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  98.4

  Christopher Hodder-Williams

  © Christopher Hodder-Williams 1969

  Christopher Hodder-Williams has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1969 by Hodder and Stoughton.

  This edition published in 2015 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  POSTSCRIPT

  ONE

  Ruth ditched me in a minor town outside a decrepit cinema. The night was wet and miserable, and the whirr of the wipers and the tricky blur of images from outside heaped on the loneliness until she finally snapped.

  Acting on a final impulse that had threatened so many times before, she grabbed her suitcase from the back and said: ‘We can’t stand it. You know it, I know it.’

  It was a hell of a moment for her to be so right. I looked at her for a long time, this super-fragile, over-slimmed minigirl with harsh eyes that were really hopelessly gentle and afraid. We were poles apart and knew it. We knew everything, had for a long time. Ruth needed a semi-detached in a briskly suburban area. Her lightweight body needed a feather duster to go with it. I hadn’t even got a gilded cage for her to flick at.

  So I let her go, feeling nothing. ‘Okay,’ I said.

  She didn’t even slam the car door and I didn’t even make a movement. I just watched her go, losing herself among the huddle of damp individuals at the bus stop.

  I drove most of the night, stopping twice for coffee at a couple of night-places where the juke box is the irresistible irritant you put money in to hear tunes that are evocative for vague, mind-lazy reasons. I think I was trying to remind myself of the early months with Ruth, by playing out-of-date pops we’d never taken any notice of when they were fresh. Of course it didn’t work. How could it? — when there wasn’t anything?

  Restless for action and aware of an unholy degree of absenteeism in recent months I got in the car, jabbed the headlights on full and drove fast. Soon the factory loomed enormous on the right. Its halo of lights gave it an eerie finish; it was glowing in the blackness like an isolated planet in space. It had nothing to do with the surrounding countryside. The impression suited my mood. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the surrounding anything.

  The guard at the gate recognized me and let me in without a challenge. I drove around the perimeter road to Group Two. Some lights were on up in the department. It was almost like coming home.

  This was when I suddenly realized how much my job meant to me. I even sweated momentarily, wondering how long I might have gone on risking it, felt grateful to Ruth for making the decision. I decided the departure from sanity was all my fault, knowing it wasn’t. I felt I could afford to be generous, for as long as I kept my job.

  I bounced out of the car, not feeling tired. I took the iron steps leading to the back way, because the main entrance to Group Two was closed. I started humming, even. On the door to the drawing office was the notice I had put up myself, about saving electricity. It looked undeniably pompous, but I left it there.

  Stavely, egg-head without yolk, was working late and sat immobile at one of the desks. He often came at night and this in itself was reassuring. Same old Stavely, playing genius.

  He looked up when I entered, watching me for a few seconds with a blank expression in which all emotions exactly cancelled out. Then his greased-back hair, slide-rule parted, sheened in the light from the Anglepoise as he made a slight movement and leaned forward. ‘Your dismissal came through last week,’ he said. ‘I thought you knew.’

  *

  I don’t remember the next few days at all clearly. I went through hates and fears and alcohol and I think it was four days later that I found myself with a lot of beard and a sense of fury against myself. I went straight to a public washroom and took a good look at myself while I tried to freshen up.

  I was forty-one; rather hatchet-faced and unfriendly. The eyes were aggressive and sharp; they seemed to flit about too much. The mouth was too generous at the sides. My figure was good — better than ten years before. But I did not like my choice of suit. It was the sort you see in trains when they got off at Reading. First class ticket maybe; but the ticket paid for by the company. The symmetrical features in the mirror were nevertheless off-balance because one eye was browner than the other. The total effect was childish; and that went with my recent conduct. I had lost my job because I’d deserved to.

  There was a razor point so I went out to the car and fetched my shaver. That was a bit better. Then I stripped to the waist and had a bloody good wash. This meant another trip out to the car for a clean shirt. That was better still.

  I checked into a hotel. It seemed to be Tuesday. I was still in the Aylesbury area. They pressed my suit and I had a bath and it seemed to be lunchtime. I ate well, and phoned Dineham, who was in London, and asked to see him. (Dineham had fired me.) He refused; but said he would give me a reasonable letter of recommendation if I stayed out of his hair thereafter. He wouldn’t do this, though, unless I gave him my word that the destructive affair that had wrecked my job with him was now entirely over. He added that though he hated his competitors in an appropriate fashion there were limits to the fate he would wish on anybody. I made the right promises and hung up, regretting the call. There had been a sour note in his voice. It didn’t fit the facts. I could understand the pressure on him to boot me out of the place but couldn’t figure why he of all people should be glad. It made me wonder about a very long sequence of events and whether or not I’d got the whole thing upside down. I gloomed about this in the bar till it closed at three. Soon after that, the first hint that things might well be upside down became apparent.

  *

  Though the man who arrived at my hotel just after three on that Tuesday afternoon omitted to explain what took him there, I thought at first that Dineham must have got on to him because there could have been no other way of tracing me that fast. Security work trains you in what is possible and what isn’t. I wasn’t quite right about the link — though later I was to discover that this man had been in Dineham’s office when I’d phoned. But right or wrong, I knew there was a connection somewhere: I’d never put up at the Mitre in Aylesbury before; and even if the security boys had been interested, they could neither have followed me (I always looked) nor have anticipated my plans — I hadn’t got any. I had simply stopped the car and got out and there was the Mitre.

  It was an old place — an expensive place for someone who finds himself abruptly out of work. But going there had paid off. This huge man who smoked tiny cigarettes said grinning: ‘If you’re Nigel Yenn I have a job for you. Will you listen?’

  ‘Certainly I’ll listen.’ I led the way up creaking stairs in ostentatious oak. ‘Is it reasonable to ask how you knew I was here?’

  He ducked his head under a low door (low for him) and replied: ‘Perfectly reasonable. Do you mind if I don’t answer?’

  There was no one in the little lounge — more creaky boards and discreet little lamps placed in corners. A narrow window, heavily leaded, allowed a strip of sunshine to illuminate dust. Deep settees with tassels and wine-coloured upholstery sagged towards the floor. It was a ludicrous s
etting for a business chat.

  The large man lowered himself surprisingly deftly into the exact centre of one of the couches and pulled at his tiny cigarette. ‘We’ve got quite a dossier on you,’ he said.

  ‘Keyholes and things?’ — I was annoyed by this phoney openness that came after the event. There had been altogether too many clicks on my line.

  ‘Be a good boy and listen. You’re valuable — or could be if you didn’t erupt like a seething volcano every time necessity infringes your puritan scruples.’

  ‘Necessity? — or expediency?’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Irritably, he shifted on the coy little sofa. He changed key now, helping the modulation by hammering out the slim cigarette with far too much force. He looked like a golfer — strong, but a little flabby around the stomach. As if he could never quite forget the importance of using his whole body for the swing, he ensured that even so trivial a physical act as disposing of a cigarette involved muscles all the way down to his feet. ‘You’d better know my name,’ he said. ‘It’s Charles Chindale.’ It so happened I’d heard of him, but thought he was something to do with the United Nations, and said so. ‘Yes but ...’ He was thinking out the best way of coming to the point. ‘I don’t come here representing any peace force.’ Chindale handed me what looked like a piece of magnetic tape — ‘Only it isn’t,’ he added enigmatically. And watched me skew-eyed as I examined it.

  I took my time. If I was to get a job I wasn’t in the mood either to say no or look an idiot. Clearly he wanted to see how I would set about a task — even as casual as this one.

  ‘Polyester base,’ I said when I was sure from the feel of it. ‘And it does have a coating on one side.’ I ground a little off with my fingernail. It became sticky, and I agreed it wasn’t ferrous. ‘Organic compound? ... Yes, how odd. It’s like a mucus.’ I handed it back. ‘The mucus is kept fairly ductile through the fact that it’s air-sealed under the top of the coating. Quite clever of them to laminate it that way. You would have thought the whole substance would slide off. What is it?’

  ‘That’s what I want you to find out.’

  ‘How did it get to you?’

  Chindale’s eyes acquired hoods. ‘I won’t say too much at this stage. But when you’ve identified it, find some excuse to talk to Dr Eustace Stergen.’ He smiled lopsidedly. ‘We will avoid any facetious reference to the doctor’s name.’

  ‘Is this a security matter?’

  He bounced up and down on the settee as he stuffed the tape back in his trouser pocket. ‘Not in the usual sense. Let’s say it’s private.’

  ‘May I ask why you chose me?’

  ‘Because you came on the market.’

  ‘And now you’re asking me to check up on the company that formerly employed me? Stergen is a key man.’

  ‘But not in your Group.’

  ‘It would still look odd.’

  ‘It would if they knew you were doing it. Do you know Stergen?’

  ‘No. Group Three keep very much to themselves. They have a separate entrance to the factory at Elstree and the whole thing is heavily guarded.’

  ‘Surely, as a security expert yourself, that shouldn’t be an insuperable obstacle?’

  I said: ‘Look ... I came out of all this very badly. How can I be any help to ... what is it? — The UN? ... That would amount to blaming my company for my own mistakes.’

  ‘Supposing they weren’t your mistakes?’

  ‘Oh, Christ! I can remember what happened, can’t I?’

  ‘All of it?’

  I left this bit hanging. Instead: ‘What on earth do the UN want with a bit of plastic tape? And how come they’re setting up a spy organization?’

  I got a golfer’s smile. Chindale was carefully laying a putt. ‘That’s precisely what they’re not.’

  ‘So they don’t know you’ve come to me?’

  ‘Never mind what they know or don’t know. Will you do it?’

  ‘I shall want to be paid.’

  ‘You’ll get paid ... Do you know about Stergen’s place in Somerset?’

  ‘I’ve heard.’

  ‘How much do you know about that? You said the two Groups were quite separate.’

  ‘They are now.’

  ‘I see. Do you know about Stergen’s line of research?’

  ‘I know he does something weird with brains.’ I felt my eyebrows lift. ‘But apparently appreciates the idyllic atmosphere of the West Country.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate the technological know-how of our English outback. Stergen’s hospital is a respectable one in Taunton. But he has this off-beat research centre on the coast.’

  I was silent for a while, determined to demonstrate that I wasn’t going to accept Chindale’s inscrutable terms merely because I’d been thrown out by Dineham. ‘I must know,’ I said, ‘what you suspect him of. It would be wasteful to go about this completely in the dark. And pointless.’

  ‘It is my privilege,’ he said with a sudden chill, ‘to operate in my own way. I’m not going to hire you, only to bring my own prejudices and suspicions to bear. This is a serious business and you have a frivolous reputation. Let’s see how you manage on your own.’

  I heard this vaguely but my mind was already on another track.

  Chindale asked: ‘Why are you muttering?’

  ‘Give me time!’ — I was convinced that Chindale was being infuriating on purpose. If he thought my rusty brain needed a jolt I could forgive him. ‘Stergen ... He wrote a technical paper — a weird one. We got it at Group Two when it became declassified. “The Dead Weight of the Human Frame.” Can’t remember much about it but it had to do with space craft. But he wrote another, a bit later. Didn’t he?’

  ‘You’re doing the talking.’

  ‘Stop testing me out and help me.’

  Chindale slipped the tape through his fingers but remained infuriating. ‘Think.’

  ‘Got it! — “The Essential Man.” Stergen claimed that the whole course of evolution was geared to the idea that only the brain of homo sapiens mattered. Ultimately mother nature would produce a series of mutations so as to get rid of the body as we know it.’

  ‘What do you think of it?’

  I shrugged. ‘It didn’t prove anything and it wasn’t new.’

  ‘It would be if Stergen found some way of speeding up the mutations.’

  I thought he was kidding. ‘That’s impossible and you know it. It would take hundreds of generations and that’s quite a long wait.’

  ‘You’re taking me far too literally, my friend.’ He looked down momentarily at the plastic tape, then back at me. I was just about to make some asinine comment about human heads walking about on tiny little legs when Chindale creaked in the settee and rapped for silence. The door winced stiffly open and a party of print-dressed dame-tourists simpered their way into the lounge for tea. We rose to leave the room; a move which they interpreted as a personal affront. As we stooped under the low doorway they grimaced at each other ... Ducks on a pond outraged by the arrogance of those chucking stale bread.

  We left them to it and creaked our way down the period stairs. They smelled of creosote and varnish. Overhead was a wrought-iron chandelier-thing. It had five candle-bulbs with five parchment shades and hung slightly askew. On the walls were old prints showing the hotel in various states of not being a coaching-inn any more. The last frame, at the bottom of the stairs, had a real bishop’s mitre pressed into a thinly folded layer, like a relief map. I wondered about the bishop who must have hocked it.

  The entire effect of this hotel was prosaically familiar. The two girls behind the reception counter were as supplied to all such places. One was unnecessarily tall and speciously authoritative, with a burr in her voice for telephoning; the other was a pretty thing with no features on her face and a bottom she displayed provocatively whenever she reached for a key. A group of American tourists glanced up from their contour map of the district to take in her contours instead. Then the tall one menaced them with a ‘
can I help you?’ and their eyes shot back to their map.

  Outside there was a market. And buses, all of them waiting in an orderly line calculated to prevent anyone unloading their baggage at the hotel. But the Chevrolet in which the American map-readers had arrived was accurately blocking the road, obliquely abandoned with a front wheel on the pavement and the back end projecting into the road. You can see at a glance how impossible it would be to unravel the puzzle. Heat rose from diesel engines and patient anger registered on the drivers’ faces, as if they were succulently looking forward to a shouting match.

  There wasn’t a thing that was different about this scene from hundreds like it, in almost any market town in England. But I’ll never forget walking out of that hotel with Chindale.

  It was one of those things that seem of absolutely no importance at the time. Chindale stopped in the sunshine and squinted the question at me: ‘What do you know about Philip Thorne?’

  ‘In what sense? — He’s an unexciting physicist with Group Three. In the old days — before the groups were divided up — I had a certain amount to do with him. Why?’

  Chindale gazed innocently into the distance. ‘I was wondering if your security job involved keeping tabs on his private life?’

  My indignation was unreasonable and I knew it. But I was pretty sensitive about the snooping image. ‘I didn’t spend my life peering through keyholes. But if you mean the ladies, Thorne was rather non-committal.’

  ‘He isn’t now. What’s happened is that his girl has got rather non-committal about him.’

  ‘That’s his business.’ By now, the nearest bus driver, deep puce in the face, was ready to let fly. It must be the heat, I thought. ‘What of it?’

  ‘It’s made him jumpy.’

  ‘Poor chap.’ I noticed one of the Americans. He came out of the hotel with the snazzy little receptionist and escorted her to the parked Chevrolet. As he did so, one of the buses eased slowly forward and meticulously scooped a dent out of the door panel with a painful grinding noise. The American took this calmly. He seemed rather a timid fellow, I thought, to have dated a girl for a quickie at such short notice.