Seahorse in the Sky

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS THREE o’clock in the afternoon, Standard Erewhon Time. The heat was oppressive. The days seemed to be getting longer and warmer; and, with the strange and feathery seeds of tall grasses blowing in untidy heaps along the street, there was every indication that it was high summer.

Russell Grahame sat on the steps of the hotel, holding a photograph in his hand and idly watching the drifting seed pile up against the useless Mercedes and the equally useless Saab. He wondered how long it would be before both cars were snowed under. The seed blew in from the great green savannah in visible clouds. It had caused several people to have acute but brief attacks of hay fever; but apart from that it seemed harmless enough. At the rate it was coming in, the whole street would probably be two or three inches deep in it during the course of the next few days. Perhaps, thought Russell, he ought to get a task force tidying the old town up. But he was feeling listless, as everyone else was; and the time to sweep the seed away would be when it had stopped blowing in.

Russell was not alone. Andrew Payne, sans strait-jacket but not sans bandages, was sitting beside him. So was the brown, childlike and curiously ethereal Selene Bergere. Selene had confessed some time ago that her real name was Jojane Jones. But nobody thought of her as Jojane. The name Selene seemed to fit her like a glove.

Ever since he had tried to commit suicide, she had appointed herself Andrew’s nurse. Now that he was almost back to normal, she still looked after him very carefully; and between the two of them there seemed to have developed a curiously touching brother and sister relationship.

Andrew’s return to normal, after many days of sheer vacancy alternating with brief fits of hysteria, was greatly assisted by the photograph that Russell now held in his hand. It was a flash photograph. The camera had been fixed in the supermarket, trained on the doorway and with its shutter operated by a simple trip string. Paul Redman had provided the equipment and rigged the camera up. Luckily, he had been travelling from Stockholm to London with two packs of film and half a dozen flash bulbs still unused. Tore Norstedt had added a refinement to the operation by arranging for the trip string also to set off a homemade electric buzzer. So it was possible to determine when the photograph had been taken. And it had been taken at about two-thirty in the morning.

It showed—with tantalizing lack of detail—the outline of a metallic spider carrying a crate of groceries, presumably to replenish stocks.

Thus was Andrew vindicated, the corroboration of his ‘vision’ working like a therapeutic charm.

Russell glanced again at the photograph, for about the twentieth time. The body of the spider was no larger than a football, with a small inverted cup-shape—possibly the sensing mechanism—set on top of the smooth sphere. It walked, apparently, on four multi-jointed legs and was also using four multi-jointed arms to support the box of groceries over its head/body. The entire machine—for clearly it was a machine—was no more than about a metre high.

“What do you make of it?” asked Andrew, gazing almost lovingly at the print that had helped to restore his sanity. “Do you think it has intelligence?”

“Possibly,” conceded Russell. “But I am betting that it is more likely to be a remote-controlled robot

…Of course, our trouble is that we are conditioned by orthodox human concepts. For all we know, this little joker could be the lord of the planet, having perhaps superseded his biologically-based creators. But I’m still betting he’s a relatively simple robot—the long arm, if you like, of his shy, retiring masters.”

Selene shuddered and moved closer to Andrew, who put his arm round her protectively and so gave Russell some inward amusement.

“I frighten easily, Mr. Russell,” she said. Because he was the acknowledged leader of the group she always referred to Grahame as Mr. Russell, despite his protestation. “I frighten very easily. What if there are hordes of these things, all waiting just to pounce on us?”

Russell laughed. “If they were going to pounce, Selene, they would surely have pounced some time ago. Instead of which, as you must admit, we have been looked after—or, at least, our needs have been provided for—very well. Personally, I think their basic task is to look after us and to—.” He stopped.

Mohan das Gupta had just come out of the supermarket. He ran across the street to them.

No bloody cigarettes,” announced Mohan.

“Well?”

“There were dozens of packs yesterday, but now there aren’t any.”

Grahame thought for a moment. “Are you sure nobody has been shopping before you?”

“It was my turn to bring the supplies over,” said Mohan. He grinned. “Perhaps somebody is playing funny games.”

“I doubt it,” said Russell. “It’s too hot for fun or games.”

“Reprisals,” said Andrew suddenly. “They are making reprisals.”

“I beg your pardon?” For a moment, Russell did not connect.

“The spiders—or whoever controls them—don’t like curiosity,” explained Andrew. “I saw one of them and I wound up as a temporary nut case, trying to carve myself. You can say I was scared out of my wits, of course—and I admit I was—but I can’t help thinking that, somehow, somebody gave me a helping hand when I went round the bend… Now we have managed to take a picture of one of them. They couldn’t make the camera have fits, and maybe for some reason they did not want to destroy it, so they are trying to discourage us by withholding something they know we use in great quantities.”

“An interesting theory,” conceded Russell. “The evidence is merely circumstantial… But—it could be so.”

“Or perhaps it’s more simple than that, old sport,” suggested Mohan with a grin. “Maybe they have simply run out. Maybe the chaps back at base didn’t count on us all becoming chain smokers.” He shuddered comically. “Oh, evil day! It’s the devil of a long jaunt to the nearest tobacconist’s.”

“Of course,” said Russell slowly, “the way to test Andrew’s notion is to set up the camera again and take another picture.”

Mohan’s eyes gleamed in his dark face. He threw up his hands in horror. “Not bloody likely! We can’t risk them cutting off the gin.”

Selene gripped Andrew’s arm very tightly. “Look!” she said, pointing down the street. “Oh, my god!

Oh, my god! What is it?”

A strange apparition seemed to have risen suddenly out of the bright green backcloth of the savannah. It began to walk or lurch almost drunkenly along the short strip of road towards them.

“Now will I believe almost anything,” said Russell in a tight voice. “Gunnar was right. There are knights as well as fairies at the bottom of our garden.”