

“They wouldn’t dare. That at least I’m sure of. Not like that anyway. But you’re right in part, Lizzie. I’ll take part of your advice at least. I’ll give the meetings up. They can win that round.”

Lizzie had watched her employer’s expression closely as he spoke. Now she put her hands lightly on his lips.

“Matt, you’re talking about politics again. You’re retreating from yourself, from us.”

“It’s my life.”

“Not any longer. I’ve been watching you change for two or three years now. It was your life once; all your life. But now these plots and plans and policies are at least fifty per cent a refuge. You can hide in them. You didn’t really want to go to Manchester tonight, did you? It was pointless long before some thug split Percy’s skull.”

“No,” said Matlock defensively, “we achieved something. At least I got some of my words heard.”

Lizzie laughed derisively.

“You mean the tape and the loudspeaker? A prank. A joke. Oh I know, it took them by surprise. It broke the pattern. Percy broke the pattern too. Have you thought, perhaps they fixed Percy because you broke your precious pattern. In any case Matt, this wasn’t your idea was it? Not much lately has borne your mark. This stinks of Ernst.”

Matlock drew away now.

“Let’s not start on that tack again, Lizzie. Ernst is my chief assistant, my successor. And my friend.”

Lizzie shrugged indifferently and lit a cigarette as Matlock turned and re-entered the compartment. The two men in it were talking earnestly, but stopped as the door opened.

Ernst’s boyish face broke into a smile. He was by far the youngest there and looked another five years younger than his forty. Matlock smiled affectionately at him. There had been no doubt at all in his mind who to publicly declare as his successor when he had reached the statutory age four years earlier. The Age Law declared that every man in a position of public responsibility must at age sixty-five appoint a successor (or ‘understudy’ as he was generally and frivolously known) at least ten years younger. ‘In a position of public responsibility’ had needed a great deal of qualification and modification, and Matlock was still not wholly certain whether he as the ‘leader’ of a non-representational ‘party’ came under this section of the Bill. Dentists, youth leaders and newspaper reporters didn’t; doctors, civil servants of the top grade, broadcasting administrators did. These were only a few of the categories where doubt had arisen. Matlock had decided to be on the safe side.

To attack a law, he always declared, one must first make sure that one does not break it.

I must have been young and certain when I said that, he thought.

Now Lizzie had openly suggested (among other things admittedly) what had begun to stir in his own mind recently — what must begin to stir in the minds of many men of his age.

Go for Op.

It sounded flippant, casual, put like that. He forced himself to think what it really meant. It was a favourite theory of his that verbal abbreviations were often euphemistic to start with and morally blinding to finish with. To ‘go for Op’ meant, he formulated carefully, to use one’s wealth illegally and selfishly to pay for a criminal operation which would extend one’s life above and beyond the maximum permitted by the laws passed by a democratically elected government. So stringently applied were these laws, moreover, that it involved illegal exit from one’s country with (if it were to be worth while) sufficient funds to maintain one during the illegal extension of one’s life-span.

That just about covers it, he thought. Put like that, it is obviously out of the question.

Obviously?

Not obviously or I would not be thinking about it. This is the natural panic of age. These are last, and worst, growing pains.

Yet who would I harm? I have no one touchable by the law. I’m lucky in that respect.

Lucky?

Why had he not married Lizzie when Edna, his wife, died eighteen years ago?

Because I had not the right to involve her so closely with me in a dangerous struggle, he cried inwardly.

Suddenly he realized that he was twisting round in his seat and the others were looking at him with concern. Matlock had always set the tone of gatherings of his intimates, they respected his silence and had not spoken since he relapsed into his brown study. Lizzie had re-entered the compartment unnoticed and was regarding him with such loving concern that he forced himself to relax and smile at her.

It was still not too late, he thought. Perhaps that was the answer, a few final years of domestic contentment. At sixty-nine he was in the prime of life. Well, just a very little out of it. But sexually he was as active and as potent as ever he had been. He had hardly a grey hair; his body was tanned and fit. Lungs, liver and lights all in order, he thought, recalling this odd list from God knows where.

And heart?

Oh no trouble there. No one ever had any trouble there any more. Since the first transplant attempts in the nineteen-sixties, things had come a long way. Hearts could be popped in and out with vast speed and almost 100 per cent certainty of success.

And everyone had at least one heart operation in a lifetime. His hand strayed again to his chest. There running down his breast bone was the only large scar on his body. He had been the first, but since then the tidying-up had become so good that nowadays there was rarely a mark to be seen.

He had been the first.

He looked across again at Lizzie and thought of her soft round breasts which he knew so well. They had done a good job there. Scarcely a mark. Of course, with Lizzie’s generation they were already doing them much younger.

He had been the first.

He suddenly saw in his mind a vision of a young girl, naked on the operating table while white-coated men with rapid efficiency carved a hole in her chest and inserted a large clockwork device, all cogs and springs. This was always how he thought of it, though he knew well the actual electronic device was a mere millimetre in circumference.

He had been the first.

He was among those responsible that every man, woman and child in England had embedded in the heart a clock which after seventy years plus was going to sound an alarm, then stop. And the heart with it.

He stirred again and the others moved too. But this time it was because the smooth deceleration of the A-Train told them they were near their destination. He glanced at the wall-clock. It was ten-fifteen.

Colin followed his gaze.

“These bloody things are always late nowadays,” he said.

Ten minutes later they were standing silently in the lift which bore them down to street level.

“Come back to my place for a drink. We can talk things out,” said Ernst.

They all looked enquiringly at Matlock. He shook his head.

“No, thank you. We must talk, but not tonight. Nine-thirty tomorrow morning.”

He watched them move away, felt the urge to call Lizzie back. Instead he turned west and began his own slow walk home.

After a while he quickened his pace and paid more attention to the night and his surroundings. As always he admired the ingenuity of the store-artists. Nearly all the big shops were constructed of the new poro-glass which was window or wall at the turn of a switch, with the area and shape of transparency as easily controlled. He stopped outside Selfridges and watched as scene after scene revealed itself in depth as successive walls were cleared. It was like the transformation scene in the old pantomimes, he thought. It was also a very effective anti-burglar device. Though nowadays the new penalties had caused a considerable drop in the crime-rate. This was inevitably used as an argument in support of Age Laws, of course.

Matlock shivered and started walking again. Fifteen minutes later he was approaching the main door of the block of flats he lived in. When he was about thirty yards away, he noticed two things. The first was a large grey hovercar parked opposite the entrance. The second was a man coming towards him and about the same distance on the other side of his door. It was still early and even in this highly mechanized age walkers, especially in London, were fairly common. But the man’s strange, loose flapping, one-piece garment — a cross between a cloak and a dressing gown — caught Matlock’s attention. There was something about it which touched a chord in his mind, but odder still was the certainty growing in him that this man was going to speak to him, was there for the specific purpose of meeting him.

He increased his pace. So did the other, and they arrived at the door almost simultaneously. Matlock halted and the two men looked into each other’s face. Matlock saw a pair of deep-set, grey eyes, a flattened, pugilist’s nose and a fiercely unkempt brown beard. He had the feeling that the other was looking deeper into his own face and he resisted the strong temptation to speak first which this uncomfortable sensation produced.

But before he could learn whether his effort was to be rewarded, the silent contest was interrupted. The door of the hovercar slid smoothly open and a young man as extreme in his elegance as the bearded man in his disarray, stepped out.

“Mr. Matlock, Sir?” he said with the near insolent deference of office. “I have a message for you. Will you sign please?”

He handed over a small plain envelope and Matlock stabbed his forefinger automatically in the proffered receipt- wax. The bearded man had resumed his walk immediately the door opened and was now almost out of sight. Matlock could hardly believe that he had stopped at all.

The young man followed his gaze.

“Strange fellows about these days, Sir,” he said. “Goodnight to you, Mr. Matlock.”

He stepped back into the hovercar which pulled away instantly and noiselessly.

Matlock waited a few moments to see if the bearded man would return, but the street remained silent. Finally he operated his sonic key and entered the building. Immediately he was in his own flat he opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper. On it in an almost indecipherably ornate hand was written, ‘I would be awfully glad if you could call in to see me first thing tomorrow morning. Yours, Browning.’

He had been summoned to see the Prime Minister. Instead of his usual coffee and brandy, he took three sleeping tablets and went immediately to bed, knowing that if he sat up in thought for any time at all, he would in the end telephone Colin and Ernst. Or Lizzie. It might be interesting to see which ’phoned first.

But best of all was sleep.