New Writings in SF 9 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Peter ? You up there ? Is it all right if I come up ?”

  “That’s Emmy Addy,” Belle said, her voice unusually sharp. “What does she want here?”

  “Easy way to find out.” Sentry raised his voice. “Hello, Emmy. It’s all right, come on up!” In the seconds of waiting he shot a cautious side-glance at Belle, puzzled by a look on her face that he had never seen there before and couldn’t interpret. Then a glossy black corona of hair appeared, followed by a gleaming smile as Emmeline Addy came into the control room. The smile winked out as she turned her head and saw Belle.

  “Gosh, I might have known you’d be here too. Did I interrupt something ? I can leave it------”

  “It’s all right. Have a seat. What’s that, cake?”

  “You did say you wanted to try a piece. Well, here it is.” Emmy unwrapped a small bundle and Sentry nodded.

  “It looks good, all right. Enough there for two. You try a piece, Tinkle. Got time to stay for a cup of coffee, Em ?”

  Belle stood up, still with that curious expression on her face. “I feel a fool,” she said, “and that’s what I needed to open my eyes to something. Emmy, I think it’s only right that we should tell Peter what’s going on. I know the taboo on gossip, but this thing could grow by default until it’s too big to handle. You know what I mean, about Andrew Kingsley.”

  Emmy’s lovely face became apprehensive. “I know what you mean, but I don’t want to be the one to start anything.”

  “Then I will, if you’ll back me up. Somebody has to do it.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Sentry demanded, and his wife fixed her big blue eyes on him resolutely.

  “Do you want to know what was the first thing I felt when I heard Emmy’s voice, just now? Jealousy and suspicion. Oh, I know it’s ridiculous, and it went as soon as it came. I won’t even bother to apologize. Emmy will understand. You see, when you drop a little poison into a biological system it spreads and infects the whole. And that is what’s happening here. I’m talking about Andrew Kingsley. Over the past few weeks he has been developing into a goat. A nasty, sneaking, perverted satyr!”

  “That’s the truth.” Emmy sighed as Sentry stared aghast. “Only last month I had a big row with him over it. Kept snooping round C. & D., pretending it was official and getting a bit too familiar with me. Then calling on me at home when Eben was on power-watch.”

  Sentry forced a smile. “In your case who could blame him for being interested. Me too, only Twinkle watches me too closely.”

  “You can say that in fun and I don’t mind. We all make that kind of joke at times. But Kingsley wasn’t fooling around, not with me he wasn’t. I had to tell him flat, in the end, that if he didn’t mind himself, Eben would find out, and he would wind up dead, fast. You know that’s right, Peter.”

  Sentry sighed. Ebenezer Addy was a big man in every way, big in body, in enthusiasm, in his appetite for work. He would be enormous in anger.

  “You too?” He turned to Belle, and she nodded gravely.

  “Just like all the rest, I didn’t want to tell anybody, least of all you, and you know why. In the early days it didn’t matter so much. We were all keyed up, tensed up, sharing a common danger—and strong emotional involvements were something to avoid. We were all pretty free and easy and no harm done. But it’s different now. We’ve settled down. We have private lives. We’ve all made the adjustment. All except Kingsley, it seems. And he has been walking this path for some time now. It’s got to be stopped.”

  “That’s easy to say,” Sentry muttered. “But not so easy to do. Why does it have to be Kingsley, of all people? As the Director, he’s virtually our inspiration and guide. If that image breaks it could smash the whole project, ruin everything !”

  “Maybe it isn’t all that bad,” Belle hazarded: “After all, a man can’t be a successful satyr without some measure of cooperation, and so far as I know, he’s not getting it.”

  “Not from me, he isn’t, anyway,” Emmy declared. “I like a bit of fun as much as anybody, but Eben’s my man and that suits me fine.”

  Her words stirred a response in Sentry. He put out his hand to her.

  “You too?”

  She looked from him to Belle, and back, and her smile was a beautiful thing. “We’ve known for a long while. That computer certainly decided right for us two. And you ?”

  Belle nodded, happy now. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  * * * *

  Five

  Wonderful or not, the seeds of unease had been sown in Sentry’s mind, and it was a problem that, while it concerned him acutely, involved him in matters outside his competence. He was a physicist. This was a problem that belonged properly to the sociology section. But the head of the sociology section was Andrew Kingsley. So where did you go from there? The colony had established its own routine for dealing with wild problems. It took the form of a regular quiz, once every two weeks. Everyone attended except the two men on power-watch, and even they kept in touch by visiphone. Questions were put up, debated, considered by whoever was expert in that field, decisions were taken, future action planned, reports made—it was a very important piece of administrative machinery. But the chairman, again, was Andrew Kingsley, and Sentry could just imagine the uproar there would be if he threw this little bomb into the works. Gossip! Where was the substantial evidence ? Would any of the others back him up ? And how could he ask around beforehand without lighting the very fuse he was afraid of?

  The more he thought about it the more he saw how impossible it was. His own immediate contacts were, naturally, with the seven other men who made up the power team. They were all good friends, but they never mentioned personal or private matters. Their talk was always “shop”, or social activities. The choir, the games tournaments, the art-class, chess problems—or some repair-job, the cosmic-ray count, radiation factors in the latest water sample, the plankton drift—but never one’s private affairs. A sensible rule had grown to be a habit, a stranglehold that Kingsley was using to his own advantage. The frustration nagged him, was still nagging him as he ended his watch, turned the job over to Charlie Snow and made his way home by the playing fields to pick up Belle.

  She was in the concluding stages of a foursome of tennis with the other three biologists, partnering Karen Wilby against Moira Snow and Sylvia Kiggel. In the next court four of the marine men were engaged in a ding-dong tussle, and Sentry joined the little group who were watching them. Giuseppi Vitelli gave him a rueful smile.

  “This is much safer than the job you handed us this morning, Sentry. Never have I seen such a beast!”

  “I can imagine. It never occurred to me it was all one animal. Still, that kind of thing won’t happen again, now we know how to discourage them.”

  “Just as well somebody was on the ball.” The comment came from a great blond oak of a man by Sentry’s left. “Kingsley was practically gibbering in hysterics. A bloody poor show, in my opinion.” Sentry eyed the speaker, Robert Vance, and wondered if the comment carried any deeper significance. Vitelli chuckled, tried to dismiss the matter.

  “You are too hard on him, Robert. It was a bad moment, and we were enough to frighten the devil himself, all smeared with that filthy ink. You were scared, go on, admit it!”

  “Of course I was, but I was one of those who had to go back out and tackle the damned thing. Kingsley wasn’t in any danger.”

  “We were all in danger,” Sentry interposed mildly. “If that stunt of mine had backfired we’d be in a hell of a mess now.” He turned away as the women’s foursome ended and Belle came trotting over to him, arm in arm with her partner. Both were breathless. Karen Wilby, a good three inches taller than Belle, pantomimed exhaustion and clutched Sentry’s shoulder.

  “Am I glad that’s over. She runs me into the ground!”

  “You’re overweight,” Belle remarked, flatly and without malice.

  “Only in the best places, I hope,” Karen retorted, panting hugely and making the most of
her magnificent endowments. Sentry joined in the laugh, knowing that Karen was irrepressibly extrovert, and quite harmless, but his mirth shrivelled as Vance inserted himself into the conversation, speaking to Belle.

  “I’m hoping to be lucky enough to draw you for the mixed doubles,” he said. “You’re the kind of partner I need.”

  “We’ll see how it goes,” she smiled offhandedly. “Come on, Peter. See you tomorrow, Karen.” She took Sentry’s arm and marched him away. As soon as they were clear he murmured,

  “Is this thing beginning to get me, or is he another of those?”

  “He’s another,” she said, very quietly. “The poison spreads.”

  “But”-—he hesitated on the words—”how do you know? Isn’t there a chance that this is all just imagination?”

  “Don’t be daft,” she said, and there was complete conviction in her voice. “A woman always knows.”

  He had to be content with that. He tried to banish the problem and the simmering rage that came to him whenever he thought of it, with the thought that it was not his field. He would have been justly indignant had one of the sociologists tried to tell him how to operate the power-plant. Every man to his own job, he decided. But the problem reared up and struck at him, three days later, in a way he just could not ignore. He had just begun the night watch for the second time in his cycle. Prior to subsidence a lot of hard thought had gone into planning various routines so that everyone was used to the utmost of his abilities, yet each had ample free time for leisure. In the special case of the eight power-men, who had to be available twenty-four hours a day, a twelve-hour watch cycle had been chosen as ideal. It meant that each man did two day watches, from 0700 to 1900, then two night watches, from 1900 to 0700, and then had four days completely free to study, rest, play or catch up on whatever activities he fancied.

  For this final night watch, while the rest of the community slept and only Solkov, on the East side, shared his vigil, Sentry had saved a delicate little job. On a work-table before him, so arranged that he could see the control board merely by looking up, stood the complex parts of a tiny TV camera, one of the hundreds that were to be found almost everywhere in Poseidon. Most of them were sizeable and linked directly in to the computer, to be put in action whenever anything was done that needed to be recorded, but this particular one was a tiny portable, one of the dozen or so that the outside party were in the habit of carrying whenever they went exploring the sea-bed. Camera maintenance was Sentry’s “other” job, and he enjoyed the work, but these tiny portables were teasing things to handle. This one had been bashed in the recent fracas with the squid and the interior was sticky with sepia-and-water.

  He had fully expected an all-night session with the thing, but this time good fortune was on his side. With the sticky ink washed out and the battery replaced, his test-gauges showed that it ought to work perfectly. The blow had cracked the seals and let in water to short-circuit everything, but that seemed to be all. Hopefully, he smeared epoxy-resin on the matching edges of the casing, marked the time exactly, and shuffled everything into place so that he could press it all together when the time was right. On the five-minute mark precisely he held his breath, slid the sections together, pressed and waited, and then let go.

  “That ought to do it,” he muttered, “until some ham-handed clown goes mad with it again.” Which was unfair, but there was no one to hear. He set it to stand on top of a multipoint recorder, where the warmth would help the resin to spread and ensure the seal, switched the control to action-on and let it run. It had capacity for an hour of sound and vision, but five or ten minutes ought to be enough for a trial. That done he turned to go and warm up some coffee before making a routine, on-the-hour check— and jumped with surprise as he saw someone watching him from the doorway.

  “Did I startle you?” she asked, smiling. It was Helen Kingsley, her heavy blonde hair unbound and brushing her shoulders. One glance showed him that all she wore was a cobwebby pale-blue robe, a nightdress of some kind, he assumed, and that her feet were bare. No wonder he hadn’t heard her come.

  “I certainly wasn’t expecting to see you, or anybody else,” he managed a smile and comparative ease. “Something I can do for you?”

  “Not professionally, perhaps, no. I’m not intruding on anything?”

  “Hardly. No secrets here. Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I stay and talk to you for a while.” She came all the way in, selected a low stool that was used mostly for the kind of job where a man would have had to crouch otherwise, and settled on it with apparent indifference for the inadequacies of her semi-transparent attire. Sentry felt a sudden chill, and the need for caution.

  “I was just about to warm up some coffee. Want a cup?”

  “You’re very kind.” She watched him, accepted the cup, smiled her thanks and murmured, “You have the best of it, here. Always something meaningful to be getting on with.”

  “You’re joking, of course! Ninety per cent of what I do is routine that the computer could handle far more efficiently. I’m practically redundant, right now.”

  “Aren’t we all?” she countered, sighing. “Here we are, all of us, just going through the same silly motions, day in and day out. So boring.”

  “Boring? Do you think so?”

  “Oh come, Peter, you must feel it. That little fuss we had, three days ago, was exciting, yes. But how often do we get anything like that now? It was different in the beginning. So new, so demanding, so different, with a fresh hazard and thrill every day. We lived then.” She sipped at her cup, staring at him. “Remember? There was a tingle in the atmosphere, a zest! Remember when Sea-lock Two jammed up, with a half-a-dozen scuba-boys trapped outside? And when Duggie Haig brought that odd weed in and we all caught a rash from it? And the time the nitrogen percentage got too high and we were all sozzled for a while until we found out what it was and fixed it?”

  “It wasn’t funny at the time.”

  “No, perhaps not. But it was exciting. And we were all so close then, like good friends facing a common threat. We lived life right up, because we could never be sure there was going to be a tomorrow. You know what I mean ?”

  Sentry knew. He saw the colour coming to her cheeks, and her growing animation at her own memories. “Adrenalin,” he said, matter-of-factly, “is all right in small doses, but I’d hate to live like that, at full-throttle, all the time. I’d be just as pleased if the next six months were dull.”

  “Oh no!” she protested. “You don’t mean it. Not that I want to see dreadful things, I don’t. But I couldn’t bear it if we settled down like some dreary little humdrum village on the surface. We’re not that kind of folk.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We’re just people!”

  “Silly!” She got up and moved a step towards him. “We are not just people. We’re different. We aren’t bound by conventions. We don’t need little-people rules to tell us ‘right’ from ‘wrong’. Why shouldn’t we make our own excitement? We’re not sheep!”

  “We aren’t goats, either. At least I’m not.” He stood up to face her, trying to keep calm. “I almost said Why don’t you try your seduction bit on somebody else?’, but on second thought I suggest you forget it altogether.”

  “You’re afraid of me?” she challenged, hands on hips, her body thrust arrogantly forward. “I wonder why? I won’t bite!”

  “Once again,” he said, “I think you’re joking. I’m not afraid of you, but I am scared of what you might do. You may think this life boring, and that’s your opinion. You may think we’re immune from rights and wrongs, and that’s your opinion again. But if you try upsetting any more domestic peace just for the sake of a few cheap thrills, you are going to get a lot more than you bargain for, and that’s no opinion, but a fact.”

  She came closer, not in the least abashed. “You’re strong minded, Peter. I like that. I’ve had a fancy for you for a long time. Does that shock you, that I can be so candid? B
ut why not ? What can you do ? You daren’t talk to anyone about it because it would be your word against mine. And I’m the psychologist, remember? My story would be that you invited me here, tried to seduce me—and failed. That makes your story the result of rage and frustration and the urge to get revenge.”

  “My story? Who said I was going to talk?”

  “Of course you won’t. I’m just showing you the whip and assuring you that I’ll use it unless you play with me. I mean to have you, Peter.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “In that way, yes! It’s a glorious feeling. I’m going to have you, steal some of you away from that pug-nosed dump of a housewife of yours and that makes it all the sweeter. That self-satisfied grin of hers sets my teeth on edge at times. You’re wasted on her.”

  “And you’re wasting your time on me!”