These Savage Futurians Page 7

  He stopped by one of several watching policemen. “What happened?”

  “Obvious, isn’t it?” The man looked at him as if he hated him. “There were thirty people still in the building, they knew its life was up but they couldn’t believe it. In any case they had nowhere to go.”

  He thrust his chin forward suddenly. “Unless you can contribute something helpful, get out of here.”

  “Can I help?”

  “We have a hundred volunteers but only twenty shovels-get moving.”

  Smith drove on and finally reached his home. Once inside he ate some more of the synthetic food and switched on the hypno-tutor.

  Now, about the weapon—didn’t want anything deadly did he? Just a deterrent, something to stop a mob.

  He went through the tapes—ah—yes—Foundations of Nerve-Weapons.

  Again, it never occurred to him that the authorities would not permit the basics of even restraint weapons to be broadcast to all and sundry. The instructions were there, but they were not restricted to adults but could be obtained by adolescents over the age of sixteen.

  It was intimated to Ventnor at this point that Smith was representative of forty per cent of the population. A percentage using hypno-instruction to make both weapons and food—Megellon’s gadgeteers.

  Smith discarded his helmet and studied his purchases. He had all the necessary materials for the plastic casing—a Langley-Forge reaction crystal but no Raynor-tube. Maybe a Holz-Deven tube from the tri-dimentional would do as well, the idea was almost the same wasn’t it? In any case the mere sight of a weapon might be enough and it would give him confidence in the event of trouble. All he needed now was a battery cell; there were no .05s in the place but he had two .03s, only slightly over the required power. Might take a little longer for the bloke to regain consciousness, say twenty minutes instead of ten, but that didn’t matter, did it?

  It was intimated to Ventnor here that the hypno-tutor, together with its tapes, was one of the crazes of the age. Large numbers of firms pushed the device with the same glowing promises that correspondence firms of dubious character had once offered to the hopeful and uneducated.

  Can you play a musical instrument? Hypno-tuition can turn you into a master in less than twenty minutes.

  Become a skilled operative— journalist— actor—director-financier— any damn thing by hypno-tuition. Unfortunately the hypno-impressions only lasted three months and then one was compelled to take another impression. This, however, did not stop the craze. It was so easy and gave such a boost to the ego.

  Smith made himself some more synthetic food. This time, to him, the odor was less savory and it required considerable effort to force the substance down his throat.

  Just as he was finishing, the window behind which he was eating, bulged inwards and twanged back into place. The heavy stone was flung back dangerously at the man who had thrown it.

  Suddenly cold, Smith saw that an angry mob was gathered outside the house. Damn! He had forgotten to draw the curtains again.

  He picked up the home-made gun, went to the door and opened it a crack.

  “Get away from here. I’m not doing you any harm.”

  They shouted: “Hoarder,” and “Industrialist,” at him and a big man with an unshaven face shook his fist.

  “We’ve got starving lads, while you sit and eat regular meals.”

  “His wife ran away with a black-marketeer,” shouted a woman shrilly. “He was too low even to feed her.”

  They shouted. again, surged forward and the unshaven man kicked open the gate.

  “What you want is a sharp, hard lesson.”

  Smith pushed the barrel of the weapon through the crack In the door. “You come another damn foot and I’ll use this.”

  The man laughed. “What have you got, little man—a water pistol? Think you can scare me with that toy?”

  He snatched suddenly at the weapon crushing the door on Smith’s hand and pressing in the firing stud.

  There was a sound and a curiously livid scarlet flash. The man staggered and was suddenly covered in a multitude of tiny blue and green sparks.

  Literally frozen, Smith watched him totter away from the door, a set-piece in a firework display, a grotesque pearly king with blue and green pearls—Oh God!

  The man seemed to fall suddenly when he was half-way down the path. When the body struck the ground, gray dust puffed from his clothes and a cloud of glittering sparks danced briefly above the body like a swarm of fireflies.

  Smith was aware of the mob racing away in panic, of the sparks blinking out one by one and the somehow shapeless body sprawled on the path.

  Numbly he shut the door, locked it, piled tables and chairs against and repeated the performance at the back. Then he sat down and made to put his head in his hands —hands? What was the matter with his hands, goose pimples? Blue goose pimples?

  7

  He stared at the hands a long time and then put them behind his back. It didn’t matter; there was a dead man in the middle of his path. A man he had killed with a ‘safe’ weapon. Oh God, what had he made?

  Smith became slowly aware of a strange inability to concentrate and remember. What was he worrying about? Oh, yes, the man, the dead man—would that be the same man Molly had run away with? No, that was Harris—the dead man wasn’t Harris. God, he felt sick—so blasted sick!

  When, six hours later, a mob rushed the house under cover of darkness, he was still sitting there.

  He was still alive but he couldn’t hear them and he couldn’t see them.

  The mob leaders looked at the distended body, the grotesquely swollen hands, the blue balloon-face and backed hastily away. Once they called his name hoarsely, then they turned and ran…

  Ventnor shook himself, opened his eyes and looked at Stein. He made no comment but there was a kind of sickness in his eyes and his face was pale.

  “I’m sorry.” Stein was brusque. “Everyone has to go through it, everyone has to learn. All you experienced happened every day, some of them, as you have learned, stumbled upon the most dreadful weapons.

  “As for the food, God knows what some of them concocted, but they left a terrible legacy behind them. The scavengers and micro-organisms which consumed their bodies under-went certain changes, in the course of generations, as a result. In consequence, we had changing life-forms and new and often virulent micro-organisms.”

  Stein paused then said, quickly. “No, don’t move, we might as well get the rest over, there’s more to come.”

  “Morel”

  “Afraid so, old chap. You are about to become an Engineer, a certain George Lansom. Lansom is—was—not a composite character. He was a living man, a skilled technician. Somewhere he had found a 1982 diary which, of course, was made of long-life materials. In this diary he carefully recorded his daily experiences and, so intense were his emotions and feelings, that we were able to get viso-emotional recordings from almost every page.”

  There was another click and Stein continued. “Lansom lived in the years of despair and fought in the last bitter battles before the final collapse. This was several—years-after— Smith—”

  The voice seemed to fade, lose meaning, become liquid like the sigh and slap of water.

  There was water, grey choppy water and a cool damp wind blew steadily in Ventnor’s—no—Lansom’s face. Yes, grey cold water, the sea, with darker grey clouds in watery masses in the dull evening sky.

  Ahead of him, and on either side, were boats, hundreds and hundreds of boats. Ancient motor yachts—now laboriously propelled by oars—crude rafts supported by bulks of timber, things with sails, sweeps and foot-driven revolving paddles. There were even a few plastic paddle-boats— once of the sport of the holiday-maker—how many years ago was that?

  All the boats were packed with men, most of them bearded, all of them emaciated and every one burdened with arms. In a few hours they would be hidden by darkness and, in that darkness, they would land unseen on the beaches. Then,
by God, look out Indoes, • look out you blasted industrialists and tycoons, the Engineers are going to stamp you into the ground.

  The part of Lansom which was Ventnor and seeing the scene the Lansom’s eyes became suddenly aware of curious familiarity. Hadn’t he been here before? Those high white cliffs, that spur of chalk, that mound and the flat coast which they had left in the early afternoon. That was Del!

  Only it wasn’t Del, not in Lansom’s mind, it was a place called ‘Deal. Gret was St. Margarets Bay and their destination was a place called Dover.

  Ventnor recalled a pile of rubble on a high hill, the outlines of a huge city, gouge-cats, Berman and a chalky stream.

  Then, strangely, the memories seemed to fade and Ventnor, succumbing to stronger emotions became, almost completely, George Lansom.

  Lansom was not a nice man, not now, not after all that had happened. Had been once, years ago. There had been reasons then, standards, affection, warmth, security and of course, the—

  To Ventnor something closed in Lansom’s mind with the savagery of a rat trap, a kind of defensive rat trap, biting out a memory which hurt too much to think about. He had a glimpse of tiny hands and little laughing faces—Daddy!—Daddy!—

  Then it was gone and in its place was hate. The bloody Indoes, they’d done it, hoarding the food, letting the world fall to pieces. But they’d pay, yes, they’d pay! That was why he was in this boat, loaded down with weapons with the damp sad wind blowing in his face.

  Strangely, Lansom was not afraid. He was an experienced fighter with no illusions, but fear did not touch him. All he wanted was to get as many Indoes as possible.

  In the fading light, Lansom rechecked his weapons. They were good weapons and he had made most of them himself. All of them were long-life stuff, made from the parts of an ancient Rolls Royce, a case of American surgical instruments and, of course, constructed with a set of Italian long-life precision instruments which had been given to him by his father. They’d been a show-piece once, kind of a relic, outmoded but interesting to visitors. They’d stood on a shelf in his room once under glass and Mary—Oh, Mary, darling—Mary!

  In Lansom’s mind the rat trap closed again, shutting out the memory.

  Two hours later his boat grated on sand and he sprang out with the others and went crunching noisily up the beach. It was strange that no one had heard them because already the shore line was crowded with dark figures, many of whom had already scaled the crumbling sea wall.

  As they crossed the coast road, a watery moon broke through the low clouds and Lansom was conscious of a curious sense of disappointment. In the faint light Dover was like any other town, the same mounds of dust, the same half-buried streets, the same dusty desolation.

  He had half-expected buildings, lighted windows even, perhaps, the sounds of music. Here, however, was only the sigh of the sea wind and the dreary, dusty desolation.

  Lansom stiffened almost unconsciously. This was a trick, a typical Indoe deceit. Somewhere they were waiting in readiness. The Indoes had always been cunning and treacherous but not clever, not really clever. The repeaters for instance—cunning but not clever. Oh yes, they’d stopped the overland attack all right, but there was a certain bestial stupidity in a weapon you couldn’t stop yourself.

  Lansom thought briefly about the repeaters. They could go on blowing for centuries, hour after hour, for centuries. No one could dismantle them for the projectors were protected by the force of the explosions they created. They would never run dry because they were solar-powered and drew their energy from normal light. They drew enough power in daylight to keep going all night so you were beaten all round.

  There was nothing really startling about them technically. You took a G-type Markham projector and an L-type Mark-ham projector and set them up about a kilometer apart. You then directed the beam of type G and the beam of type L to meet at a given spot or, what the experts called ‘agitation point’.

  The beams excited the molecules of the atmosphere, eventually causing an explosion. It was not quite a nuclear explosion, it was more an electronic explosion. The point was, however, it was unpredictable, sometimes it blew seven times in an hour and, at other times, seven times a day. Several hundred had tried to put the things out of commission and several hundred had died. Close approach seemed to trigger it.

  They continued to advance, ankle deep in dust, crouching, weapons ready, and tense for the surprise attack.

  The sea was nearly five hundred meters behind them before light stabbed from a mound of rubble some hundred meters ahead.

  Some distance to Lansom’s left a curious scarlet bubble rose suddenly from the ground and he saw that a man was enveloped in it. The trapped man made convulsive movements with his limbs then pitched forward on his face. As he fell the scarlet bubble vanished as if pricked by a pin.

  A hoarse voice shouted: “Take covert Bubble cannon!” And then he heard the liquid monkey-chatter of a homemade Hersholt as a group of men on his right laid down answering fire.

  The mound of rubble from which the bubble cannon had fired began to glitter, turned slowly to a shimmering white and puffed upwards jet of sparks.

  They advanced again but now resistance was stiffening. Light stabbed from numerous mounds and men began to fall.

  Ahead there were warning shouts: “Micro-cannon! Mine field here!” And then, urgently: “Chase-bombs! Watch out —chase-bombs!”

  Two cursing men suddenly drew level with Lansom and dropped flat behind a low mound of dust. Something bulky lay between them. He recognized the squat outlines of what was popularly known as a ‘muck-spreader’. It was in actuality a composite, long-range micro-cannon with thirty barrels; the weapon fired explosive missiles no bigger than the point of a pin at the incredible rate of eighty missiles a second per barrel.

  The two men sited the weapon carefully, then one lay flat and began to stab the firing keys with the speed and skill of an expert touch-typist.

  The weapon only made a curious sighing sound but, far ahead, a tremendous area of ground boiled and spurted yellow flame. The ever-present dust swirled up with it in a cloud and began to roll outwards and towards them.

  Lansom’s ears hurt from the reverberating noise that rolled and echoed outwards from the fire.

  Suddenly the noise stopped and the two men climbed to their feet. One of them grinned, white teeth showing briefly in the darkness. “That shook the bastards, eh? That taught them a lesson.”

  They picked up the heavy weapon between them and went on. Lansom followed; through the pall of dust the flash of weapons far ahead looked sullen and angry.

  He came upon three men setting up a sonic mortar.

  “Heard the news? We’ve got them on the run. They’ve pulled out of the inland defences but Kirby’s lot cut them off at Buckland Bridge. Those who got clear are pulling back to the Castle.”

  “Be a hard place to take.”

  “Not with this.” One of the men patted the mortar lovingly. “That place may be long-life and thick but once we get accurate readings on the structure of the stone a couple of missiles from this will kick it apart like a house of cards. The missiles are keyed to set up vibrations, see? Like a high note shatters a wine glass, clobbers a man’s brain as well.”

  Lansom went on. A cold wind blowing in from the sea was clearing the haze of dust and making his thin body cold. A paleness in the sky warned of the coming dawn.

  He was not happy about it, from the commanding heights of the castle the Indoes could cover the whole area and there was very little cover.

  He had covered only a few more meters when he was brought to a halt by a number of shallow foxholes and several armed men.

  “Front line, mate, we’re assembling for attack—what‘s your mob?”

  “I’m in Benson’s lot.”

  “Benson? Oh, yes, you’ll find his crowd on what used to be Pencester Road. Follow the foxholes that way.”

  Three minutes later Lansom was among the men he knew, most of
whom were digging shallow foxholes with their hands. He followed suit then squatted in the hollow he had made and ate his last ration of food—a cube-shaped piece of dried protage which was, he thought, about the size of a lump of sugar. Inwardly he laughed harshly—what the hell was sugar? He tried to remember when he had last eaten a full meal. The time he and Squire had caught that wild cat or was it when they’d stewed a couple of rats and seagull? Couldn’t remember properly; funny there were no seagulls around here. No, not so strange when you came to think about it. So much of the land poisoned by this and that, and they said the sea was still badly polluted near the coast. He’d noticed the stink as they came in, kind of a sickly chemical smell.

  He realized it was almost light and looked upwards. Above them, surprisingly close, the castle stood remotely against the sky.

  He studied it almost detachedly. It looked high, far away, grayly serene and somehow unreal. A ragged gray cloud drifted above seeming almost to touch the battlements.

  He remembered when he had first seen it—twenty—thirty years ago? Been a show-place then, ancient monument, a genuine Norman Castle. He’d been in it, paid five shillings. When they’d got to the battlements he and Mary had lifted the kids up so that—no!

  He forced the memory from his mind and studied the approach. Steep and bare, no cover at all, this was going to be worse than Charing.

  It was then, that far away, a man put two fingers between his lips and emitted a piercing whistle.

  The sound produced a curious electric tension. This was it!

  There was another whistle and, behind them, a ‘muck-spreader’ opened up with a sighing sound.

  The lower slopes of the hill vanished, became a sea of yellow flame, a cauldron of reverberating explosions and swirling smoke.

  “Forward!”

  With a numb land of obedience Lansom found himself advancing with the rest. They walked into the black smoke left by the ‘muck-spreader’, stumbling over the still hot soil and lurching into craters.

  Lansom was not frightened but he was tense and aware of increasing fatigue. How old was he—fifty-seven—sixty?