New Writings in SF 19 - [Anthology] Read online

  ‘You’re sure you want to go through with this ?’

  At Saintsbury’s faintly patronising, faintly sneering tone Hudson knew he couldn’t withdraw, even had he wished to do. Now, now that the moment was approaching with the rapidity of a capsule re-entry, he wondered if he should feel fear. He was afraid, of course; but should he feel any more deeper emotions than the obvious ?

  ‘There’s no danger,’ he said, speaking as off-handedly as he could. ‘I’m only going to acquire a fresh set of memories.’

  Harriet had her preparations going well, the bone ground into powder form, the drugs mixed and decanted or whatever she did. All Hudson cared was that his idea should be put into practice, that work done by talented scientists in training worms to set patterns and then feeding those worms to other worms, who inherited the memories of the dead, should not be overlooked. He wanted to make sure that extra production by the brain of RNA, which stimulated memory, should be used by him for his own purpose.

  ‘Just think of it!’ he’d told Harriet when he’d first asked her to help. ‘Memories are inheritable, and memory can be strengthened by Ribonucleic acid—so you add the two together! I’m going to inject a piece of a Viking and then stimulate production of RNA in my brain—and-’

  ‘And you’ll be lucky if you remember what the Viking knew!’

  ‘It should work! Why not? I’ve been working on the problems of the Northmen in Canada all my life-’

  ‘You haven’t a clue about biochemistry, have you?’ She’d begun, then, her reduction of his amour propre. ‘I’ll set up a programme. This intrigues me. I assume you can help with the funding?’

  Professor Saintsbury had, on first approach, been not too keen. But as soon as he had met Harriet he had been only too willing to appropriate funds from his department.

  Hudson had been grateful.

  With a background of stolid Middle Western respectability and above-average results through college and university, Hudson had fought free of the Laocoon coils of Big Business and had—quite deliberately—chosen to rusticate in archaeology. The thoughts and imaginations of epic adventures would, he had decided, do for him.

  Professor Saintsbury, now, would have rowed a pretty oar in a dragon ship.

  There had been, so Harriet had told him, pursed of lip and concentrated of brow, a whole hell of a lot more to do in making his crazy idea work. Remembering-worms and memory drugs! But, she said, her synthesis would produce the result he required. From the cells of a long dead Viking he should draw the memories through her alchemy.

  The two halves of the programme had now been brought together. Harriet’s RNA-yielding yeasts and her own brand of synthesis had been brought to this tent—Hudson was scarcely likely to forget that recent red convertible ride—to be wed to the ancient bones provided by Professor Saintsbury. Cells were cells, Hudson had said; all memory in any cells—using the dead Viking’s backbone had been a bravura exercise in insurance in the absence of surviving brain cells.

  Saintsbury watched Harriet bending over the final stages of the work. He was, Hudson felt sure, admiring the stretch of the yellow and white dress and not giving a thought to the experiment. He didn’t believe it could be done. That had been self-evident. Hudson, weakly wondered if he, himself, really desired success.

  To take Saintsbury’s mind off Harriet, Hudson said: ‘If we can show the Norsemen really did visit Lake Superior for copper-’

  ‘The Vikings settled in America, all right,’ Saintsbury said boomingly, not looking away from Harriet. ‘We don’t have to prove that any more. They don’t call this place Leaf Cove for nothing—Leif Ericson landed here, you can bet on it. And right up to the fourteenth century the Vikings lived and colonised. Then-’

  ‘The Skraelings ...’

  The word struck a shivery spooky feeling up Hudson’s spine.

  ‘But if you recover this man’s memory, Harry—well, if you do—I’ll be the first-’ Saintsbury stopped talking, took his eyes off Harriet as she straightened up, and walked to the opening in the lab tent.

  ‘All ready.’ Harriet’s voice carried flatly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Feeling fit ?’

  ‘Huh? Oh, sure, sure. Let’s get started then, shall we?’ Hudson spoke with a china-bright gaiety.

  In his own mind Hudson had determined to keep the procedure on an unadorned level; he refused to admit any ceremony. All he wanted to do was inject the memory-conveying cells of the dead Viking, take the RNA yeast, and under the spell of Harriet’s alchemy, remember what that long dead Norse warrior had known.

  Afterwards they stood looking at him. His hands trembled. He stood up quickly from the camp stool. His face felt clammy. ‘I-’ he said. ‘I—feel all right—I think.’

  ‘You’d better lie down and rest while the stuff takes.’ Harriet had no sentimental attachment to protocol in her dealings with her own speciality.

  ‘Yes. All right. You’ll wake me-?’

  ‘Yes, Harry. We’ll wake you.’ Saintsbury smiled pleasantly. He and Harriet went out as Hudson threw himself down on the camp bed. This experiment had to work! For the sake of wiping that smug grimace from the fat face of Professor Saintsbury—it had to work.

  The sun had set when he awoke and a forest and shoreline stillness, in that strange amalgam of two environments uneasily meeting, sharpened his senses as he stepped out of the tent. He took deep breaths of the night air. The stars showed clear; high and remotely singing. Blue and silver shadows coiled over the camp site, among the tents and under the trees. This was a night, he felt with a strong purpose, containing hidden things.

  With the delicacy of a Christmas Day bather he let the impressions of this place crowd in. The tents, the dig, the red convertible, Saintsbury and Harriet ... Yes, yes ... And? And what else? Nothing else? Nothing ... No hazy stirrings of another memory, no vague presentiments of other faces and other names, no imposed visions from the mind of a Viking long dead ? No ... nothing ... nothing ...

  Had he then failed ? He could not believe that, would not, his idea must prove itself. More lay at stake here than appeared on the surface to a casual observer. No one on the dig at Leaf Cove could now be a casual observer, and that made it that much worse. He must achieve a breakthrough !

  Slowly he walked through the sleeping camp in that iron and diamond light, brooding, thinking back, conscious of old days and old times, the past a living garment clothing his present thoughts. All those thoughts were of Harry Hudson’s mind; he alone their begetter. He saw his own past with limned clarity, precise, defined, frightening in its untrimmed revelation of events his mental censor had mercifully deleted. But through it all the macabre desire to experience another person’s thoughts within his own head prised his attention free. Himself—yes!—engrossing—but this other dead Viking, this man of the past—how much more fabulously compelling!

  Passing at random in his aimless walk the tent of Saintsbury he was tempted to stop by for a talk. The professor had promised to waken him; evidently the effect of the drugs had worn off sooner than anticipated. But he moved on, engrossed in prying back in his mind, until a low murmur of voices arrested him. He looked down, but not quickly enough, and his foot entangled in a guy rope. Falling heavily he brought a tent billowing down around him.

  He had tumbled down Harriet’s tent!

  What an oaf! How she would relish the opportunity to castigate him now ... He scrambled furiously up, dashing his hair from his eyes. Professor Saintsbury, naked, lumbered up before him, breathing hard, pettishly punching at folds of tent canvas, cursing with a footballer’s invective.

  Harriet, one hand to her breast, the other to her mouth, cowered back on her camp bed mattress, her dark hair flowing.

  ‘It’s Harry!’ she squeaked, wide eyed.

  ‘Harriet...’ said Hudson.

  She grabbed a scrap of clothing and covered herself up. ‘Well, Harry? You don’t own me! Now for heaven’s sake put this tent up! It may be the height of summer bu
t I’m chilly!’

  ‘Yes, Harriet-’ And Hudson and the professor between them, a not overly amiable partnership—re-erected the tent.

  Until it was done she fumed, ‘Nitwit! Clod! Pulling a girl’s tent down around her ears-’ and much more.

  Then, ‘All right, Harry! Now you can clear off and go to bed! And don’t come prowling around here again!’

  He went. He felt anger, of course, anger that Harriet should bother herself about a man like Saintsbury. But, most of all, he felt hurt resentment that neither had asked him how he felt, about the experiment, if he had remembered anything at all of another man’s life.

  They did not damn well care.

  That had been evident a long time. They had consented to his wishes only so that they could—well, whatever else happened, he had had his way and the experiment had been performed. Now all that was left him was waiting.

  He knew what was said about waiting. He, personally, proved they were right all the rest of that night and during the strained breakfast period that followed.

  Harriet had to return to the city in the afternoon. Saintsbury, black-browed and bear-surly, announced his intention of going with her. The dig, he said fretfully, had palled on him for a spell. He needed the city to pep him up.

  To Hudson’s surprise, Harriet said: ‘You’d better drive, Harry. After last night I feel soul weary.’ Hudson was in no mood to appreciate the attempt at humour. He grasped the wheel with a savage compunction for the car.

  He drove. Saintsbury and Harriet snuggled down in the back. He could see parts of them in the mirror; they meant to enjoy the ride back to the city.

  White concrete road ahead of him, like an unwinding tightrope he must travel endlessly, the precarious balance of an abandoned enthusiasm alone his guide and mentor, Hudson forced the car back to civilisation.

  He knew well enough how the others regarded him—that ninny Hudson, Harry the jerk—and that would have been nominally bearable, a burden with which he could have happily learned to live, hibernating: but the reality was far worse, for he knew dourly he didn’t give a damn what the others thought of him. That was what made it all so horrific; he couldn’t have cared less how they regarded him. He had his own life cut out, and fulfilling that took up all his energies and planning. As a loner, he knew they could all drop dead.

  He hammered the car around a bend and fought the snakes out of the steering column. The sun was beginning to lay shadows spikily across the road. Dust plumed.

  ‘Haul up at Andy’s,’ Harriet called.

  ‘We’ve only just started-’

  ‘Don’t argue, dear boy! Just do as I ask you!’

  ‘Oh!’

  A staccato clattering as of a giant belabouring iron railings with a steel stick ricocheted up the road behind them. In a howl and a shriek and a rush of dusty wind, a group of motor cyclists jockeyed past. They cut patterns in the sunshine and shadow, weaving, riding rubber tyres like cloud-borne chariots. Hudson glared angrily at their departing backs.

  A window opened in his mind.

  Across the level clearings between the forest and the encampment they came, silent of moccasin and deadly of tomahawk. Fire and smoke, blood and scattered brains, the rip of scalp and the scream of dying women and children, a cacophony of remembered sights and sounds and smells, scorched through that opening window into Hudson’s mind.

  The window closed and he was driving a red convertible in a smothering dusty skid into the lot outside Andy’s.

  ‘What the hell’s got into you, Harry?’

  ‘Harry—call yourself a driver!’

  He got out and stood with shaking knees clutching the car. He thought his face must look green.

  ‘Harry! What’s the matter?’

  ‘The Skraelings ...’ he managed to say, his lips stiff and bloated.

  ‘Get him inside, Harriet—the guy’s going loco.’

  ‘No!’ He spoke quickly, impatient with their sluggish understanding. ‘I—a vision, call it what you like, a memory —I had a memory-’

  ‘The Viking.’

  ‘Yes. It hit me unexpectedly. Just a sunlit level expanse and the Indians racing for the encampment—the Northman’s name was Ozuur Thorgeirsson ... There’s nothing there now ... Just me, just Harry Hudson ...’

  Saintsbury looked at him with those agate eyes hard and suspicious. ‘If you’re pulling a fast one-’

  ‘He’s not, he’s not!’ Harriet pulled Hudson along to the restaurant. ‘Can’t you see the state he’s in! Anyway, he doesn’t have the sort of brain to fake anything.’

  A blue haze enveloped the objects in Hudson’s view so that he walked like a man scaling insubstantial clouds, a muzzy ringing in his head, doleful and mysterious, pained him. He’d been struck shrewdly by that vision—no, not vision, by that memory from the mind of Ozuur Thorgeirsson. The cataclysmic abruptness of it had threatened the sanity of his own mind. He had thought of that problem and felt he could guard against it. That had been during the comfortable planning stages; now that he had experienced one memory and could expect more, he saw clearly what a fool he had been to meddle in this kind of mental business.

  Ancient memories of days of sunlight long ago waited in the depths of his brain cells to recreate the images and scenes, the faces and the sounds, to pull the past into his own mind, or to drag his consciousness back into the past. He held tightly to Harriet’s arm and she patted his bunched hand, brightly saying: ‘You have a quick drink, Harry, then you’ll feel better. I must say I’m pleased it worked.’

  ‘It—it worked all right.’

  For Hudson the interior of Andy’s might have remained the same as when he was last here. The skid kids, brash in their leather jackets, roughing up a young man and his girl in a booth. Saintsbury said: ‘Oh, oh! I don’t want any trouble. We’d better leave ...’

  The young man said: ‘You’d better clear off! I-’

  They didn’t hear what he was going to say, for one leather-clad arm extended like a hosepipe, and a spread of fingers over lip and nose and eye thrust him back into his seat. The girl screamed. Some glasses smashed. People rose to see. The barkeep had vanished.

  Hudson saw the feathers and the swastikas and the fierce brown faces painted on the leather jackets—he saw them, but so did Ozuur. Sunlight slanted down on bloodied tomahawk. Smoke drifted flatly, smelling of burning grease. A child ran—arms and legs jerking...

  Screaming war cries the Skraelings butchered and raped the Viking settlement. They hurled their charm-wrapped stones, their spears, their tomahawks—and the shield wall could not extend to cover everyone... The red bodies broke through ... Ozuur saw it all—again ...

  With a single sharp cry Hudson snatched up a Coke bottle and brought it down with full force on the head of the motor cyclist who was attempting to roughhouse the girl. Two other cyclists jumped in. Hudson took their collars and smashed their heads together. He began to chant a weird mind-congealing war cry, replete with Odins and Freyas and strange and shivery names; Valhalla.

  Pandemonium raged in the restaurant. When at last the police arrived half a dozen badly-knocked-about young would-be tearaways in torn black leathers lay on the stoop outside, and Hudson was licking skinned knuckles.

  The police sergeant blinked his eyes. He watched as the would-be young thugs were manhandled away. ‘Well ?’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ The girl babbled, between pats with a bloodied handkerchief to her boy-friend’s mouth. ‘Nothing! He-’

  ‘He just took ‘em apart!’ put in an admiring bystander.

  ‘Yes, well-’ said Hudson. A strange ambivalence of vision persisted. The camp lay smouldering, little flames hissing and flickering over the last logs, a dead child sprawled indecently, a shattered long sword, a riven shield. His angle of view showed him his eyes were near the ground. He could not feel any sensation from his head. Werle and Ulric and the others would come back from their faring inland; they should not have sent so many, the Skraelings sp
ared no one and nothing ... The Skraelings ... This land had been theirs; but the Norsemen were coming, they were coming, from Greenland, from Iceland, from the far fjords of Norway and the islands of Sweden ...

  For Harry Hudson the death he was experiencing transcended every other experience and emotion he had ever known. He forced himself to remember he was Harry Hudson. If for a moment wild frenzies had driven him into beating up a few moronic leather-clad youngsters, that moment had passed.

  Ozuur Thorgeirsson might not agree with that... but...

  ‘Well, that’s over then,’ Professor Saintsbury, smiling lubriciously, sidled up. ‘Come along, Harriet, my dear. I think we can trust Harry to drive again ... yes?’