Transit

NINE

Sunset came with tropical suddenness. The evening meal was over—nothing but fruit, this time—and the fence, such as it was, was in position. One moment the world was still light and warm; and next moment, it seemed as if the sun had been completely swallowed by the sea. And a cool wind rustled through the trees, bearing with it an invisible tide of twilight and darkness.

The fence was less of a fence than a three foot high tangle of driftwood. It enclosed a few square yards containing two tents, four human beings and a fire. It enclosed a world within a world.

Avery looked at his companions in the firelight and wondered if they felt as lonely and exposed as he did. During the hours of daylight there had been so much to do, so much to think of doing, that there had been little opportunity for private thoughts and feelings. Daylight itself was a cloak of comfort; but now the cloak had been taken away, and there was a feeling of nakedness and fear.

The stars were coming out. Alien stars. Stars of another galaxy or perhaps just another part of Earth’s galaxy. What an arrogant way to describe it—Earth’s galaxy! It was related to the archaic thinking that had placed man at the fixed centre of the universe, sitting on a flat world, the one and only darling child of an anthropomorphic god.

But perhaps God had many children, and perhaps some of his children were adept at the manufacture of hypnotic crystals. And other things…

Anyway, the stars were no less beautiful for being unfamiliar stars. They shone without warmth, without compassion. But that was part of the beauty; for they were the ultimate in detachment. Hydrogen bombs, London winters, human hopes and fears—even interstellar abduction—were as nothing to those bright needle points of eternity.

Avery felt that it was going to be a long time before he could come to terms with his predicament. He could already accept it as a fact—in so far as any of the facts of recent experience had proved acceptable—but he could not yet accept it emotionally. London, evidently, was light-years away. That, in itself, meant nothing. It might just as well be a few hundred or a few thousand miles over the seaward horizon. Each was remote, in different ways, beyond the power of imagining.

What he could not accept was that, for all practical purposes, London both as a symbol and as a place had ceased to exist. Intellectually, he knew that the chances of seeing it—or Earth—again were very low. Yet the rattle of the Underground was still in his ears, the subtle throb of the city seemed to find an echo even in his pulse. He wondered what would happen to him if or when he abandoned hope—not a specific hope, but the curious, almost unformed hope that some day, once again, he would belong. For the first time, he was surprised to discover, mankind felt to him like a great family. It was an odd sensation, this knowledge of being a child, lost and far from home. But he was not entirely cut off from mankind; for he had the company of three people. Looking at them, he wondered what kind of confusions were whirling round in their heads.

Barbara had a bottle of whisky. In fact, Barbara had about six dozen bottles of whisky. Her cabin trunk had been lined with them just as Avery’s had been lined with cigarettes. Somehow, he had not thought that she would be a heavy drinker. It was not, as she had carefully explained when the bottle was produced, that she was an alcoholic or even ‘in a sordid state’. It was just that she had needed a crutch on which to lean in a world where she had had to endure an unending role as a TV immortal in a hospital that looked as if it would go on admitting imaginary patients until the entire population was neurotic, bed-ridden or both.

Barbara sat with Tom in front of the tent that he referred to brightly as ‘the girls’ dorm’. They each had tumblers—and the whisky. Mary and Avery sat less than a couple of yards away, but enough to make it a gap, outside ‘the men’s dorm’. Avery also nursed a whisky—a small one. But Mary had steadfastly refused to drink. She looked at Barbara somewhat anxiously. Barbara was on her third generous double, but so far there did not appear to be much effect. Tom, however, was looking rather melancholy. He had matched her, glass for glass.

For a little while, there had been a lull in the conversation. But the spell was broken when Avery threw a handful of wood on the fire and sent a shower of sparks up towards the sky.

Barbara let out a deep sigh, shook her head, then said abruptly: ‘We’re going to have to have a naming of names.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Avery was bewildered.

‘The flora and fauna, stupid. All those pretty pictures tell us what the animals and plants are like in these parts, and what they’re good—or bad—for. But they don’t have any names. I think it’s very important for animals to have names. Besides, how the hell do we talk about them if they don’t?’

‘She’s got a point,’ said Tom solemnly. ‘Damn confusing to pop off at a six-legged rabbit when it isn’t a rabbit, if you see what I mean.’

‘You’re drunk,’ said Mary primly.

Tom laughed. ‘The Leith police dismisseth us.’ He delivered himself of the tongue-twister safely, and with as much satisfaction as a scientist propounding a new and revolutionary theory.

‘Simple. It’s a rabbitype,’ announced Barbara.

‘What is?’

‘A six-legged rabbit. It’s a rabbitype. There’s also a rhinotype, a crocotype and a doggotype, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.’

Avery smiled. ‘That’s nice and convenient. But how would you describe the Greek god that Mary saw? Incidentally there doesn’t appear to be a picture card to tell us what he does.’

‘Simple,’ said Barbara. ‘He’s either a supertype or a sexotype,’ she giggled, ‘depending upon your sex, how you look at him, and what he does to you.’

‘I hope,’ retorted Avery, ‘that he doesn’t do anything at all—if he exists.’

‘He exists, all right,’ said Mary. She shivered. ‘I wish you hadn’t reminded me of him.’

‘Darling,’ said Tom, ‘Richard and I will protect your virginity, even unto the last drop of whisky…. Christ, I’m tired! It must be the sea air.’

‘The “type” suffix will do quite nicely for the time being,’ decided Avery. ‘And incidentally, a priority task for us all is memorizing those pictures and the information. It may mean the difference between survival or otherwise…. Touching on Tom’s last remark, it may be a good idea if you three went to bed. It’s been a pretty tiring sort of day.’

‘We three?’ said Barbara. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Take the first watch and keep the fire going. I’ll waken you in a couple of hours. Then you can do a spell and waken Tom. Mary can have what I hope will be the dawn watch.’

Tom stretched. ‘Beddibyes is a lovely and almost holy thought—providing it’s a bed with four legs in West One. Somehow, a sleeping bag and a tent don’t fill me with quite the same enthusiasm. However, when on Mars one must do as the dear little Martians do. Good night one and all…. Perhaps—if Barbara will be so kind —I’ll just take a night-cap in with me.’ He gave himself another generous measure of whisky.

‘By the way,’ said Avery, ‘does your trunk contain any personal comforts—such as whisky or cigarettes?’

The question was addressed chiefly to Tom, but Mary answered it first. ‘I have about half a hundredweight of sweets,’ she confessed. ‘I suppose I used to eat quite a lot, but ’ she stopped. Even by firelight her blush was noticeable.

Avery transferred his gaze once more to Tom.

‘Sorry, old man. There’s nothing we can eat, drink or suck in my little box. All comforts, such as they are, are of a highly personal nature One assumes, of course, that civilized standards of privacy will not deteriorate in our little group…. Sweet dreams, everyone.’ He disappeared inside the tent.

Avery was intrigued. There had seemed to be some tension in Tom’s voice. Linking it up with that silly remark about privacy, it looked as if there was something he wanted to hide. But, clearly, in such a situation nothing could be hidden from anyone for long. Presently, they would all be painfully aware of each other’s likes and dislikes, each other’s strengths and weaknesses, each other’s little secrets And, in a way, that would be another kind of nakedness….

Mary was the next to go. A few minutes later she was followed into the tent by Barbara. Each of Avery’s companions was still only two or three yards away, yet he felt suddenly and luxuriously alone.

He shivered a little, with cold and pleasure. Then he threw some more wood on to the fire and settled down to his vigil. Perhaps he ought to leave the camp and take a stroll round to see if there was anything about that was likely to ‘go bump in the night’. But he dismissed the idea. It was now so dark that, away from the firelight, he would be able to see very little; but, at the same time, he would himself be more exposed. Better to stay put and rely on the fire and the fence.

He had been sitting by the fire for about three-quarters of an hour, immersed in his own thoughts and memories, when there was a movement by his side. It was Barbara—wearing a hastily thrown on shirt, a pair of slacks and nothing else.

‘I can’t sleep,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve tried all the regulation positions and it won’t work. Mary seems to have found the trick of it, though. She’s well out.’

‘Maybe you drank too much whisky.’ Avery kept his own voice low.

She smiled. ‘Or not enough Richard, I’m so bloody lonely. Do me a favour, just hold my hand. Nothing else, that’s all I need.’

Avery looked at her for a moment. Then he put one arm round her shoulder and drew her gently against his side. She let out a sigh of relief, and after a minute or two the tightness seemed to drain out of her body.

‘It’s wonderful,’ she said, ‘what a bit of human contact will do—actual physical contact, I mean. I was ready to twang like a harp, and now you are making me feel silly and relaxed.’

‘Not too silly, I hope.’

Barbara gave him a curiously appraising look. ‘No, not too silly It’s early days yet, and we all have to be terribly adult about everything, haven’t we?’

Avery had no answer to that, and she snuggled closer. After a time he found that they were almost clinging together; and that it gave him, too, a sense of security, a feeling of being slowly unwound. What was even more odd—and gratifying—was that the sex aspect didn’t appear to obtrude at all.

‘Why don’t you go back to bed, now?’ he asked at length.

‘No thanks,’ she murmured. ‘This is better than sleeping.’

They sat there for a long time, not talking, hardly thinking, but just watching the fire and listening to the strange and intriguing night noises that were occasionally superimposed on the even sound of the sea.