Timescape

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

A BABBLE OF CONVERSATION MET PETERSON AS HE opened the front door. Through the entrance to the drawing room, across the stone hallway, he could see people talking rapidly. A burst of laughter, glasses clinking, a sugary swelling of the new Latin rhythms.

He paused only an instant. Without looking to either side he crossed the black and white squares of marble and went up the wide curved staircase. It was generally true that people would not intercept you if you passed by quickly, not letting anyone catch your eyes. It was perfectly reasonable that he should be there, after all; it was his town house. A guest would assume he and Sarah together were putting on this bloody party which he had forgotten, and that Peterson was tending to some domestic chore upstairs.

He moved silently on the deep carpet and crossed the landing. The hall bathroom door showed a crack of light at the floor; probably someone inside. He would be in the bedroom long enough for it to clear, but he should keep in mind the flow of traffic to and fro when he made his exit. He would have to go out the way he came in; to reach the rear exit through the kitchen he would have to pass through the party.

He closed the bedroom door and went to the closet. A rank of overcoats effectively concealed the two suitcases from anything short of a spring house-cleaning. He pulled them out. A bit heavy, but manageable. He got them into position by the doorway and then gazed round. Opposite, the three long Georgian windows looked out onto a, series of peaked roofs. Most buildings had dim rows of windows lit; it was the brownout hour, he recalled. Others were black. Zealous conservation, he wondered, or people who had left town already? No matter—he wasn’t going to concern himself with such things any longer. Between the windows were full-length mirrors, framed in brown velvet which was in turn edged in black; Sarah’s latest notion. Peterson hesitated, studying his reflection. Still a bit drawn, white around the eyes, but basically recovered. He had bluffed his way out of the hospital as soon as he felt able to move about. He had gone directly to his office. The Council was in a full crisis state, and no one noticed him clearing certain documents from his files, placing a few last-minute orders by telephone, and giving certain instructions to his solicitor. Sir Martin had him in for an overview conference, and there Peterson saw his preparations were none too soon. The clouds were definitely carrying the bloom material far and wide. The cloud form was slightly different from the ocean form, but they shared the neurojacket effect Kiefer had found only a few days ago. Kiefer’s data were of great use, but effective counter-measures were still a problem for the laboratories. The clouds dumped the stuff wherever they rained. Land plants generally resisted the neurojacket mechanism, but not always. Plant cellulose remained intact, but the more complex portions were vulnerable. Quick tests had turned up a method of cleansing certain plants, to cut off the process before the stuff could diffuse through the plant skin. Washing the harvested crops, in some solutions seemed feasible, and promised a 70 percent success rate. Peterson thought wryly of Laura’s “Oh, the vegetables and everything are perfectly fresh. The finest. They’re brought in from the country each day.” Yes, and that’s where he’d got the damned stuff. In the human digestive tract it played hob with all sorts of metabolic processes—often fatally, if untreated.

No one knew what the more subtle, secondary effects on the food chain might be. There were some decidedly dark projections by the biologists.

What’s more, the cloud mechanism was spreading the bloom faster. Reddish dots were appearing in the North Atlantic now.

With amazing energy Sir Martin was marshaling the Council resources, but even he seemed worried. They were dealing with an exponential process and no one could say where the effect would saturate.

Peterson looked round the room for one last time. Every feature in it was tailored for his habits, from the elegant accord ian-like shoe rack to the artfully arranged bookshelf, with its concealed communications center. A pity to leave it, really. But the whole point was to leave before the rush, and yet have a plausible reason to be absent from the Council for a few days. Recovering at some country hospital would do nicely. Sir Martin had studied him for a long moment when Peterson announced his departure, but that was an unavoidable risk. The two men probably understood each other quite well. A pity things couldn’t have worked out better between them, Peterson thought, and edged open the bedroom door.

A departing back, going down the stairs after a trip to the loo. Peterson waited until the man had vanished across the marble foyer. He shouldered open the door and carried the bags to he head of the stairs. Christ, they were heavy. He’d never allowed for the possibility that he might be ill when he had to make his move.

He went down the stairs with soft thumps, taking the weight solidly and checking his balance before attempting the next step. He had to watch the footing intently. The stairway was immensely long. He began puffing. Latin music started abruptly, brassy and rich, flooding his ears and throwing off his concentration. Out of the corner of his eye he sensed movement. A man and a woman, approaching from the drawing room. He took the last three steps rapidly and nearly slipped on the slick floor.

“Ian! My, don’t you look the traveler. I thought Sarah said you were in hospital.”

He thought rapidly. Smile, that was it. “I still am, actually,” he began, at the same time walking round the corner to a small tucked-in closet. He had to get the bags out of the way before anyone else came along. “It’s filling up, however, so I thought it best I get out of the public’s way. Go to a suburban place to recuperate, you know.”

“Oh Christ yes,” the man said. “City hospitals are the worst. Can I help you with those?”

“No no, just a few clothes.” He had scooted them into the closet and now closed the door firmly.

“I say, we were looking for a place to, you know, be private for a time.” The woman looked at him expectantly. She was one of Sarah’s friends, one of the sort he could never remember from one time to the next. She turned to gesture upstairs, no doubt thinking he had a thin imagination and needed a diagram. Her eye caught the door of his bedroom, standing open. “Oh, that would be perfect! It has a lock, hasn’t it?”

Peterson felt a cold anger. “I’d rather think there might be—”

“I shouldn’t think we’d be long. You don’t mind, do you? Yes, you do mind. He minds, Jeremy.” She put one foot on the lower stair and looked at the man with her, clearly turning this difficult chap over to him.

“I, it really would be most, most obliging of you if you would give us some help here, Ian.”

Peterson felt suddenly hot and weak. He had to cut through all this, get free. He had reacted automatically to the idea of anyone using his bedroom for some stupid rutting, but now he saw that was pointless. He had just now kissed the place goodbye, after all. “Yes, I see, go right ahead. I don’t mind.” He was able to say it almost cheerfully.

The couple thanked him and moved up the staircase with what seemed to Peterson deliberate slowness. He glanced at the drawing room and took several deep, clearing breaths. He could get the bags and be gone without arousing comment, if only—

Sarah. She had seen him as she passed by a knot of chattering people. She tugged at a man, nodded towards Peterson. They crossed the squares of the foyer, like chess pieces advancing. Knight errant and queen to the attack, he thought. He noted remotely that she was wearing one of her own sleek dresses, a jungle-print creation with a matching silk scarf tied round her head and hanging artfully to the left. He looked at the man with her and felt a cold shock. It was Prince Andrew. Jesus, she couldn’t be starting that up again, could she? Well, it would hardly matter now.

“Ian! You’re out already? Squisito!” Sarah exclaimed, taking his hand.

“Just getting some things. They’re transferring me to a place in the country.” He extended a hand to Andrew. “Good evening, sir.”

“For heaven’s sake, Ian, you don’t have to call me sir here.”

“Andy’s, getting us invites to the Coronation Ball—the small one. Isn’t that lovely of him?”

“Yes, very. How is your brother faring, Andrew?”

“Oh, I haven’t seen him for a week myself. He’s always busy now. Glad I don’t have that job. He’s better suited to it than the rest of us, anyway.”

“Oh, I’m sure you could do magnificently,” Sarah murmured.

Andrew shook his head in a wobbly way. “No, I doubt it. I’ve often wondered whether it was just luck that the heir turned out that way or whether he turned out that way precisely because he was the heir.”

Peterson suppressed a fidgeting motion with his hands and tried to think of something to say. Was this conversation unreal or was it just him? “He takes his work very seriously,” he said blandly. “The times I’ve consulted with him, he’s gone right to the point.”

“Got a sense of humor, though, you know,” Andrew replied, as though apologizing for his brother’s seriousness. He blinked owlishly.

Peterson realized that Andrew was drunk, in precisely the degree that royalty can get drunk without arousing comment. That was to say, quite a bit. Sarah tugged at Peterson’s sleeve, beckoning him into the party. He considered for an instant and then followed. He wanted no one to notice the size or weight of the cases he carried as he left. Best to get Sarah and Andrew back into the mob and slip away later. He allowed Sarah to parade him around, introducing him to a few new people he could spot as being potentially useful to her. He smiled, nodded, said little. Gradually it dawned on him that everyone there was addled in some way—drunk, high on drugs, or simply hysterical with frenetic energy. And they were all talking the most superficial rubbish, as well. He had expected a barrage of questions on the bloom or the clouds, but absolutely no one asked. He found himself watching them from a distance. As elegant and ignorant as swans. Yet he knew some of them must have doubts. Again, the sensation of unreality.

It took well over an hour before he saw his chance. He wanted to be damned sure Andrew didn’t see the bags, so he waited until Sarah was clinging to Andrew’s arm and had just set into one of her stock outrageous stories. Then Peterson slipped through several babbling groups, seeming to be among them but in fact listening to nothing, watching only to see if anyone important saw his exit. At the right moment he moved quickly into the foyer. Out came the bags. As he turned, his own bedroom door opened and a bleary, reddened face appeared. Before the woman could hail him he wrenched open the outer door and fled. Not the smooth departure he had envisioned, but good enough. Ahead lay Cambridge and then, by God, he could rest.