Waiting for Godalming

2

Icarus Smith took an early lunch at the Station Hotel. It is popularly agreed that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But Icarus did not pay for his. The barman, who now wore a most distinctive watch fob, gave Icarus a double helping of mashed potatoes and told him that everything was “on the house”.

An understanding existed between Icarus and the barman. The bar and grill of the Station Hotel was a study in scarlet. The rooms were high-ceilinged and broadly proportioned and would have found favour with Stravino. Long, net-curtained windows looked to the station, where the great steam engines came and went, the mighty King’s Class locomotives with their burnished bits and bobs. Icarus sat down at a window table, recently vacated by a stockbroker’s clerk, and stared wistfully out through the net curtaining to view a passing train.

There were few men alive who were not stirred by steam and Icarus had long harboured a secret ambition to relocate an engine. Exactly to where, and for why, he did not as yet know. And though the thought of it thrilled him, it terrorized him too. His grandfather had been an engineer on the Great Northern Railway and had lost a thumb beneath the wheels of The City of Truro. Icarus prized his digits, but a man must dream his dreams. And if this man be the chosen one, these dreams are no small matter.

Having concluded his early repast and washed it down with a pint of Large and a brandy on the house, Icarus placed the black briefcase upon the table before him and applied his thumbs to the locks. The locks were locked.

Having assured himself that he was unobserved, Icarus removed from his pocket a small roll of tools and from this the appropriate item. It was but the work of a moment or two. Which is one moment more than one less.

The locks snapped open and Icarus returned the item to the roll, and the roll to his pocket.

He was just on the point of opening the briefcase when a hand slammed down upon it.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” said the owner of the hand.

Icarus looked up and made the face that horror brings.

“Chief Inspector Charlie Milverton,” said he, in a wavery quavery voice. “My old Nemesis.”

“I have you bang to rights this time, laddo.”

Icarus held up his hands in surrender. “It’s a fair cop, guv’nor,” he said. “Slap the bracelets on and bung me in the Black Maria.”

“One day it will come to that, you know.” The chief inspector grinned and winked and sat himself down at the table next to Icarus. For he was in truth no policeman at all, but the bestest friend Icarus had.

Friend Bob.

Friend Bob was a tall and angular fellow, all cheekbones and pointy knees and elbows. In fact, he looked exactly the way a bestest friend should look. Even down to that curious thing that fits through the lobe of the left ear and that business with the teeth. So no further description is necessary here.

“Watchamate, Icky-boy,” said Friend Bob.

“All right, Bob-m’-son,” said Icarus Smith.

“You’re losing your touch, you know. Opening up a stolen briefcase in a bar.”

“The briefcase is mine,” said Icarus Smith.

“With the corner up,[2] it is.”

“Temporarily mine, then.”

“That’s a bit more like it.”

Icarus smiled upon Friend Bob, and Friend Bob smiled back at him, doing that business with the teeth. Although they had known each other since their schooldays at the Abbey Grange and were as close as best friends could be, it had to be said that Friend Bob did not wholly approve of Icarus Smith. He knew well enough that Icarus did not consider himself to be a thief. But he also knew that Icarus was alone in this particular consideration and that it was only a matter of time before the law’s long arm reached out and took him in its horny hand. Friend Bob hoped that by subtle means he might one day persuade Icarus as to the error of his ways.

Icarus Smith, in his turn, hoped that one day he might convert Friend Bob to the holy crusade of relocation. And, after all, if you wish to relocate a steam engine, it takes two. One to drive the blighter and the other to shovel the coal. And Friend Bob, felt Icarus, was a natural shoveller.

“What are you doing here?” asked Icarus Smith.

“Working,” said Friend Bob. “I am the new washroom attendant.”

“Well, you are a natural shoveller.”

“It’s an honest living.”

“And the pay?”

“There’s room for some improvement there.” Friend Bob fingered his left earlobe.

“You could always work with me.”

“I think not.” Friend Bob smiled. “So how are things with you?” he asked. “How’s the family? How’s your brother?”

“Still barking mad. He thinks he’s a detective.”

“You’d better watch out that he doesn’t arrest you, then.”

Icarus drummed his fingers on the briefcase. “Tell me, Friend Bob,” said he. “If you could be anything you wanted to be in this world, what would that thing be?”

“You know perfectly well what it would be. I would become a successful artist. Famous throughout the land.”

Icarus nodded. “But you don’t feel that your total lack of artistic skill might prove a handicap in this?”

“A considerable handicap,” agreed Friend Bob. “But a man must dream his dreams.”

“Indeed.” There was a moment of intimate silence, each man alone with his thoughts and his dreams.

“So,” said Friend Bob, when he had done with silence. “What do you have in your briefcase?”

“Let’s have a look, shall we?” Icarus lifted the lid of the case.

“Urgh,” went Friend Bob, peering in. “Leather underpants, you pervert.”

“You are, as ever, the wag. Have you eaten your lunch yet? There are some sandwiches in here.”

“I have no wish to munch upon sandwiches that have been hobnobbing with a pervert’s knickers, thank you very much.”

“Hello, what’s this?”

“What’s what?”

“This.” Icarus lifted from the briefcase a small dark electronic doo-dad. “Transistor radio, I think.”

“It’s a Dictaphone,” said Friend Bob, who had a love for all things electrical. “You can record your voice on that. Here, I’ll show you how.”

Friend Bob took the Dictaphone, held it up to his mouth and pressed a little button.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!” went the Dictaphone.

“Aaaaaaaaagh!” went Friend Bob, flinging it back into the briefcase.

“Surely that’s the wrong way round,” said Icarus. “I thought you were supposed to record on to it.”

“I pressed the playback button by mistake, you twat.”

Icarus now took up the Dictaphone, tinkered with the volume control and then pressed the playback button.

“No,” screamed a voice of a lesser volume. “No more pain. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

“Oh shirt!” said Friend Bob, whose mother had told him not to swear. “It’s someone being tortured.”

“Leather pants in the case,” said Icarus. “Probably just some recreational activity. Shall we hear a bit more?”

“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

“Come on now, what harm can it do?”

Icarus fingered the button once more. A new voice said, “Tell me all about the drug.”

“It’s drugs.” Friend Bob flapped his elongated hands about. “It’s gangsters. I’m off.”

“It’s probably just a TV programme, or a radio play, or something.”

“Or something. Whatever it is, I’ve heard enough. I don’t want to get involved. Return the case to its owner, Icarus, please.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“It will end in tears.”

“Let’s hear a little more.”

“Fug that.” Friend Bob lifted his angular frame from the seat next to Icarus Smith. “I have tiles to polish. I will bid you farewell.”

“Are you coming to the Three Gables tonight? Johnny G’s playing.”

“I’ll be there. But listen, just dump the briefcase, eh? Leather pants and tortured souls are not a healthy combination.”

Friend Bob turned upon his heel and had it away on his toes.

Icarus sat and considered the Dictaphone. He turned the volume down a bit more and held the thing to his ear.

“What drug?” came the voice of the tortured soul.

“Red Head,” said the other voice.

“Red Head?” whispered Icarus Smith. “What kind of drug is that?”

There came a crackling sound from the Dictaphone, followed by another “Aaaaaagh!” and a “Stop, please stop, I’ll tell you everything.”

And Icarus listened while the tortured soul told everything. And as Icarus listened, his face became pale and his hands began to tremble.

For what Icarus heard was this and it bothered him more than a little.

“Tell me all about Red Head,” said the other voice. “How did you come up with the formula?”

“From the flowers. It was the flowers that showed me the way.”

“Are you trying to be funny?” said the other voice.

“No. I’m telling you all the truth. And I have to tell someone. I’ll go mad if I don’t.”

“Just tell it all from the beginning then.”

“All right. As you know I worked for the Ministry of Serendipity. On the A.I. project. Artificial intelligence. The thinking computer. Rubbish, all of it. But we didn’t know it then.”

“Why is it rubbish?”

“Just listen to what I’m telling you. From the beginning, OK?”

“OK.”

“I worked on the project with Professor John Garrideb. He was one of three brothers, all of them something in mathematics. John was always convinced that we’d make the big breakthrough. But when we did, when I did, it wasn’t the way we expected and it’s my fault, what happened to him, which is why I’m telling you this.

“We worked on the project for twenty-two months, but like I say we were getting nowhere and we kept getting all these directives from above, saying that our work was in the National Interest and we should hurry ourselves up and that other governments were ahead of ours and all the rest of it. And we were working really long hours and I took to drinking a bit in the evenings. And then a bit more and then a bit too much.

“And one night I left the Ministry and went home on the special train from Mornington Crescent and got off at the wrong stop. And I found myself in Brentford and I fell down on the floral clock in the Memorial Park and that was when it came to me.

“I had a sort of revelation. It was all to do with the flowers on the floral clock. It was well after midnight and as I lay there I noticed that all the flowers were still awake. They had their petals open. And I thought that’s a bit odd and then I saw the floodlights. They’re on all night, you see, to illuminate the clock and because they’re on all night the flowers stay open. The flowers never sleep. The flowers cannot dream.”

There was a pause and Icarus heard sobbing.

“Stop blubbing there,” said the other voice. “What are you crying about?”

“Because I understood it then. I understood why we could never build a computer with artificial intelligence. Because a computer cannot dream. It’s a man’s dreams that give him his ideas. A man is what he dreams.”

“Sounds like rubbish,” said the other voice. “But go on.”

“When we sleep,” said the tortured soul, “it’s only our bodies that sleep. Our brains don’t sleep. Our brains go on thinking. If we have problems, our brains go on thinking about them, trying to sort them out, trying to solve them. But the solutions our brains come up with are in the form of dreams that our waking minds cannot understand. People have tried to interpret dreams, but they can’t, dreams are too subtle for that. But the way we behave and the solutions we eventually arrive at are guided by our dreams, even though we’re not aware of it.

“I suddenly understood all this, you see. Probably because it was ultimately the solution to the problem I had. The problem with artificial intelligence. The answer was right there. In our heads, you see. The brain is the ultimate computer, you just have to know how to use it properly.”

“Which is why you came up with Red Head?”

“To enhance the intellect. To speed up the thinking processes. To create the human computer. Why bother to build machines, if the answers to the problems you would set them to solve were all inside your head anyway? Just needing a little chemical help to bring them out. But I didn’t come up with Red Head.”

“I don’t understand,” said the other voice. “Explain yourself.”

“I was lying there amongst the flowers,” said the tortured soul. “And it all became clear, like I say. And I realized that if such a drug could be formulated, it could change everything, solve all human problems. A group of human computers dedicating themselves to the good of humanity. Just think what might be achieved. I saw the big picture. The overview. But then I thought, how could I ever formulate this drug? It might take years and years. The rest of my life. What I really needed was a drug to speed up my own thinking processes, in order that I could create a drug that could speed up thinking processes. Bit of a Catch 22 situation there. But the crooked man showed me how to read the flowers and that’s how I came by the formula.”

“Crooked man?” asked the other voice. “Who is the crooked man?”

“He found me lying there on the floral clock. He helped me up and he showed me how to read the flowers. He told me that the flowers would help me, if I helped them. All they wanted was to sleep. It seemed a pretty fair deal to me.”

“You’ll have to explain this,” said the other voice.

“The crooked man helped me up. He said he’d been listening to what I’d been saying. I thought I’d only been thinking but apparently I’d been talking out loud. Or according to him I had. He said the answer was staring me right in the face, all I had to do was look at the flowers. Well, I looked at the flowers, but all I could see was the flowers. Lots of different coloured flowers in the shape of a floral clock. But he said, look at the colours. Think of the rainbow. Well, I remembered the poem we’d been taught at school, about how you remember the order of the colours in the rainbow. It’s a poem about fairies. It goes, Some came in violet, some in indigo, In blue, green, yellow, orange, red, They made a pretty row.”

“I remember that,” said the other voice.

“Yeah, well I remembered it and looked at the flowers. First the violet ones, then the indigo ones and so on. And they spelled out letters. Letters and numbers. They spelled out a chemical formula. The chemical formula for Red Head.”

“With the corner up,” said the other voice.

“It’s true. Well, the formula is true at least. The drug works. I wish to God now that it didn’t. But it does. When I’d written the formula down, I thanked the flowers and then I smashed the floodlights so that they could sleep and dream and then I walked all the way home and went to bed.”

“Incredible,” said the other voice. “Insane.”

“Oh yes,” the tortured soul agreed. “It’s quite insane. All of it. I went into the Ministry the next day. Gained access to the laboratory and mixed up a batch of the drug. It was remarkably simple and straightforward. And then of course I had to test it. See if it really worked. So I tested it upon myself.”

“And it worked?”

“It worked all right. But not in the way that I’d been expecting. I thought it would speed up my thinking. But the human brain is not a calculating machine. It functions by entirely different processes. Organically. Thinking is organic, that’s what it’s all about. The drug enhanced my thinking processes. It opened my eyes and allowed me to see clearly. To understand everything. To see things as they really are. And people as they really are. The ones who actually are people. And the ones who aren’t. The wrong’uns.”

“Careful,” said the other voice.

“Or what? You’ll kill me? You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you? You have to keep your secret. If humanity knew about you and your kind and what you’re up to and how to see you—”

“Careful.”

“Be damned,” said the tortured soul. “Be damned the lot of you. I know you for what you are. And I know what you want.”

“Only the formula.”

“But you won’t get it.”

“You’ll tell us what we want to know eventually.”

“Not I,” said the tortured soul. “I’ve only told you this much because I wanted to spend the last few moments of my life free from pain.”

“What?”

“The poison I’ve taken will kick in at any moment. You’ll never find the drug. But someone will and that someone will learn the truth and they’ll put paid to you and your kind. That someone will change the world for ever. That someone will make things right.”

“Perhaps you’ve told us enough anyway,” said the other voice. “We know where to find the formula. On the Memorial clock.”

“Oh yeah. Right.” A laugh came from the tortured soul. “The flowers. I got very angry over the flowers. Because of what they’d done to me. Because they’d given me the power to see something so awful that it would ultimately lead to my own destruction. As it has. So I went back there, to punish the flowers. To stamp them to oblivion. But then I thought no, it wasn’t their fault. They were quite mad, you see, the flowers. That’s what happens when you’re deprived of sleep. When you cannot dream. You go mad. The flowers couldn’t dream and so the flowers went mad.

“But I did go back. I made a kind of pilgrimage. I wanted to see whether the floodlights had been repaired. And if they had, then I would break them again. So I returned to the Memorial Park, and do you know what I found when I got there?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” said the tortured soul. “Nothing whatsoever. You see, there was no floral clock in that park. There never had been.”

“What are you saying? Speak to me.”

Another silent moment, then another voice spoke.

“Save your breath on him,” it said. “He’s dead.”