HARM Read online

  Fremant recognized the pilot. “It’s Chankey!” he exclaimed. Chankey, the winner of the Kontest Fremant had refereed in Stygia City. A cheer went up from all concerned.

  Someone helped Chankey to his feet. A woman brought him a clay cup full of water, which he drank.

  EVENTUALLY, WHEN FULLY RESTORED, the stalwart Chankey told his story.

  “What a struggle it has been…It was the light-drone from Earth that began it…Fortunately, Safelkty got to it first…that scientific man…Else it would have been destroyed…” Chankey spoke in gasps, leaning against a cottage ladder.

  “That’s not the same story what we heard,” said Ragundy.

  Chankey took another drink of water and appeared to recover more fully from his rough landing.

  “Earth has ’clared the killing of the Dogovers who lived here before us jennyside. That word means the delib’rate killing of a whole race. So revolt broke out. Astaroth’s regime is smashed. Astaroth has disappeared. Essanits has taken control, appointing Safelkty as his Director of Science.”

  “Never mind all that history,” said one villager. “Tell us what is this flying thing you come here in.”

  “Is there news of my father, Astaroth?” asked Aster.

  Speaking carelessly, Chankey said, “I did hear someone say he crossed the lake and cut Habander’s throat, but who knows?”

  “But this flying thing!” some villages repeated.

  “Ah, it’s Safelkty’s first invention,” said Chankey proudly. “It’s called a ‘push-pull.’ One whirler in front, one in back. At last, we humans have conked the air!”

  “And you hit the ground,” said Utrersin mockingly.

  “You primitive folk here have no decent land to stop on,” said Chankey. “Life is going to be different now. I have come in advance, but soon Essanits and his force will be here to address you. Safelkty has plans to build a proper road from Stygia City to Haven, with horseless—um, machines—to run on it. Your lives are going to change, I’m proud to say to you!”

  This speech drew varied responses from the crowd. Certainly there were those who welcomed the idea of change, and cheered vociferously. The majority, however, feared that any change would be for the worse; that, for instance, their own affairs would be ruled from afar, to their disadvantage. For what did Stygia City know or care about Haven?

  Even those who had previously complained most vocally about the shortcomings of life in their poor little village suddenly found in their hearts a new love of the place as it was, and booed accordingly.

  Change! Machines that fly! Terrible!

  FIVE

  CONTROLLER ALGERNON GIBBS—ALGY to his enemies—sat alone in his office in the Ministry. He had locked his door so as not to be disturbed. Grim files stood imprisoned on shelves. The one window was barred and locked. He was still suffering from the humiliation of Abraham Ramson’s visit.

  As part of his tour of inspection of British ministries, Ramson had convened a meeting of Gibbs’s team of interrogators. He had complained about almost everything, from the dilapidation of the building and the amateurism of the interrogations to the dearth of ice in the catering department. Without mentioning Gibbs’s name, he had lowered him in the estimation of the listeners. Gibbs had shown the American, on leaving, to the stretch limo awaiting him before he retired to his office, in a bad mood. He sat scratching his designer stubble.

  He called for his secretary. Agnes Sheer emerged from an inner room. She was tall and elegant, clad in gray—two inches taller than Gibbs, for which he resented her.

  He tossed her the disc which Ramson had presented to him on their frosty parting.

  “Open that,” he said.

  Sheer slipped the disc into the computer. A picture lit almost immediately on the big wall screen. HEAVY QUESTIONING, it announced. It was followed by ENEMY ENQUIRY DIVISION and an eagle.

  It then ran through an array of sophisticated interrogation aids. There were illustrations with brief descriptions, and an order number opposite each.

  “Shut it down,” Gibbs said. Sheer shut it down.

  “We are so much worse funded than the Americans,” Gibbs said. “It’s a bloody nuisance. How could we afford the Thresher, or those electric shoes?”

  “Perhaps we could get them cheaper through our Chinese dealer,” Sheer suggested.

  He ignored her remark. “We might order some of those posters. They should sap morale.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  When the woman had left, Gibbs turned with a sigh to the book on his desk. He opened it to page 125.

  He removed his glasses, polished them, then reapplied himself to reading the text of Pied Piper of Hament, by Paul Fadhill.

  <
  In the booth, it was dark. Something glittered. Something tittered. The tittering something proved to be a witchlike old lady in a bonnet and an avaricious mood. She was pacing to and, consequently, fro. She demanded that her palm should be—no, not crossed—loaded with silver.

  When this had been accomplished, she ordered the loving pair to sit on a rickety sofa. It certainly had rickets in its legs. “A mystical island for you?” she croaked.

  “Oh yes, Bali, please!” the duo said in chorus.

  “Better than Bali, my dearies!”

  “Where’s better?”

  “Place where everyone is stoned. Heh heh heh.”

  She waved her palsied old hands over them, chanting in an unknown tongue as she did so.

  “Obi chagit hocha hanka heegi abrogal dimkey dimkey dormug gé abeagle ga…”

  Next second, it seemed, the duo were standing in an enchanted place. It was as neat as a model, every blade of grass in place, little deer sauntering, white doves winging, a pure white gazebo gazing—one like snow, the other more like milk—by a stream curling down from a hill with slopes as gentle as a woman’s breast. A wonderful parklike countryside surrounded them, bounded by a silver sea.

  “So that’s where our silver went!” Harry exclaimed.

  “Hush! Someone’s coming.”

  And someone was certainly stomping along towards them—a big grey man. Celina was alarmed.

  “Oh, hi! Nice place you have here. I trust we are not trespassing, sir?”

  The big man ground to a halt. He was made entirely of stone, down to his stone underpants and beyond. His face was as animated as one of the faces on Easter Island, though without the same sophistication of expression. When he opened his mouth to speak, smoke came out, with a glimpse of fire behind. The smoke formed the shape of an equilateral triangle before dispersing into the pure air.

  He took hold of their arms, one arm in each of his rough stone hands, and led them along. He emitted smoke instead of conversation, but there is nothing witty one can say to a series of equilateral triangles once one has agreed about the square of the hypotenuse.

  The stone man took them to Stone People Village, where they were kindly treated. They lived in a stone house with a stone cat. There were stone curtains at the windows. They slept in a stone bed. They sat on stone chairs to eat at a triangular stone table.

  Fortunately, the food was real food. They dined as do the wealthy of Hampstead, on plates of aubergine and calves’ liver, sprinkled with coriander, served with basmati rice, and doused in balsamic vinegar, with Madegasca prawns for a side dish. These platters were followed by crème brûlée and plum pudding in a suet crust with lashings of Jersey cream.

  As they were enjoying themselves, they were—strange as it might seem—following a different and dual existence in another world, where Harry Marigold worked in a pharmacy dispensing prescriptions and Celina Celandine designed outdoor clothes for a fashionable couturier who lived in the neighbouring mosque.

  They were puzzled by this double life and met secretly to plot their escape from it, walking
in a nearby park, peaceful except for traffic continually roaring by.

  “It’s metaphysical,” said Celina. “In fact, metafizzicle, like a bottle of newly opened San Pellegrino.”

  Harry agreed. “No good asking my boss about it. He’s too thick, although he’s shockingly thin. He’s the sort of guy who thinks that endorphins are a kind of fish.”

  They were laughing together as they strolled through the park, where no one could overhear their jokes—or understand them, indeed, if they caught the odd punch line head-on.

  Said Celina, “The bloody government is no help at all.”

  Harry said, “What we need to do is blow up the Prime

  Minister. That would solve our problems.”

  “I can see it now,” Celina said, laughing. “Bits of him spread all over Downing Street.”

  “Yes—to be known thereafter as Downer Street…”

  She took his arm. “Or we could cast the devil into a bottomless pit.”

  He patted her behind. “Better still a pitiless bottom.”>>

  Algernon Gibbs grew tired of this whimsy. His thoughts began to wander. He lit a cigarette. Only one more left in the pack. “Sodding job this…Too noisy…Not enough freedom, for a start…Promotion…Deserve a sodding knighthood…Could get another job with less strain…Train horses. Geld them…Castrate grown men…Must come off these sleeping pills…Become a transvestite. Men admiring…Change my name…Celina. Not bad…Celina Gibbs. Gibbs Girl Gives It!…Sodding great bosoms…”

  As his thoughts drifted by, thoughts often rethought, his left hand held the cigarette. It was cork-tipped. His pale, cruel right hand unzipped his trousers and, reaching in, began to play with what it found there. What it found there showed signs of life. Celina Gibbs. Pride of Pinner…Pretty as a picture…Prettier, prettier…

  The rimless glasses began to mist as his breathing became heavier.

  THE CLOUD COVER was becoming heavier. A cool breeze blew. People coughed, spat phlegm on the parched ground.

  The crowd milled about, not knowing what to do. The venerable Elder Deselden hobbled forward with his staff. He was escorted by two young men armed with staves, whom he called his possles. One of his most devoted followers, an old man called Citrane, whose face, with its short beard, resembled a goat’s, hurriedly got down on hands and knees, thus providing a stool for the old holy man, who seated himself on this human support and spoke.

  “Master Chankey, you arrove here as a disaster from the air. We want no more disasterers here. Our lives are dedicated to religious matters. We want nothing to do with Essanits, nothing to do with your science. We recall how Astaroth, whatever his other flailings, wisely destroyed most of the traces of what we call tick-nologogy, including all metal flying things, sparing only the great ship-thing that brought humanity to this world. We do not want to start up such monstrobities again.”

  Chankey responded to this speech with some tact.

  “Whether or not traveling away from Earth was a sin, I cannot say. But the arid nature of our late leader drove him to destroy much that would have helped us to survive here on this world. He delicated his life to hate and harm, by destroyting all of the so-called Dogovers. As we must make amens for that massy killing, so we seek to resterore the good things that will make our life easier—and your life here in Haven easier.”

  Liddley stepped forward with a stern face and addressed them.

  “All right. You men have had your say. Now I will have my say.”

  “Shut up!” shouted Ragundy, but Liddley continued unperturbed.

  “People in Haven perish. They are accustomed to the process of perishing, of living half a life…Our customs and attitudes toward life have developed to fit in with the process. So children die and old people starve and women are overworked. It’s undernorrishment…That’s the trouble. Undernorrishment. So we drink the foul water from our well and die of it. We’re too enzausted to clean out our well, imagine!

  “This sorry stake of affairs has come about gradually. So we ourselves don’t see the full horror of the system. In fact, we regard the system as a natural and proper way of things.

  “Now you come here promising machines! What we need is fertilizer and traps for control of the dacoim pests. We need to live decently. Machines are no good to us.

  “There, I’ve had my say, writhe or wrong…” She stepped back into the crowd, which was growling, either in agreement or disapproval.

  “Wrong!” said Chankey curtly. “How will these traps and things you talk about get here if not by machines?”

  It was Fremant who spoke up on Liddley’s behalf. “If they all crash like your machine, they won’t be much help…”

  The two possles were closing in on Liddley, swinging their staves, shouting that a woman had no business to speak in public. Fremant flung himself between them and Liddley.

  Immediately, the nearest stave was in motion. It struck him on the forehead. He heard someone shriek as he went down. Bellamia and Aster rushed to his aid. Liddley fled.

  HE WAS COOLING his throbbing head on the cold parquet floor. Somehow, he knew it was winter. He was wearing only light clothing. He knew he ached all over, and stank. The Ministry had failed to release him. A cockroach came to inspect him.

  Disappointment and disgust were upon him. Another personality broke from him, like a playing card falling from a gaming table.

  MID-OCEAN, and the great dolphin-driving sea breathed its restless slumber of waves, ocean-blue and unfathomable. This time he was a sailor named Yargos. He was one of a crew who knew only the sounds of the sea, the groan of the wooden vessel that sailed the sea, the crack of cordage and the drumming of the full-bellied sails overhead.

  Yargos wore a gold ring through the lobe of his right ear. He was strong, his body well muscled. His thoughts rarely reached beyond the day. He and his shipmates were equals, bound together by the loneliness of their voyage. Matters might change when and if they reached port; but for the present they were companions in defiance of the elements.

  By night they lashed the wheel and all slept, except for a man acting as sentry.

  Yargos wrapped himself in a rug and slept in the bows. He dreamed of a brown-skinned slave boy in distant Cymantta, a boy with a foreskin like a lady’s silk stocking.

  The ocean by night underwent a change. The mighty roll of unbreaking waves became luminescent. A million million tiny organisms strove to perpetuate themselves, burning with a cold light as they did so.

  High above the mast, high above the ocean, radiated an answering light, where a million million distant suns gave forth their unsleeping signal.

  But Yargos found no permanent place to accommodate him within Fremant’s psyche. He lived for day after repetitive day before disappearing where no man knew.

  HE LISTENED TO THE WAIL of the wind dying. After a while, he opened his right eye. His left eye had been punched and would not open.

  He saw about him the familiar stale room, far too large to be called a cell. Its ceiling bore ornate plasterwork, with cupids. To one side was a grand cold fireplace with cupids. He was all too familiar with this room. Understanding had dawned long since in him that his torturers had taken over and occupied a once-grand mansion, a home long ago of fine, possibly respectable, habitation, where people—families—may have lived out their lives in good countenance. Well, that was one guess, guaranteed to add to his misery.

  He lay sprawled on the floor, oppressed by the great hollow space around him. All sorts of insects moved about the floor. The place was sinking into decay, and a small despised fauna was taking over. He watched earwigs scurrying, wood lice taking their time.

  The prisoner watched a centipede behaving strangely, running into cracks, running out again, its body contorted, running in circles, running into skirting boards. As it fled nearer to him, he saw that a tiny red ant had clamped itself firmly to one of the centipede’s antennae. In panic, the centipede rushed about, unable to shake off its minute assailant. In desperatio
n, it fled under a broken strip of planking and the prisoner lost sight of it.

  He lay thinking about the poor insect and its terror. Inevitably, it would exhaust itself and die. Then the remorseless ant would drag it away to be consumed.

  The absolute horror of all life possessed him.

  The relatively civilized England he had known also had its red ant, heralding its destruction.

  He knew he had been incarcerated for many weeks, if not months, although they had said they would let him go free. They had not done so yet. They said that certain authorizations were required for his release.

  Reflections and regret poured through his mind. In what he had imagined were more civilized days, he had wished to be part of the British mainstream, despite his ancestry, which he mostly despised. He had adopted an English persona as Paul Fadhill. He had consorted with English friends and had even written what he regarded as an English comic novel.

  Now he saw how false had been his persona. He had betrayed himself. Perhaps subconscious knowledge of that betrayal had prompted him to write the few lines about the assassination of the British prime minister, for which he was now being punished.

  But who was he? What was he? Where was he? His mind circled around such questions, like a rat investigating a dead body, as the misery of the days went by.

  The long wait, punctuated by interrogations that covered the same familiar ground as previously, was gradually eroding his identity, as the identity of the building in which he was incarcerated was being eroded. He whispered his name to himself, cheek pressed against the filthy parquet. “I am Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali, Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali…,” over and over.

  He faded out, to see the troubled face of—what was her name?—was she the darling Celina?—Doris?—faithful Bellamia?—she lived on what he knew as Stygia—looking down on him. He stretched out a hand to her, though his hand was as cold and heavy as stone. Very slowly the vision faded and he found himself in a dreary solitude.

  At some later time, the door of the chamber was thrown open and the two guards entered. Without ceremony, they hauled him to his feet. He was made to walk down the corridor.