Froomb! Read online

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  Her thick lips mesmerized him. He watched them while the fury of desire raced in him, more wildly than he had known it at any time before. The wildness of it made him tremble.

  “No!” he said.

  He pushed her hand down from him. She stayed there, looking at him with her yellow eyes, her hands stroking her thighs, her big breasts quaking with her silent laughter. But the laughter had gone from her eyes, and the sun reflecting in them was cold.

  She turned as if nothing had happened and went on with the tour of the rooms. Now and again she asked

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  questions, about his father and the times he had lived in. Her normal behavior made him more uneasy still, but as they went on the feeling diminished.

  They came into the great kitchen at last, and it seemed that his father was still in command. There was the long table in the middle, and the huge stone fireplace, with more spits, Dutch ovens, copper pans with fire inside their skins. From the ceiling beams hung blackened hams, cheeses, onion plaits, everything as his father had ordered.

  Surely he must still be here? How could there be so much of him and he not show?

  There was a fat girl sitting at the table staring at him. She was dressed as his father had dressed the maids, in eighteenth-century style, with big skirts and low bodices, mob-caps with forelocks showing wild beneath them. The girl did not shift her eyes from him, but sat there, leaning one-sidedly on the table with a plump elbow digging on the wood, the low neck showing fat white breasts down to the nipple on the tilted side.

  He seemed to know her, yet that was impossible. The way she stared was not plainly curious, like the girl at the guardroom and this woman, but frankly puzzled; almost as if she too tried to remember who he was. Her eyes were merry, with a bright mischievous light in them, and it was that which seemed should bring the sharpest memory of all, yet it would not focus.

  The woman touched his arm and drew his attention away. She still smiled. He heard a rhythmic swishing. There was a man’s black behind at the far end of the kitchen. He knelt on the floor scrubbing the stones. The rhythm stopped when the scrubber dipped a big brush into the bucket.

  Petra went and stood in front of him. The man squatted

  back on his haunches. John saw the shiny back of his waistcoat, and a white collar on top, split. He went round. The gray haired man had a thin, lined face, craggy, with light blue eyes that frowned at the sun.

  “This is the Reverend James,” Petra said, her hands on her hips looking down at the clergyman. “This is John Brunt.”

  The clergyman grasped his thin knees with craggy hands like a parrot’s claws and smiled vaguely at the newcomer.

  “He is very old,” Petra said. She stared at John again.

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  “There is a brush and bucket in the yard. Help him scrub the floor.

  John stood in astonishment.

  “Me?” he said, and then laughed a little. “I’ve never scrubbed a floor in my life!”

  “This is not your life,” the woman said. “Get the bucket. You know the pump.”

  “I—” He rebelled, stood still, trying to find words that made sense, but found none and stood dumb as an idiot. The woman smacked him hard across the face as she had done before, but raising an even more paralyzing pain. The chewing girl lounged at the table watching idly, her half naked bosom shaking a little from inner laughter.

  “Fetch the bucket, my son,” said the clergyman. “You must learn humility.”

  “Damn it, the floor’s clean!” he said, the sting making it feel as if only one side of his mouth worked to the words. “It needs no—”

  She hit him again, twice now, still with the flat of a steel hard hand.

  “Get the bucket,” she said calmly.

  He tasted blood on his teeth, and wanted to strike her, hard, and keep on until she squirmed under the brutality.

  “I don’t know what this place is, but no! Go to the devil!” He shouted, his spirit alight with anger, the taste of his own blood heating him further.

  She stepped close to him and got his arm behind him in the instant before he instinctively tried to bring it forward in escape. He was half turned round, his head was pressed down from behind and then he was frog-marched to the open door and sent headlong out over the cobbles of the yard. He lost his balance and went down, striking his cheekbone on the stones, grinding his elbow with an excruciating pain at the base of the pump. He lay there, gasping, his head gone solid with the shattering pain in his cheekbone. He could hear the pump jangle above him.

  “Get the bucket, get the bucket, get the bucket, get the bucket. . .” The words repeated in his numbed head like an idiot jingle.

  He turned on his back and held his bleeding face.

  “No!” he shouted. “Go to the devil! Go to the devil!”

  He saw her standing there, legs apart, staring down at him, something like a broomstick in her hands. She began

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  to thrash him. He cried out, put up his arms to save his face and rolled over. The cobbles dug into his body like boots kicking. The blows rained on his back searing the flesh, bruising his very bones. He tried to crawl away, keeping his ringing head down to save it from more pain. The blows kept on, unhurried, certain, crashing through his whole body in thunderstrikes of bright pain. His knees collapsed, he tried to keep crawling with his hands to get away from the brutal pain. His arms gave way and he lay there, letting the blows rack him.

  “All right!” he shouted, gritting his teeth to stop sobs from coming out. “I’ll get it! Oh God, I’ll get it! Oh God!”

  The blows stopped, but as he struggled to get up one more warning strike caught him across the small of the back.

  “Don’t—don’t go on,” he shouted. “Don’t! I’ll get the bloody bucket if you stop!”

  Numbed, beaten, stunned with pain and crushed in body yet still his burning defiance demanded a bargain. He looked up through watering eyes and saw the woman laughing as she threw the big stick at him.

  “Wash that first,” she said. “It’s got blood on it.” She turned and walked away, shimmering in his tears, through the kitchen door.

  He could hardly carry the bucket for the pain in his limbs and body. Water slopped over the cleric’s work as he bent, scrubbing. The clergyman reared back on his haunches scowling. John dropped the bucket. It toppled over and the water ran wild across the flags, rushing in the joints like geometrical rivers, bringing up dust bubbles like dirty marbles.

  The girl laughed as he fell against the table and leaned there, breathing hard, trying to stop himself crying out against the hundred pains that racked him.

  “Didn’t you like it?” the girl said, her bosom shaking like jelly with her silent laughter. “That’s funny. Lots of men pay her to do that.”

  He just stared at her, then turned, picked up the bucket and sloshed out across the floor. He reeled against the doorpost, and as he recovered himself he heard the clergyman shout.

  “Clumsy bloody fool! Look at it! Just look at it! All I’ve done. All I’ve done this morning. . .” His wailing voice ended with a shocking sound.

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  Startled, John turned Ms head and saw the old man

  crying like a child, big tears running over the crags of Ms face. He found the sight made the sickness of pain worse. He went on, staggering on the cobbles, swinging the wooden bucket so that it struck his legs, and nearly tripped up.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus Christ! Where am I?” He repeated the call to the rhythm of Ms pumping. “Packard! Turn the switch, man! Turn the switch! There’s nothing here! Turn the switch, Packard!”

  He shouted at the sky, and the screaming sound was swallowed in the vastness. The iron jangling of the pump remained. No water came from the spout.

  And then he realized what seemed to be the truth. He had crashed the life and death barrier, but had landed up not in Heave
n, but Hell.

  And upon the cathode screens that Packard watched, there was only the spark and zizz of futile energy caught in the empty net of the searcMng mechanism.

  -2

  Peter smacked a handful of pills into his mouth and stared at Margaret.

  “What do you make of him?” Peter asked, taking a drink of water.

  “It’s difficult to say,” she said. “He’s so different. He’s such a big man.” She stared at the window with thoughtful eyes. “Where do you think he comes from?”

  “Well,” Peter said, “he knows coffee. That plastic stuff nearly choked him. And the way he looks. As you say, he’s big and well-colored. Looks as if he’s been living here all his life.”

  “There was a man called Brunt,” she said, holding a file out to Mm. “He was the innkeeper years and years ago.”

  Peter got up, opened the window and looked out.

  “He says he’s dead,” Peter said, “but he’s the best piece of masculine bodywork I’ve ever seen. I don’t tMnk I ever

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  saw a man like him. And when we hit him, he hit back!”

  He turned his dark eyes wide with surprise.

  “That was very strange,” she said, and there was an odd movement of excitement within her.

  “We get the two biggest men we can out of a rotten lot, and he just knocks them silly,” Peter said. “Yet he says he’s dead.”

  “Well, that can’t be true, can it7”

  “He wasn’t carrying any pills,” Peter said slowly. “And he isn’t like any man I’ve seen, but I have seen old pictures with big men and full of punch. . Peter stared. “He was interested in you.”

  She pressed the file tighter against her breast and there was a sudden feeling of guilt in her.

  “Yes. It was very strange,” she said.

  “You keep saying it’s very strange,” Peter said, and went back to the desk. “He talks of travel, flying, he knows real coffee, he is attracted by a girl.” Peter watched her. “He did that so easily. Almost as if it were quite natural.”

  The file trembled slightly.

  “Where do you think he comes from?” Peter said.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “The Inspectors that they send,” Peter said, frowning. “They’re all women. Big women. These few men I’ve got here for guards are the biggest we can get now. And they’re not as big as he is. . . Where could he come from? A man, you see. This will upset the government, a man like this.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked sharply.

  “I’m not sure, but I shall have to send a signal to government. Where could this man have come from?”

  “He could be a strange traveler.”

  “A very strange traveler who knows a world that isn’t here,” Peter said, and sat back. “The government won’t like strange travelers, whether they say they’re dead or not. You know what they say about strange people.” Peter smiled. “There is only one thing they’ll call him. A witch.”

  “No, he isn’t that!” she said quickly.

  “Why?” Peter looked up with curious sharpness.

  “I don’t think he could be,” she said, confused.

  “If the government sends the Inspectors down they’ll very soon find out,” said Peter.

  “I don’t think I should send a signal like that,” she said.

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  “Why?” Peter sat back, eyes very small, staring at her. “It would mean a witch hunt here,” she said. “The last time that happened there was—it was awful.”

  “I’ll leave it to the government to decide,” Peter said. “But here we have a big, healthy man of a type born years ago, who says he’s dead. It’s more than likely that the Chief will decide there’s only one explanation for that peculiarity; the man must practice black magic. How else could he do it? How else could he know these things? How could he know so much about a world like that?”

  “Please don’t do that until we know more,” she said urgently. “This man might be something very important, important to us and the government. Let them decide, of course, but let us send the facts. Don’t prejudice their decision. If the man is important, then it will be good for us later.”

  “True,” said Peter, and took more pills. “Yes. We’ll do that.” And as she went out of the office Peter watched her slyly.

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  The Prime Minister at the time of John Brunt’s death, Richard Wayling, was a man of exceptional caution and modesty. He would always credit anyone else with his policy movements, so as to be on the safe side whatever the result. In recent years, this modesty had paid him well, for it was the development of this skillful avoidance of blame here and in other countries which had inspired the famous cartoon, published first in The Detroit Messenger and later in all countries. It depicted the world at the wheel of a motorcar which was rushing at great speed down a slope to the final abyss and crying out, “The fluid’s running out of my brakes!” Shortened to Froomb! it so perfectly fitted the international picture that its cynical truth caught on very widely. It posed so many questions: Why didn’t he try the brakes before he started down? Who made the brakes leak? What difference does it make, anyway?

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  At the same time, during a press conference following one Message to the Nation, the American President, suddenly losing confidence, said, “Really the only thing we can do is hold hands.” This did not impress the correspondents as being firm, or even hinting at the customary thunder of Stars and Stripes. It was suppressed in the United States but profoundly considered elsewhere. Everywhere it was found to be hopelessness without drama, whereas Froomb! was hopelessness with it. The choice of Froomb! was obvious to the people of those days; an age of self-pity and blaming the man who made the brakes.

  Premier Richard Wayling was very conscious of the President’s holding-hands proposal. Behind a facade of bragging and vague threats the Russians were only too eager to hold hands. Though the Soviets did not consider themselves to be in the same car as the rest, they knew they were in a similar car in similar circumstances equipped with the same kind of brakes. China was bleeding the system.

  It was on the occasion of a behind-the-scenes plucking at an international finger that the Premier made a private call at Packard’s flat on the afternoon of Brunt’s death.

  Packard was the first Minister of Science who was and always had been, a practicing scientist. All previous holders of the Ministry had been civilians with ambition, excellent form-signers and readers-aloud of prepared statements, able to explain side-effect casualties with a casualness designed to minimize alarm. Packard’s way was his own, and frequently misunderstood.

  A question in the House on the Firestone Incident had a typical reply from the Minister. The Incident was the test underground nuclear explosion which by some miscalculation had created a minor earthquake in Wigan when five hundred and eighteen houses had slipped away down a great crack that appeared one Sunday at eleven-fifteen in the morning. Packard had said, in answer to the question in the House as to what caused it, “The bloody computer gave the wrong answer.” Pressed as to what the government was doing in the face of this tragedy, he replied, “We are not ordering any more of that type of computer.”

  This late afternoon the Premier left his private guards on the ground floor and went up alone to Packard’s flat. He did not want to risk his guards spreading around what he wished to talk about with Packard.

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  “The Russians have leaked,” said the Premier, in Packard’s lounge. “It coincides with certain information which has come in from the northeast frontier of India. Very disturbing.”

  “Oh God!” said Packard. “What’s happened now? I have supped full of horrors, I warn you.”

  “It seems that the Chinese are trying out some kind of ray across the border,” the Prime Minister said. “The Indian information was that a company of soldiers, about two hundred, were crossing a fiel
d in open formation, when they suddenly disappeared. There is a story of a lot of steam, and then all that was left was ash and melted metal. When I heard this, I sent instructions for our people to find out more about it. Now the Russians have given us a friendly warning that something similar has been happening along their eastern border. It started when three hundred people were waiting at a railway station. They disappeared like the soldiers. To check this phenomenon, the Russians sent five hundred more people there. The same thing happened.

  “They decided to carry out a full-scale scientific experiment, which with their numbers they can afford to do; they sent a thousand people, in units of some hundreds at a time and watched what happened. There was a lot of steam, then there was a lot of ash spread around on the ground.”

  “Sounds like Instant Manure,” said Packard, turning back. “Is it possible to make some kind of a heat ray gun that dissolves people like that?” Dicky asked. “On that scale?” Packard rapped his head with his knuckles.

  “Cl 5 were on that kind of thing a year or two ago,” he said.

  “That’s the Cumberland lot, is it?”

  “The plant they dug out the mountain for.”

  “Yes. I remember. What happened?”

  “I think it’s still going on. I’ll get the message.” He used a telephone. “Ann, dear, C15, Codeword Heatshield please.” He rang off. “What are the Russians going to do about it?” “They have protested.”

  “They don’t want to poke off a bomb at the Chinks?” “Nobody wants to poke off a bomb at anybody,” said Dicky, lips twisting in distate, “you know that!”

  “What are we going to do with all these ruddy bombs?”

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  Packard asked angrily. “We’ve got every cave' in the country stuffed with ’em. The Yanks are piling them beside the main roads, it’s got so bad. We’ve got overkill for five hundred years.”

  “If we could get a firm agreement, we could dismantle the lot,” said the Premier. “But we’ve been trying for an agreement for twenty-two years and still it keeps going. Like Ping-pong.”