The Green Drift Page 17

  The balls stopped in the prowling sockets. He saw the gun rise, gripped in bony hands.

  Richard knew Griswold wanted to be King, that was all.

  Richard stood still. Griswold came towards him across the grass, the gun pointing. It was all slow in motion, as if each minute muscular movement was analysed. Richard could see the bones moving in the flesh envelope, the glaring balls of the eyes staring at him. Suddenly Griswold stopped.

  ‘Chance,’ he said, ‘I want to talk with you.’

  Richard slackened so that he felt he must fall from lack of strength. A wave of hot fear swept through him. He had been standing ready for death without feeling or emotion.

  A few fireflies moved in the stillness.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Griswold said.

  ‘I was looking. I don’t know.’

  “Come into the house.’

  He waited for Richard to enter the garden and go ahead. High in the dome of the sky the green drift moved, heading for the zenith above their heads.

  They went into the hot darkness of the house. Through an open window Richard could see where he had been shot at. The telephone box stood like some kind of robot watching at the corner.

  You’ve got to have the juice turned off.’ Richard said.

  Griswold sat on a table, the rifle across his lap.

  It’s too late. You know that,’ he said. They’re coming.’

  ‘It would be only putting something off that must come.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Accept the inevitable.’

  ‘You’re bewitched.’

  “I think for myself. I have been thinking for myself for a long time.’

  ‘But if they come and they grow they’ll eat you ! ’

  ‘So will the people you live with.’

  ‘God! what an idea.’

  ‘But not if you stay here,’ Griswold said. ‘Nobody— nothing will eat you then. It has all been arranged, you

  “You arranged it. You got everybody cleared out on this contamination scare, got the area sealed off.’. Richard was making statements, without surprise, as each new discovery fitted into its slot. ‘You were in charge. They took Bur orders without question. The evidence you phoned through checked with the lies you were telling them, the bits you sent them to examine.’

  ‘There is a time when one has all the power one can hold in the framework of man’s devising. When you reach the top, you find yourself chained by suspicion, by watchfulness. Suddenly the freedom of decision is taken from you. You have reached the dangerous height, and there you enter the trap set for you at the beginning. I reached that trap, but did not quite go in. It is set for me to go on, higher, past their devising.’

  “You would have come today in any case.’

  ‘Your strange telephone call merely created a diversion. Yes, I would have come in any case. Only officialdom knew about the spiders. Only they could calculate the timing and the position, for no one else had been told.”

  ‘When I heard from the newspaper what you had. I phoned, it was a great shock to me. It set a new problem.

  I couldn’t understand how you had come to be in the know—directly from Them. I thought I was the only one

  who understood and carried out that kind of communication. When I heard about you. right in the centre of the landing area, I felt there was a danger that you might try and stop the landing. I wasn’t sure what to do. I needed others, but not one that could take my place. I intended to clear you out with the rest, but I found you were infected to a degree where you could have been my enemy. The others too were being so rapidly affected that it would have been dangerous for me to let any of them go. That’s why the tests were made at the blocks. I didn’t want anyone to get out who would be affected by the spiders, and who would know what was coming.’

  ‘Nobody did know.’

  ‘Nobody outside your house today.’

  ‘It is hypnosis,’ Richard said. ‘Hypnosis. Was there a great crowd of people that stood and stared at us today? Was there?’

  ‘No. There were a few people in the village who came because of the newspaper story. A hundred or so, perhaps.’

  ‘What did we see? Spiders?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But they dropped things.’

  ‘You saw them drop things.’

  ‘I touched them—read them.’

  ‘What did you read?’

  ‘I can’t remember. They all turned and ran away.’

  ‘Have you ever seen people do that?’

  ‘No. Not like that.’ Richard felt a freezing blast of horror.

  ‘You see the idea, then?’ Griswold said. ‘People who deal in this area afterwards will see only—people. But ordinary people need to be talked to.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that.’ He felt easier, as if something soothed him from outside. ‘They need translators.’

  ‘You will be one.’

  ‘No. I’m not that far gone! No! ’

  ‘You can’t go back.’

  “I can! I will I din’t believe in this infection. It’s you invented to cover the hypnotic effects. I don’t believe there’s any infection at all!”

  “But you can’t go back, because of the murder.’

  Richard felt a shock of strange discovery, as if a door suddcnly opened and shown what he had known had been behind it all the time.

  “What murder?’ His voice was like a whisper.

  The woman Barbara’s husband.’

  When?’

  Last night. Ellen saw Porch down through the window in the bar, drinking. But it wasn’t Porch. It was the husband come back. You murdered him together, you and Barbara. It wasn’t Porch in the bar because Porch was in the street when he saw you walking away together.

  After that, the husband came out and saw the same thing. He followed you—’

  ‘Why didn’t Porch say so, if that’s true?’

  ‘Porch did say so—to me.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it! ’

  ‘After you’d killed him you were frightened. She ranted to hide, but she wouldn’t leave you. You shut her in the cupboard. She was under the delusion she had escaped, had got home, that everything had still to happen. She went to bed, she thought. You pulled the curtains in case anyone should see in, though it wasn’t likely anyone would be there—’

  ‘Where’s the body, then? If there was a murder, where is the evidence?’

  “In your lily pond.’ He heard Griswold chuckle in the dark.

  The window seemed lighter. The stars were bright on the fringe of sky beyond the cottage roofs.

  ‘She wouldn’t have killed him,’ Richard said hoarsely. “All day she’s been talking about him, meaning to get him back—’

  ‘The defence mechanism in operation. She doesn’t remember any more than you. There is a very simple physical fact about jumping time belts. If you do send your mind to Tomorrow, you can’t expect it to register Today. You just have a living husk Today, doing mechanical things, from habit, from suggestion, from likes, ; dislikes, without reason or compassion. There’s no guard against your nature then. You left Wednesday for two hours last night—’

  ‘You said I disappeared! ’

  ‘She said you disappeared! Nobody else saw you. That isn’t disappearance.’

  ‘What good can this do you? It won’t stop me going. If it’s true, your friends will destroy any evidence, that’s if anyone ever got in here again after they come—’

  “You’d better stay.’ The thick voice was without emotion.

  Outside fireflies darted in the velvet gloom, just as they had last night in the pub garden. He began to feel the same hazy unreality, the dreamlike edge of night coming over his mind as he had done before. The threats of Griswold, the coming of the strangers lost edge, faded, did not matter any more. He had the same feeling of floating forwards through the velvet darkness, rising, how high he could not tell. There was nothing below but the bottomless velvet blackness
. Griswold’s voice died away into some distance behind and faded into the mumbling as of a distant storm, then died.

  There was a silence such as he had never known, a stillness of all movement. The fireflies were fixed against the velvet background. He got up from the seat, his body almost weightless, and turned in at the bar door. The two men were still, struck dead by the time pause. Barbara stood behind the counter motionless, staring. The people had the horror of waxworks. There was no sound. He made none as he went across the room to the door. It was open, but the heat had gone from the night. There was neither heat nor cold. There was nothing to feel at all. There was no movement of air against his skin as he went into the dark street. He stopped and looked up.

  The sky was speckled with a million small greenish lights, hanging in terrible depth, making space above him vast and dizzy with horror and fear.

  The telephone box was dark. He remembered Hayles saying the number. Somehow without moving the green snow was increasing all round him, flickering a million reflections in the cottage windows. He went into the box. The motionless specks of light outside made it seem as if he stood in some glass case at the bottom of a phosphorescent sea. He felt unable to breathe, and then realised his breathing had stopped. No air came when he drew in; he □ould feel no air upon his skin. The door sprang shut behind him and suddenly there was air. Outside, the green rain began to move. He could see it lazily falling as he called the number. Suddenly there was Annie’s voice and the blipping of long-distance signals. It was normal hut suddenly there was urgency, the straining of nerves, the thunder-beat of a frightened heart, and he was saying it quickly as the green pools gathered in the hollows of the dark.

  He spoke and suddenly it was done. The air was gone, outside the green rain was still. He went back in his silent stride to the pub, and through into the garden. Suddenly he felt pain, stress in his body and muscles, a tearing ache across the front of his head. He saw the moving fireflies multiply in his doubling vision and felt he would choke.

  The blackness came upon him like a tide, gradually submerging his consciousness.

  He felt hard, bumpy earth under his back, and the soft warmth of night on his wet face. He sat up. He was hedged in by shadows that stood close to him. He pushed them aside in a sudden panic lest they should choke him again. He struggled up, desperate to get above them and into the air of the starry night.

  In the distance there was a flare of summer lightning, flickering. He stood amid the flowers of the garden and the tall stems of Michaelmas daisies, green and soft and wet. There was a light in the upper window of the inn, but none below.

  He felt the sweat and cold of horror, but could not remember what he had done, what terror threatened. He went to the door and tried it. A light shone through the glass panels from the half-open door of the kitchen beyond the bar. He opened the back door and went into the bar.

  ‘Barbara! ’

  His voice echoed strangely in the place, as if someone spoke behind him. He went through the counter flap and IQ the stairs outside.

  ‘Barbara! ’

  She came to the top of the stairs.

  ‘Heavens! I wondered who it was! ’ She was breathless. ‘Where have you been? You disappeared! ’

  ‘I passed out in the garden. Don’t know why.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She came down the stairs.

  ‘I can’t be all right or I wouldn’t have passed out.’

  ‘Have some brandy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She went into the bar and poured brandy by the light coming through from the kitchen. She came back to him. ‘I couldn’t make out what happened to you.’

  ‘It sounds daft, but I’ve got a feeling something funny’s going on. I can’t make out what, though.’

  ‘You’d better get home. Do you feel dizzy?’

  ‘No, vague. As if somebody got into my head, emptied it out and put fog back in.’

  ‘You talk funny,’ she said. ‘Your wife’s there, isn’t she?’ Yes.’

  ‘I’ll walk back with you in case you flop again.’

  ‘I’ll try not. I’m all right at the moment, but it scares you, suddenly going out like that. I never thought it could happen to me.’

  ‘It just shows you’ve got to be careful. Come on.’

  “But you can’t come back by yourself.’

  Don’t worry about me. You get home first. Come on.’

  They went out into the empty street. She closed the bar door behind her. He reeled slightly and she caught his arm.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s my ruddy head.’

  “Keep hold of my arm,’ she said.

  They went away down the street. The bar door stayed unlocked.

  Fireflies danced in the darkness, as if in a night of insect revelry. Again and again the summer lightning flashed. Far off over the sea thunder growled, and black cloud shield began to march up the sky, blanketing the Wars, reflecting more solid heat down on the night land.

  “There’ll be a storm,’ she said, and her arm tightened on his.

  ‘You scared of storms?’

  ‘Only the noise.’ They went on down the quiet lane, their shoes gritting on the dust.

  ‘Lot of these fireflies,’ he said.

  ‘They’re pretty.’

  He halted, dragging her back.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  He laughed. ‘Just queer a minute. Something’s gone wrong- in my head. I can’t really tell if it’s night or day or what. What day is it, anyway?’

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘Any week. Any time.’ He started off again.

  ‘Your wife must be asleep. There’s no light on.’

  , ‘What’s the time then? What time Wednesday is it?’ He lifted his wrist as if he had only then remembered his watch. ‘It’s Thursday.’ He laughed stupidly. ‘Nearly half twelve.’ He reeled again and turned about face in the effort of keeping his balance. ‘No lights anywhere. Look. Everybody’s asleep.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said, struggling with his dodgy balancing. Her eyes kept looking towards the sea sky and the rapid flaring of lightning there. She was frightened of lightning. She was frightened of being alone when it thundered. Yet she wanted to get back home before it all crashed out in fury.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s the heat. I think.’ Again he stopped, but sharply now. ‘What’s that noise? That whispering?’

  ‘I don’t know. An animal or something in the hedge. Do come on, please.’

  ‘It’s a lot of animals,’ he said, head cocked. ‘Or insects or something. Listen.’

  Lightning flared again. She tautened and pulled his arm.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Come on.’

  ‘I never heard it before,’ he said. ‘Ten million crickets in mufflers.’ He began to drag on again.

  Half the sky was starlit, the other dark with electrical storm.

  ‘Something is going to happen,’ he said huskily. ‘I know, and I can’t remember what it is.’

  ‘It’s your stomach makes you feel things like that,’ she said. ‘Hurry. I want to get back.’

  ‘Leave me. I’ll be all right.’

  She shivered slightly. ‘No, come on. I’ll see you back.’ They shambled on in long curves as she strove to correct his wandering feet.

  ‘It’s a powercut!’ he said suddenly, and turned right round again. ‘Look! Even the phone box is out. It’s the lightning, perhaps.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she urged. ‘Come on! ’

  They went on to the gate. The house stood against the night sky, white ghost paint glowing, stars twinkling in the windows.

  He halted.

  ‘Look—listen,’ he said. ‘That whispering. It goes on all the time. It’s a whole mass of insects.’

  ‘How could it be? Don’t be silly. It’s probably the electric wires. They hum and make funny noises. Come on. We’re almost here now.’

 
; They went on through the garden. The front door yawned wide. He tripped on the step and fell against the doorpost.

  ‘You’re bad,’ she said. ‘I’ll sit you down and get your wife.’

  She was hot, tired and frightened of the taut atmosphere, the whispering, the coming storm.

  ‘In there,’ he said, as if giving in. He pointed to the open study doorway. It was curiously light inside the house, as if their eyes had grown fully accustomed to the dark.

  They went on and he spun away from her and Hopped on the sofa. She undid his collar as he lay there panting.

  ‘It’s my head,’ he said. ‘Something’s moving about inside it.’

  ‘I’ll get your wife,’ she said.

  ‘Upstairs. First right. Phew! ’

  She went out and up the white painted stairs. It was quiet. The whispering outside was soft now. A flare of lightning glowed over the sea. She shivered again, and went to the first door and knocked.

  ‘Mrs Chance! ’

  There was no reply. She looked at the other doors, then called again. Still there was no answer. She turned the handle and opened the door. Someone was lying on top of a bed.

  She went in. The girl was stretched out there as if she had fallen asleep suddenly, her soft nightdress rumpled and tossed. Barbara called again. Then shook the sleeper by the shoulder. The girl’s head fell sideways as if the muscles of the neck had failed.

  A new wave of fear ran through Barbara. Thunder growled in the distance as she shook again. The sleeper sighed and that was all. Barbara let go and stood back, her heart beating so that she could hear nothing beyond the thudding of blood.

  ‘My God!’ she gasped. ‘What’s happening?’

  She backed out of the room, then turned and hurried down the stairs. She saw the ghost of a coloured phone on a table by the study door. She ran to it with a wave of relief and lifted the receiver. There was no sound, no mush, nothing when she jinked the crutch. Her heart froze. She put it down and ran into the study. Lightning blazed in the sky through the big window beyond the sofa.

  Desperate, she ran to it, scrabbled for the curtains, found them and pulled them across to cut out the terrifying storm. Another flash glowed in the hall outside, and the thunder became louder, sharper, more frightening. The echoes ran away across the sky. She touched his shoulder as he sprawled on the sofa.