Quatermass, page 19
A scream: “We’re into malfunction—we’re spinning! I’m trying to—! Total malfunction, all systems!” Deafening thumps as something hit the microphone of the shuttle. A coughing cry.
Every person in the Big Bunker was on his feet.
There was a rush of sound from the loudspeakers. Then only the dry-mouthed voice from Mission Control. “Houston to Mother Bird! Mother Bird, are you receiving me? . . . Mother Bird, are you able to receive me? . . . Can you hear? . . . Mother Bird . . . Houston to Mother Bird . . .”
In the end Grock Jervis gave a small desperate signal.
Somebody cut the relay off.
Quatermass said slowly: “I don’t think . . . it even knew they were there.”
He sat.
Knew. Not knew, he shouldn’t have said knew. That implied faculties. That was anthropomorphism. Their presence had not registered, he should have said.
Those last seconds . . .
They had not been wearing helmets. One could tell that from the acoustics. Not pressure-suits either, perhaps, one didn’t need them in a shuttle. But if the shuttle systems blew, if the protection went . . . instant explosive decompression . . . blood foaming out . . .
“Well, professor?”
It was Hatherley.
There was a hubbub of voices in the bunker. People were conferring in worried twos and threes. Now he saw the expression in Hatherley’s eyes. It looked like exhilaration. It must be a trick of the light.
“Professor—that beam?”
There was no doubt about it. A hysterical, inspirational edge to the voice. Quatermass could not look at him. He started pulling his papers together.
“A great beam reaching out to infinity!”
Quatermass said: “I think we imagine something different, you and I.”
There was a grunt from Jervis. The Prime Minister was sitting in his place with his eyes fixed on Hatherley. He looked like a prisoner with an uncertain hope of rescue.
Annie Morgan butted in. Her shock was turning to incredulous anger. She said to Hatherley: “Have you read the report on the child? The one who survived for a single day?”
“No,” said Hatherley.
“What!” Annie was even more astonished. “Surely—we had them rushed out. The report on Isabel. Her name was Isabel. I’ve got copies here—”
She was searching for her case but Hatherley waved the offer away. “It’s irrelevant,” he said.
They could only stare at him.
“She didn’t go with them,” said Hatherley. As if the remark had not only been perfectly reasonable but had proved an important point, he turned and stalked away out of the conference room.
Soon everyone had gone.
All but Grock.
He sat alone rubbing one of his great jug-ears and nodding to himself. He felt himself to have been saved. In the last few minutes the huge terror that had threatened to consume him so utterly had grown smaller. He supposed it was what was meant by the comforts of religion. He had never been a religious man but he respected that of others. He liked to hear hymns and incantations. He rejoiced in other people’s rituals. It was like watching workmen through a fence.
Whatever it was that uplifted young David Hatherley, he was glad of it.
The young held the key to this mystery, he was surer and surer. He had always kept the society of young friends and this showed the soundness of his instinct. He had seen himself sometimes as a Socrates amongst them. He had the homely features but not the brain, so he would not put them to question as the Greek would have done. He would have lost them. Most of them had no great intellectual gift. They did not talk much to him or even to each other. But they had intuition. There was a secret in them which he, old Grock, respected. When some of them drifted off to join the Planet People he had been saddened to lose them, not surprised. Dan and Keith and Simon . . . they were the real youth of the land. The gangs were nothing but a horrible aberration. They would burn each other out.
That shining beam . . . perhaps it led away to . . . Grock knew little science but wondered if it might not be such a thing as a black hole. The concept had always alarmed him. Gaps in space that could consume matter, even light. Perhaps the scientists who propounded the idea were inspired by a religious idea and found it fact. Perhaps that was the true explanation of immortality. Some cosmic magic, molecular transubstantiation, to dissolve a clownish body and snatch it along a beam of light and through a blackness that shivered all dimensions . . . to an unknown planet. To meet those who had gone before. Keith and Simon and Dan perhaps. If it had happened to them as they thought it would. And Friedrich and Peter and little Terry . . .
One must desire it. Earnestly desire it.
The report on that poor wretched girl lay under his hand. He had done no more than glance at it. He would not read it now.
He pushed it away across the table.
A hundred thousand miles from Earth the shuttle rocket was spinning like a leaf caught in an eddy. Its attitude thrusters had sent it into a yawing motion before they expired and it was still continuing, even though without power. Every device aboard was dead, as were the two men in the crew compartment. Behind them, the long doors of the cargo bay stood open to expose the transmitter. The flimsy antennas had snapped under the inertial strain of the shuttle’s gyration, and now trailed from the bay. They looked like the intestines of a smashed sea creature.
1 2
The entrance to Downing Street was blocked by a heavy tank, which squatted there on permanent guard. It was rarely if ever seen to move. In fact, said Helen Peacher, there was some suspicion that there was no crew inside it. A cat was often to be seen playing with her kittens in the shelter of its tracks, and the kittens might well have been born there.
If it made the Prime Minister feel safe in Number 10 it served its purpose.
Helen Peacher despised her boss deeply. It was she who, as Minister of Supply, had found accommodation for Quatermass and Annie Morgan in the Parliamentary Annexe, the huge block built for MPs and their staffs. It had no such use now. The long recess had become indefinite under the Emergency Regulations.
From his room Quatermass could look down on the Embankment. From here it had a spurious normality. A few trucks and cars could be seen on the move, and there were people on the pavements, clerks and the like with some apparent purpose. One or two stopped on a corner where a barrow-man was selling nuts. Beyond the bridge he could make out part of the superstructure of HMS Arbalest, the old missile frigate moored protectively alongside the terrace of the House of Commons. Above everything loomed the burned-out tower of Big Ben with its clock faces all stopped at three-fifty—a.m., of course, that’s when they would have struck.
After the curfew siren there was little movement on the streets below, only an occasional army pig on patrol or a car carrying some of the Prime Minister’s catamites home to Number 10. According to Helen Peacher.
Quatermass sat for hours looking out into the darkness. He expected at any moment to see a dazzling band spring to earth, somewhere along the horizon. Not wanting it but in a way needing to know. He despised himself for that. Another mark of old age, the feeble, greedy garnering of bad news, the chimney-corner gloat that came before the final disorder. He felt grey and heavy, as if he were filled with clay.
Annie came at last.
She had brought food, and she made him eat before she told him what news she had. After the fiasco of the shuttle rocket, Moscow had cut itself off from the Americans. From now on it would act alone. “In the matter of the spatial threat,” it had declared, “it is now time for unilateral initiative.” Whatever that meant.
Meanwhile the incidents had gone on, in many parts of the world. It was likely that there were far more of them than were ever reported, since they invariably brought about a failure of communications. Often they had occurred in remote areas, but not always.
“The worst was on Disneyland,” said Annie.
He was the more shocked because of the place. He had never seen it but the very thought of it had always struck him as ridiculous. Confected turrets and the celebration of Mickey Mouse. That it should have been blasted had a special grotesqueness. Thousands of young people again, the very fact that they had gathered there should have been warning enough. But why there? What drew them? He struggled with the connection. Donald Duck and Goofy and megalithic beacons. What had that land been in former times, south of Los Angeles? Red Indian country? Apache? And before that, before even the Indians came? Who was there then?
He felt a frightening blank in his mind, a kind of petit mal. Without realizing it, he found himself clinging to Annie.
He was old, an old man to be held like a child. She got him to bed.
“Don’t leave me,” he said.
In the end she got into the bed beside him, to warm him.
He fell asleep for a time. Then during the night he woke and she realized he was trying to make love to her. But it came to nothing. He slept again with his head on her breast.
“Hello, Bernard,” said his wife.
He was surprised and delighted to see her. She had returned sooner than he had hoped. But for a drowsy, confused moment he could not quite remember where she had been. She had gone into town, he knew, for some medical purpose. To consult a gynecologist about what had been troubling her, that must be it. No—his head was clearing now—no, she had been in hospital. And now she had been discharged. She had had the operation and they had sent her home. No, that was wrong too. It was the baby. Of course, why hadn’t he realized that before? They had sent her home with the new baby.
He ought to have fetched her. He had no business to have left her to drive herself home like that, with her newly born baby.
“Where is it?” he asked. “Where’s the baby?”
But she only smiled as if that was a secret for the moment. Or a surprise for him to find, the child tucked up in the cot they had bought. That’s where she must have put it.
He should have fetched her home. He had no excuses, lying here in bed like this at a time when she needed him. But he had completely overlooked it.
She looked tired, he thought. Her face was drawn and thin. That must be from the effort of the birth, which was only days ago. But then she turned again and the weariness had all gone. So quick to change. She looked as she had done in her pregnancy, the glow back again, the slight rich plumping of the skin. She was very desirable and he wanted her, wanted to pull her over to him and make love to her—
There was somebody in the bed.
Lying there beside him, a woman.
In some unbelievable way he had forgotten her. She was asleep, breathing heavily, a woman with fine features and greying hair on the pillow. He did not know her name.
His wife had not noticed her yet, the bedclothes were heaped so high. But in another moment she must. She would catch sight of Annie—that was it, Annie, that was the woman’s name—and then he would see pain come into her face. The bloom would go from it and it would turn thin.
Where she had just been, they had hurt her. He remembered now. And there was to be more hurt here in her home.
She still hadn’t realized, standing there with that incredible glow upon her. At any second it must hit her. The hurt would come from him—
Quatermass woke with a jolt.
He found himself shaking.
Annie was there beside him, moving, murmuring as if he had broken her sleep.
It must be dawn.
The dream was dispelling fast, as his always did. He could only remember the feeling of it, the vivid guilt—it was because he had attempted Annie, of course, those hours before. And failed. Shameful, that, shameful.
He lay still.
His brain was racing but in confusion.
Annie’s eyes were open and watching him. The faint light in the room picked up their glisten, a soft wetness. Perhaps she was sorry for him. He wanted no pity from her. Better have resentment or even contempt.
He was wide awake now. His brain was curiously busy. Nervously active in an undirected way, excited as a dog hunting rats in a field, jumping all over the place. Ideas kept popping up and vanishing, getting away from him before he could catch them. Then small, logical sequences came. And in a sudden rush, lucidity.
“It’s a machine!”
Perhaps it was being with her that had done it, had provided an arousal that worked itself through in an unexpected way.
She turned to him. “What did you say?”
“A machine—”
She whispered: “My dear, you’ve been lying there tormenting yourself and worrying. You’ve got to rest now.”
“No,” he said. “It’s true.”
“Tell me, then.”
He couldn’t explain it to her, yet he felt complete certainty. “Just give me a minute,” he said. It took longer than that.
At last he said: “I’m going to tell you a story.”
She smiled.
“I know it’s—well, it’s the wrong end of bed time,” he said. “But I used to be quite good at it once.”
Good at something, anyway.
“What about?”
“Martians.”
She frowned. Either puzzled or concerned for him. There wasn’t enough light to make out which.
“Bernard, you don’t actually think that all this—?”
“I said a story.”
“Because—there really isn’t anything alive there, is there? I mean it’s been proved, hasn’t it? I know that much.”
It was concern.
“Just Martians that there might have been. Story Martians. About as likely as rabbits in trousers and mice wearing hats. No more, no less.”
She was still watching him. “Disneyland got through to you, didn’t it?”
“I’ll tell you what they were like. Very, very tiny, like midget woodlice, flat and grey and frayed-looking. Not really much alive. And they hibernated a lot. Often they dried up completely for a year or two and only thawed out again when they got a drop of moisture.”
“That’s alive?”
“It was enough. They stayed under the gravel and rock fragments, because that’s all there is on Mars. Sheltering from the sun and the dust storms. If they were lucky they found bits of lichen to nibble.”
“Poor little creatures.”
“And then one day—they got a fearful shock.”
“I should have thought they’d welcome it.”
“Well, they didn’t. It was a monster that appeared amongst them. Far, far bigger than they were. The braver ones crawled out to have a look. It was squatting there on enormous legs and swinging its terrible head about and swaying and digging its long claws into the earth and fetching up huge mouthfuls of it and actually eating it. The little Martians trembled because they’d never seen anything like this. The monster was far greedier and fiercer and faster than they were, or had ever imagined. Far more alive.”
“Can I guess?”
“All right.”
“One of those things they used to send. A probe. A space probe.”
He smiled. “Got it first time. There was a plate on the side of it saying ‘Made in USA. If found, please return.’ But the little creatures couldn’t make it out.”
“They couldn’t read.”
“If they’d gone on watching long enough—if they’d had time before their wits withered up in one of the dry spells—they’d have seen it for what it was. That it was only a machine and not alive at all.”
“Bernard, I don’t mind it as a story but—”
“Don’t you see?” He turned in the bed. “It’s a matter of recognition. A machine always gives itself away.”
After a moment she said: “And you can tell?”
“I think I can.”
There were technical arguments but he was not going to attempt them. Not here, not now, for God’s sake.
He drew the bedclothes back and he was looking at her body. She lay still. Her breasts had not dropped. They were firm. He put his hand gently upon one of them. The nipple stirred under his palm, engorging.
“That’s what life is,” Quatermass said. “That’s alive, that’s what it means.”
He stroked the soft areola, feeling it swell.
A tiny moment in huge, subtle, continuing processes, infinitely variable.
The colour was rising in her face. He was reminded of the dream but there was nothing here of that bright bloom. This was a greying woman, starting to move into his own age.
She had managed to keep her body well.
An irrational thought seized him—that if he could enter it and succeed, everything would be somehow proved. It was like accepting a gigantic bet.
“Annie—”
She pulled the covers over them both because the room was cold. Her arms went round him. He looked down at her and it was like seeing half the human race.
She seemed to guess the awe.
“I’m me,” Annie said. “I’m only me.”
He was moved at that, filled with a rush of tenderness for her. He was young enough. And sure enough.
Ringstone Round was under military guard. It had been declared dangerous.
Certain of the stones were cracked, as if their angle had subjected them to the full power. One was riven completely. It might have been struck by a great cleaver, sending the halves apart at an acute angle. Others had been curiously shivered. Large flakes of sarsen hung ready to drop away. A few seemed quite unaffected, as solid as they had stood before visitors through the centuries.
Now barbed wire circled the whole site, right outside the blackened perimeter line.
There were half a dozen young soldiers on guard, all that could be spared for this duty. Young men, trained and adequately armed, they crouched at their posts beside the wire.
The Planet People watched them.
They had drifted back to the Round just to see it again, Kickalong and Caraway and a few others. They had walked among the great stones, feeling all the time that they had missed their chance, but Kickalong got very certain. Because it had come here once didn’t mean it wouldn’t come a second time, he said, in fact it was all the more likely. This was a sure place, he said. He seemed to know about it, that all it needed was enough People to come here again.
Every person in the Big Bunker was on his feet.
There was a rush of sound from the loudspeakers. Then only the dry-mouthed voice from Mission Control. “Houston to Mother Bird! Mother Bird, are you receiving me? . . . Mother Bird, are you able to receive me? . . . Can you hear? . . . Mother Bird . . . Houston to Mother Bird . . .”
In the end Grock Jervis gave a small desperate signal.
Somebody cut the relay off.
Quatermass said slowly: “I don’t think . . . it even knew they were there.”
He sat.
Knew. Not knew, he shouldn’t have said knew. That implied faculties. That was anthropomorphism. Their presence had not registered, he should have said.
Those last seconds . . .
They had not been wearing helmets. One could tell that from the acoustics. Not pressure-suits either, perhaps, one didn’t need them in a shuttle. But if the shuttle systems blew, if the protection went . . . instant explosive decompression . . . blood foaming out . . .
“Well, professor?”
It was Hatherley.
There was a hubbub of voices in the bunker. People were conferring in worried twos and threes. Now he saw the expression in Hatherley’s eyes. It looked like exhilaration. It must be a trick of the light.
“Professor—that beam?”
There was no doubt about it. A hysterical, inspirational edge to the voice. Quatermass could not look at him. He started pulling his papers together.
“A great beam reaching out to infinity!”
Quatermass said: “I think we imagine something different, you and I.”
There was a grunt from Jervis. The Prime Minister was sitting in his place with his eyes fixed on Hatherley. He looked like a prisoner with an uncertain hope of rescue.
Annie Morgan butted in. Her shock was turning to incredulous anger. She said to Hatherley: “Have you read the report on the child? The one who survived for a single day?”
“No,” said Hatherley.
“What!” Annie was even more astonished. “Surely—we had them rushed out. The report on Isabel. Her name was Isabel. I’ve got copies here—”
She was searching for her case but Hatherley waved the offer away. “It’s irrelevant,” he said.
They could only stare at him.
“She didn’t go with them,” said Hatherley. As if the remark had not only been perfectly reasonable but had proved an important point, he turned and stalked away out of the conference room.
Soon everyone had gone.
All but Grock.
He sat alone rubbing one of his great jug-ears and nodding to himself. He felt himself to have been saved. In the last few minutes the huge terror that had threatened to consume him so utterly had grown smaller. He supposed it was what was meant by the comforts of religion. He had never been a religious man but he respected that of others. He liked to hear hymns and incantations. He rejoiced in other people’s rituals. It was like watching workmen through a fence.
Whatever it was that uplifted young David Hatherley, he was glad of it.
The young held the key to this mystery, he was surer and surer. He had always kept the society of young friends and this showed the soundness of his instinct. He had seen himself sometimes as a Socrates amongst them. He had the homely features but not the brain, so he would not put them to question as the Greek would have done. He would have lost them. Most of them had no great intellectual gift. They did not talk much to him or even to each other. But they had intuition. There was a secret in them which he, old Grock, respected. When some of them drifted off to join the Planet People he had been saddened to lose them, not surprised. Dan and Keith and Simon . . . they were the real youth of the land. The gangs were nothing but a horrible aberration. They would burn each other out.
That shining beam . . . perhaps it led away to . . . Grock knew little science but wondered if it might not be such a thing as a black hole. The concept had always alarmed him. Gaps in space that could consume matter, even light. Perhaps the scientists who propounded the idea were inspired by a religious idea and found it fact. Perhaps that was the true explanation of immortality. Some cosmic magic, molecular transubstantiation, to dissolve a clownish body and snatch it along a beam of light and through a blackness that shivered all dimensions . . . to an unknown planet. To meet those who had gone before. Keith and Simon and Dan perhaps. If it had happened to them as they thought it would. And Friedrich and Peter and little Terry . . .
One must desire it. Earnestly desire it.
The report on that poor wretched girl lay under his hand. He had done no more than glance at it. He would not read it now.
He pushed it away across the table.
A hundred thousand miles from Earth the shuttle rocket was spinning like a leaf caught in an eddy. Its attitude thrusters had sent it into a yawing motion before they expired and it was still continuing, even though without power. Every device aboard was dead, as were the two men in the crew compartment. Behind them, the long doors of the cargo bay stood open to expose the transmitter. The flimsy antennas had snapped under the inertial strain of the shuttle’s gyration, and now trailed from the bay. They looked like the intestines of a smashed sea creature.
1 2
The entrance to Downing Street was blocked by a heavy tank, which squatted there on permanent guard. It was rarely if ever seen to move. In fact, said Helen Peacher, there was some suspicion that there was no crew inside it. A cat was often to be seen playing with her kittens in the shelter of its tracks, and the kittens might well have been born there.
If it made the Prime Minister feel safe in Number 10 it served its purpose.
Helen Peacher despised her boss deeply. It was she who, as Minister of Supply, had found accommodation for Quatermass and Annie Morgan in the Parliamentary Annexe, the huge block built for MPs and their staffs. It had no such use now. The long recess had become indefinite under the Emergency Regulations.
From his room Quatermass could look down on the Embankment. From here it had a spurious normality. A few trucks and cars could be seen on the move, and there were people on the pavements, clerks and the like with some apparent purpose. One or two stopped on a corner where a barrow-man was selling nuts. Beyond the bridge he could make out part of the superstructure of HMS Arbalest, the old missile frigate moored protectively alongside the terrace of the House of Commons. Above everything loomed the burned-out tower of Big Ben with its clock faces all stopped at three-fifty—a.m., of course, that’s when they would have struck.
After the curfew siren there was little movement on the streets below, only an occasional army pig on patrol or a car carrying some of the Prime Minister’s catamites home to Number 10. According to Helen Peacher.
Quatermass sat for hours looking out into the darkness. He expected at any moment to see a dazzling band spring to earth, somewhere along the horizon. Not wanting it but in a way needing to know. He despised himself for that. Another mark of old age, the feeble, greedy garnering of bad news, the chimney-corner gloat that came before the final disorder. He felt grey and heavy, as if he were filled with clay.
Annie came at last.
She had brought food, and she made him eat before she told him what news she had. After the fiasco of the shuttle rocket, Moscow had cut itself off from the Americans. From now on it would act alone. “In the matter of the spatial threat,” it had declared, “it is now time for unilateral initiative.” Whatever that meant.
Meanwhile the incidents had gone on, in many parts of the world. It was likely that there were far more of them than were ever reported, since they invariably brought about a failure of communications. Often they had occurred in remote areas, but not always.
“The worst was on Disneyland,” said Annie.
He was the more shocked because of the place. He had never seen it but the very thought of it had always struck him as ridiculous. Confected turrets and the celebration of Mickey Mouse. That it should have been blasted had a special grotesqueness. Thousands of young people again, the very fact that they had gathered there should have been warning enough. But why there? What drew them? He struggled with the connection. Donald Duck and Goofy and megalithic beacons. What had that land been in former times, south of Los Angeles? Red Indian country? Apache? And before that, before even the Indians came? Who was there then?
He felt a frightening blank in his mind, a kind of petit mal. Without realizing it, he found himself clinging to Annie.
He was old, an old man to be held like a child. She got him to bed.
“Don’t leave me,” he said.
In the end she got into the bed beside him, to warm him.
He fell asleep for a time. Then during the night he woke and she realized he was trying to make love to her. But it came to nothing. He slept again with his head on her breast.
“Hello, Bernard,” said his wife.
He was surprised and delighted to see her. She had returned sooner than he had hoped. But for a drowsy, confused moment he could not quite remember where she had been. She had gone into town, he knew, for some medical purpose. To consult a gynecologist about what had been troubling her, that must be it. No—his head was clearing now—no, she had been in hospital. And now she had been discharged. She had had the operation and they had sent her home. No, that was wrong too. It was the baby. Of course, why hadn’t he realized that before? They had sent her home with the new baby.
He ought to have fetched her. He had no business to have left her to drive herself home like that, with her newly born baby.
“Where is it?” he asked. “Where’s the baby?”
But she only smiled as if that was a secret for the moment. Or a surprise for him to find, the child tucked up in the cot they had bought. That’s where she must have put it.
He should have fetched her home. He had no excuses, lying here in bed like this at a time when she needed him. But he had completely overlooked it.
She looked tired, he thought. Her face was drawn and thin. That must be from the effort of the birth, which was only days ago. But then she turned again and the weariness had all gone. So quick to change. She looked as she had done in her pregnancy, the glow back again, the slight rich plumping of the skin. She was very desirable and he wanted her, wanted to pull her over to him and make love to her—
There was somebody in the bed.
Lying there beside him, a woman.
In some unbelievable way he had forgotten her. She was asleep, breathing heavily, a woman with fine features and greying hair on the pillow. He did not know her name.
His wife had not noticed her yet, the bedclothes were heaped so high. But in another moment she must. She would catch sight of Annie—that was it, Annie, that was the woman’s name—and then he would see pain come into her face. The bloom would go from it and it would turn thin.
Where she had just been, they had hurt her. He remembered now. And there was to be more hurt here in her home.
She still hadn’t realized, standing there with that incredible glow upon her. At any second it must hit her. The hurt would come from him—
Quatermass woke with a jolt.
He found himself shaking.
Annie was there beside him, moving, murmuring as if he had broken her sleep.
It must be dawn.
The dream was dispelling fast, as his always did. He could only remember the feeling of it, the vivid guilt—it was because he had attempted Annie, of course, those hours before. And failed. Shameful, that, shameful.
He lay still.
His brain was racing but in confusion.
Annie’s eyes were open and watching him. The faint light in the room picked up their glisten, a soft wetness. Perhaps she was sorry for him. He wanted no pity from her. Better have resentment or even contempt.
He was wide awake now. His brain was curiously busy. Nervously active in an undirected way, excited as a dog hunting rats in a field, jumping all over the place. Ideas kept popping up and vanishing, getting away from him before he could catch them. Then small, logical sequences came. And in a sudden rush, lucidity.
“It’s a machine!”
Perhaps it was being with her that had done it, had provided an arousal that worked itself through in an unexpected way.
She turned to him. “What did you say?”
“A machine—”
She whispered: “My dear, you’ve been lying there tormenting yourself and worrying. You’ve got to rest now.”
“No,” he said. “It’s true.”
“Tell me, then.”
He couldn’t explain it to her, yet he felt complete certainty. “Just give me a minute,” he said. It took longer than that.
At last he said: “I’m going to tell you a story.”
She smiled.
“I know it’s—well, it’s the wrong end of bed time,” he said. “But I used to be quite good at it once.”
Good at something, anyway.
“What about?”
“Martians.”
She frowned. Either puzzled or concerned for him. There wasn’t enough light to make out which.
“Bernard, you don’t actually think that all this—?”
“I said a story.”
“Because—there really isn’t anything alive there, is there? I mean it’s been proved, hasn’t it? I know that much.”
It was concern.
“Just Martians that there might have been. Story Martians. About as likely as rabbits in trousers and mice wearing hats. No more, no less.”
She was still watching him. “Disneyland got through to you, didn’t it?”
“I’ll tell you what they were like. Very, very tiny, like midget woodlice, flat and grey and frayed-looking. Not really much alive. And they hibernated a lot. Often they dried up completely for a year or two and only thawed out again when they got a drop of moisture.”
“That’s alive?”
“It was enough. They stayed under the gravel and rock fragments, because that’s all there is on Mars. Sheltering from the sun and the dust storms. If they were lucky they found bits of lichen to nibble.”
“Poor little creatures.”
“And then one day—they got a fearful shock.”
“I should have thought they’d welcome it.”
“Well, they didn’t. It was a monster that appeared amongst them. Far, far bigger than they were. The braver ones crawled out to have a look. It was squatting there on enormous legs and swinging its terrible head about and swaying and digging its long claws into the earth and fetching up huge mouthfuls of it and actually eating it. The little Martians trembled because they’d never seen anything like this. The monster was far greedier and fiercer and faster than they were, or had ever imagined. Far more alive.”
“Can I guess?”
“All right.”
“One of those things they used to send. A probe. A space probe.”
He smiled. “Got it first time. There was a plate on the side of it saying ‘Made in USA. If found, please return.’ But the little creatures couldn’t make it out.”
“They couldn’t read.”
“If they’d gone on watching long enough—if they’d had time before their wits withered up in one of the dry spells—they’d have seen it for what it was. That it was only a machine and not alive at all.”
“Bernard, I don’t mind it as a story but—”
“Don’t you see?” He turned in the bed. “It’s a matter of recognition. A machine always gives itself away.”
After a moment she said: “And you can tell?”
“I think I can.”
There were technical arguments but he was not going to attempt them. Not here, not now, for God’s sake.
He drew the bedclothes back and he was looking at her body. She lay still. Her breasts had not dropped. They were firm. He put his hand gently upon one of them. The nipple stirred under his palm, engorging.
“That’s what life is,” Quatermass said. “That’s alive, that’s what it means.”
He stroked the soft areola, feeling it swell.
A tiny moment in huge, subtle, continuing processes, infinitely variable.
The colour was rising in her face. He was reminded of the dream but there was nothing here of that bright bloom. This was a greying woman, starting to move into his own age.
She had managed to keep her body well.
An irrational thought seized him—that if he could enter it and succeed, everything would be somehow proved. It was like accepting a gigantic bet.
“Annie—”
She pulled the covers over them both because the room was cold. Her arms went round him. He looked down at her and it was like seeing half the human race.
She seemed to guess the awe.
“I’m me,” Annie said. “I’m only me.”
He was moved at that, filled with a rush of tenderness for her. He was young enough. And sure enough.
Ringstone Round was under military guard. It had been declared dangerous.
Certain of the stones were cracked, as if their angle had subjected them to the full power. One was riven completely. It might have been struck by a great cleaver, sending the halves apart at an acute angle. Others had been curiously shivered. Large flakes of sarsen hung ready to drop away. A few seemed quite unaffected, as solid as they had stood before visitors through the centuries.
Now barbed wire circled the whole site, right outside the blackened perimeter line.
There were half a dozen young soldiers on guard, all that could be spared for this duty. Young men, trained and adequately armed, they crouched at their posts beside the wire.
The Planet People watched them.
They had drifted back to the Round just to see it again, Kickalong and Caraway and a few others. They had walked among the great stones, feeling all the time that they had missed their chance, but Kickalong got very certain. Because it had come here once didn’t mean it wouldn’t come a second time, he said, in fact it was all the more likely. This was a sure place, he said. He seemed to know about it, that all it needed was enough People to come here again.
