The Green Drift Page 15

  ‘They have a theory,’ he said, ‘back at the Office.’

  He walked away towards the pond, Richard following.

  A few yards from the mirror surface he stopped.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Richard said.

  ‘Watch it.’ Griswold held his hand out. ‘Ammo.’

  Richard took a palmful of bullets from his pocket and tipped it into the open hand. Griswold loaded the rifle, . put the rest of the shells in his pocket.

  The surface of the pond began to move, ripples waved out from a bubble. But the bubble did not form. Instead it moved, almost completely submerged, across the surface of the pond, like an inverted glass bowl.

  Griswold took aim. Richard saw his face, tense, creased, running with sweat. Seconds passed. Griswold did not fire. Richard looked aside quickly and saw the muscles of the gunman’s face twitching.

  The target slipped beneath the surface. In a moment an oily bubble formed which burst lazily in the air. By then Griswold had lowered the rifle.

  ‘Why didn’t you shoot?’ Richard said. ‘I wanted you to shoot! It might have stopped them! I could think then!’

  Griswold wiped his eyes with an open hand.

  ‘I meant to,’ he said gruffly. ‘I meant to! My finger just would not move.’

  ‘But you fired at the window! ’

  ‘It didn’t know what I was doing,’ Griswold said. ‘This time it was different. It’s a kind of hypnosis.’

  He turned and walked away from the pond.

  ‘We have the full dish on spiders now,’ he said. ‘It seems spiders can do everything a man can do and some things he can’t. A spider can submerge by creating his own diving bell – a bubble of air forms round him, just like the cocoons they’re coming in. Same principle, different only. Also, they migrate.’

  “Spiders do?’

  “You’d be surprised what they do,’ Griswold said. ‘I just had a list of things to watch for. Different breeds of a spider do different things. There is one that can hypnotise. Some eat insects, others flowers, others animals and birds. They seem like insects but there are wide differences between them. Also they can spin webs. All these things are done by spiders that we have already. The things now arriving might be able to do the lot.’

  “But you said something exploded when you shot that one up there.’

  “So it did. My guess is that the glass case broke with the re and he came out still in his bubble. Maybe they some solution to strengthen the bubble, probably the same stuff they spin webs with. I hit the bubble. That’s what burst and saved him. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been any better shooting the one in the pond.’

  Richard stopped by the garage.

  “But what are they going to do? Your people? Did they tell you ?’

  “They don’t know what to do yet. It depends on us giving them constant information which they can match up to their astro-observations. That’s the only thing to do when you’re up against the Unknown.’

  “Why did all the others die? Thousands of them! Why they die and just two, it seems, live on?’

  “We don’t know how many lived on,’ Griswold said. “But insects lay hundreds of eggs to breed very few. You remember that. The dead spiders may mean just that. The expendables.’

  “But these are bloody great things! How did they grow that big in a few hours?’

  - “Perhaps our conditions are favourable to their growth.’ ‘But at this rate they’ll be elephants by night!”

  ‘I don’t know,’ Griswold said. ‘But their skins must be different from anything we’ve got. We’d burst if we grew at that rate.’

  ‘Somebody will have to capture one” Richard said grimly. ‘Can’t they send an expert over from Bristol Zoo or somewhere?’

  ‘No one is allowed in or out of this area,’ said Griswold.

  Richard looked towards the hedge and the spire of the church showing over it.

  ‘How many are left there?’

  ‘I gather—none. All tests were favourable.’

  ‘So it’s only us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You realise what will happen if these things land in force and grow at this rate?’

  ‘Of course, I realise,’ Griswold said. He brought a hand from his pocket and opened it.

  Richard stared at the bullets lying there.

  ‘You’re giving in! ’ he said, startled.

  The two men looked at each other.

  ‘No,’ Griswold said. ‘But one must be sensible. There seems to be little hope either way. We can strain our luck to the very end, in case, and then there’s this.’ He shovelled them back into his pocket.

  Richard turned away.

  ‘You’ll never do it. No one will be able to do it! ’

  ‘It might become easy”

  ‘You’re a bloody ghoul! ’

  ‘I’m in the same boat as you and the rest.’ Griswold wiped his face again. ‘And don’t forget, it isn’t certain that they’ll come.’

  Richard stared.

  ‘No. It isn’t certain. We might bend the beam—if we had anything to bend it with”

  ‘If you could remember” Griswold said. ‘But it’s too late now, anyway. We’re stuck. Last of the Guinea Pigs.’ He walked away round the house. It was then five o’clock.

  EIGHT

  ‘Bur what’s the good?’ Jennifer pleaded. ‘There’s no one in the village now!’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to matter,’ Barbara said. ‘It’s just home. If anything is going to happen and we aren’t going to escape it, I’d sooner be home.’

  ‘But you’ll be alone, there.’

  ‘Will that matter? The way I feel now I’d sooner be alone. If I can’t have somebody I want, I don’t want anybody else.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ Jennifer said. ‘But it can’t do any good.’

  She turned as Ellen appeared in the study doorway. She looked as if she had been crying, and was yet defiant.

  ‘I warn to go home,’ she said. She sounded listless, making a flat statement as if nobody would bother to oppose it.

  Barbara looked at Jennifer.

  ‘That’s two,’ she said. ‘We wouldn’t be alone. I want to go before it gets dark.’

  Jennifer felt her heart beating fast, but did not know why. Fears were coming and going in her like waves on a beach.

  ‘We ought to stay together,’ she said.

  ‘But what good is it?’ Barbara said. ‘The man says we’ve got to watch. But it’s no good doing that if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, except those fireflies. I think I’ve got used to them now. I want to go back.’

  Jennifer looked up as Richard appeared in the doorway. He was hot and dishevelled, his sticky face streaked

  with dust. He looked angry at seeing the three women together.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘They want to go back home” Jennifer said.

  He controlled his anger.

  ‘No, don’t do that” he said quietly. “Let’s all stick together. It’s what they want us to do”

  ‘I don’t think it’s safe here! ’ Ellen said, in sudden horror. ‘I don’t want to stay! I want to go home! ’

  ‘Try and hold on” he said urgently. ‘Please! There’s no one in the village tonight. There’s no sense in going back. If anything happens here, we can help each other. But if we’re all spread out, we can’t. You don’t want to be alone down there, do you?’

  Barbara shivered slightly.

  ‘It’s the place I know” she said. ‘I’m not so frightened there. I want to go back.’

  ‘Stay with us! ’ Richard said. ‘Stay here.’

  He tried to hold them together but knew they were breaking apart. Griswold had no power at all over them. His authority was waning, his bullying fading with the fears he was facing.

  Hayles was being watched now, in case he tried it. Porch was watching, which held both men where they were for the t
ime being. The three women might be able to hold together if they could be got over this mawkish desire to be home.

  ‘It can’t do you any good,7 he said. ‘If you go. what will you do? One will go to one house, and the second to another. You’ll be quite alone then. If anything happened to either, the rest of us wouldn’t know. You can’t risk that sort of thing. You mustn’t! ’

  Ellen rubbed her palms on her thighs.

  ‘All right” she said sharply. ‘All right, then! ’

  She turned and went out of the study. Barbara looked up in surprise- ‘

  ‘Oh no!’ she said, alarmed. ‘She can’t go alone!’ She hurried out after Ellen.

  ‘This is hopeless!’ Jennifer said. ‘We’ll be killing each other in the end. It’s no good, Dick! ’ She shook her head violently, as if to clear it, then looked at him. ‘What happened—upstairs?’

  We think it’s dead,’ he said. ‘He says there’s been no sound in there for a long time. We’re pretty sure.’ He put his arm round her shoulders. ‘They mustn’t go down to the village. You do understand, do you? The dream mustn’t come true. If we go down there it will. It will happen just as I saw it before. But if we stay here, it can’t. It can’t happen, you see.’

  She said nothing but stared at the carpet.

  ‘You see,’ he said, his voice growing husky and rough, ‘if any part of it is wrong, the whole lot will be wrong. That’s what Griswold says. That’s what the scientists say. it’s the only hope, you see.’

  ‘I don’t understand these time switches,’ she said. ‘All I know is yesterday, today, tomorrow, like it always was— My God I “

  ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘But it was dark! I remember it was dark already! ’ She looked round at the window and the early evening sun. bright on the flowers. She looked at him, her eyes wild. ‘But it was, I know. I remember! ’

  ‘What do you remember?’

  ‘It’s when I look at you,’ she said, scanning his eves. ‘It’s when I look at you! It was dark out there—getting dark.

  getting dark You kept calling. I remember you kept calling. What for? Why was it dark then? You were calling. I can hear it somehow. A pair of boots— She shook her head impatiently. ‘No, that’s bonkers. That couldn’t have anything to do with it.’

  ‘What boots? What else was there?’

  ‘I don’t know. It couldn’t have been boots. That’s silly. Are you sure it’s dead?’

  ‘Griswold’s keeping guard. From the passage. He can see the pond, too.’

  ‘Are there any more?’

  ‘There are no signs of any.’

  ‘What do you feel?’

  ‘Too damn confused to feel anything. One minute I think one thing, the next the opposite. I can’t concentrate. I know something’s coming. Sometimes I get hairy scared, the next minute it doesn’t seem to matter. It’s my head. Somebody’s pressing it in at both sides. The thing I’m trying to keep in front of me is that somehow this dream has got to be changed. We mustn’t go into the j village. If we do that, everything I said will happen, will happen.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘Yes. These things are working on a time that’s different from ours. When we connect with them mentally, we can get the shift from our time to theirs. That’s obviously what happens. Last night I jumped with their assistance. It was lucky I made that phone call. Griswold says electrical waves can run free of time, like radio. That’s important. Without it that phone call could never have got through.’

  ‘Griswold talks too much. He’s frightened.’

  ‘So is everybody else, Jen.’

  ‘And yet we just stay here, frightened one minute we’ll never get out, and sure the next that It Can’t Happen to Me.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing new about that,’ he said and stared out of the window at the silent village.

  ‘It was getting dark! ’ she cried again. ‘It was, I know! ’

  ‘We just slipped a time cog,’ he said. ‘But the trouble with it seems to be that you can’t remember what happened tomorrow, even though you went there. The only thing that came through across both time belts was that electronic phone call. If it hadn’t been for that it would have been just the same as any other dreams or story ideas that come into your head without any apparent reason.’

  ‘Do you think it would be important if you could remember what really happened to you last night?’

  ‘It’s difficult to tell. I came across the belt half-way through the phone call. Maybe I missed any important part there was to be seen. I don’t know.’

  ‘Porch has gone off his head,’ Jennifer said stolidly. ‘He’s quiet, but it won’t last.’

  He looked quickly at her.

  ‘He’s very queer. What do you think he’ll do?’

  ‘Rape somebody,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing Hayles won’t do. He’s steaming secretly.’

  ‘I’ve spoken with him. I don’t think he’ll go unless he can make a performance of it. It isn’t good enough, just to go.’

  ‘Isn’t it a sign of madness when we think everybody’s mad but us?’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps we’ve got tuned in to the influence,’ he said. “We can still see round the object.’

  He turned as they heard a ting of the phone bell, but it was a solitary sound. The bell did not ring.

  ‘It does that when we get the line twisted out there,’ Jennifer said. ‘You know, when the cows rub their heads against the tree in Arthur’s paddock. The branches catch in the line.’

  ‘You’re just talking,’ he said, and turned to the door again. ‘Griswold. Perhaps he’s coming down.’

  But Griswold’s footfalls stopped at the head of the stairs. Richard went out into the hall. The big man stood like a captive balloon, swaying very slightly, the gun slanted across his belly like a quarterstaff.

  ‘I thought the phone went,’ Griswold said.

  ‘So did I,’ Richard said. ‘But it does that sometimes.’ ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘The women went into the kitchen.’

  ‘I mean Porch and the journalist.’

  ‘I haven’t seen them. Not recently. Anything up there?’ ‘I think it’s dead. There hasn’t been a move.’

  He began to come down the stairs. The red of the setting sun reflected in the open panes of the window on the west side of the ball. It made the heat seem like a beam from furnace doors.

  Griswold went out into the garden and stood on the drive, the gun slanted across him still, as he turned his head from side to side on his bull neck. Richard had the sudden panicky feeling that if he saw who he was looking for, Griswold would shoot them down. He went out behind the Government man.

  ‘Perhaps Hayles went to get some air,’ he said. ‘Porch had to follow.’

  ‘He’s very scratchy, that man,’ Griswold said. ‘Not reliable.’

  ‘Nor is Porch,’ Richard said.

  Griswold turned and went back into the house. He looked at his watch, then picked up the telephone. It was time for the fifteen-minute report.

  Richard watched his face.

  “What’s the matter?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Dead,’ said Griswold, his voice a mere bubble in his throat.

  ‘Exchange gone?’ Richard said, quick with alarm. ‘I think—’

  ‘Great God!’ Griswold shouted.

  He pulled the whole instrument off the table and held it in his hand. The cable, broken off at the skirting, trailed after him across the carpet.

  ‘Hayles! ’ said Richard.

  ‘What do you mean—Hayles? Why should he do this?’ ‘He meant to go. This means he didn’t want you to put a warning ahead of him.’

  ‘He must be mad! ’

  ‘Like the rest of us.’

  Griswold glared at him. then tossed the telephone into a chair. Jennifer came to the study door and leant against the jamb.

  ‘The girls will go, too,’ she said. ‘You can’t stop them.’ ‘We’ve got to stay!’
Richard shouted suddenly. ‘If we don’t, then it will all come true! ’

  Griswold stared ai him.

  ‘Perhaps this is all part of what you forgot,’ he said gruffly. ‘But we’ve got to go down there now.’

  ‘No! ’ Richard said. ‘No! Don’t you understand—’

  ‘We must have a phone,’ Griswold said. ‘You can’t join that up again. We’ve got to go down there.’

  Richard looked at him, then at Jennifer. Griswold walked to the door.

  ‘Where are the others?’ he asked.

  ‘They were in the kitchen.’ Jennifer went out into the kitchen and came back again. ‘They’re not there now.’ ‘Somewhere outside,’ Griswold said, wiping his face with his grey handkerchief. ‘God! this heat— I’m going down to the village. I expect he went there.’

  He went to the door.

  ‘You’re glad of the excuse!’ Richard said. ‘You’re frightened to stay here! Frightened! I’ve watched you crumble to bits these last few hours. Now you frighten me, too! ’

  Griswold walked on out without looking back. Richard ran to the door.

  ‘You’ve left your things here—your case—the papers— don’t they matter any more?’

  Griswold went on.

  ‘I must get a phone! ’ he shouted, keeping his back turned. ‘That’s all.’

  Richard watched him go out of the gate, then turned back. He and Jennifer looked at each other.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ he said.

  She started to cry.

  ‘Don’t know,’ she whimpered.

  He looked at the stairs. She caught his eye and stopped her quiet, stifled sobbing.

  ‘Are you sure it’s dead?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She turned and walked into the kitchen. Her shoulders drooped a little. She looked listless, but just inside the door she stopped and turned back.

  ‘We can’t stay here alone,’ she said.