Mandrake, Page 3

  Other natives had told him, on his way, that they had seen landslips in parts of the hills, though there had been no heavy rains. Queston frowned. There could have been some rogue earth tremor here, perhaps; terrifying the tribe so that they had migrated at last. That must be it… but why, if so, should their precious belongings be scattered about? Even if they had fled, they would have come back through any amount of fear for those.

  His natives refused to stay near the place, and there was no useful purpose to be served by arguing. But on the trek back through the lowlands, he found an old man alone in a rough-hoed field; the people here knew of the tribe in the caves, and Queston had spoken to them often before. He beckoned the old man, and pointed up to where low fronds of cloud drifted round the tops of the hills.

  ‘What happened? ’ he said in Portuguese.

  ‘They were a strange people,’ the old man said. He seemed to know at once what Queston was talking about.

  ‘But what has happened?’

  ‘It was the boy,’ the old man said. He squinted upward; his brown, ancient face was seamed as corduroy, the eyes bright and dribbling; he mumbled round a single yellow tooth. ‘It was the boy. He was chief, in place of the old one, because he was of the family who spoke to the caves. But he was too young. He did not go in alone, as those of his blood had always done. He had no respect. He took others with him, who should not have gone. And the caves were angry.’

  He stopped, mumbling. Queston looked at him keenly. This was not dotage; the old man was not a fool. Only reluctant to go on.

  ‘Was the boy hurt?’

  ‘The boy, yes. And all of them. It has been a bad season.’

  Queston waited, uneasy.

  ‘The boy had no respect,’ the old man said. ‘No respect for the place. And the hills were angry. They called all the people into the caves into the deep caves, where they had never been. They went in, chanting. And when they were all inside, the caves gave their punishment, and consumed all those there. Not one of them came out again.’

  The words echoed in meaningless enormity through Queston’s head. He stared at the old man, appalled. ‘They were all killed?’

  ‘O yes. All of them.’ The voice was almost placid.

  ‘But why did they go into the deep caves? They were always frightened to enter, even for sheltering, unless they were of the family.’

  The old man said patiently: ‘The caves called them in.’

  For a terrible moment Queston felt as if he heard the tearing splitting roar that must have overwhelmed them; smelt the bitter dust, and the sudden shrieking terror as death came in tumbling tons of rock. And in that flash of a second he thought of something else behind the terror: a blind, orgasmic surrender, almost a welcoming… but then it was gone.

  A remnant of reasoning stirred in his mind, forcing its way through the shock. He said thickly, staring at the old man: ‘You speak as if you had their faith in the caves. In the power of the caves. But your people have always before thought it foolishness.’

  The old man looked up at him out of the bright sunken eyes. ‘It has been a bad season,’ he said again. He mumbled, and looked down. ‘A bad season.’

  Queston gave him money, and went away.

  ‘But you didn’t leave the place altogether, of course,’ Mandrake said.

  ‘O no. There was a lot more than that to be found out. I worked on it there for three or four months.’

  ‘And you found out more? About this curious extinction?’

  Mandrake’s eyes were fixed on him with close interest; he had listened to all the story in complete silence. They were close to Britain now; their seat-belts were on, and their ears prickling with the de-pressurization that went with a descent from 70,000 feet.

  Queston shrugged. ‘It’s complicated. I have work to do still. Really, that’s why I decided to come back—to retreat somewhere and just put all the pieces together. I want to write about it.’ And that understatement, my friend, he thought, will have to do for you.

  Brunner said, turning from the seat in front: ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Haven’t thought about it. Somewhere quiet.’ He smiled, grimly. ‘Some part of the country where people aren’t quite so attached to their surroundings. Or their surroundings to them.’

  He felt a touch on his shoulder; it was the stewardess, smiling for his empty glass. Holding it up to her, he missed her outstretched hand by about half an inch, and pulled himself upright in the seat, frowning. Bad to have his reactions blurring on two Scotches, even airline-size. Well, but there had not been much chance of drinking for some time now.

  He felt the Minister studying him again, and turned to meet the demanding stare, feeling a slight resentment that a man at least ten years younger than himself should exude such an air of authority.

  Mandrake said: ‘You would be a very valuable addition to my research staff, Dr Queston. If you would think about it… we should be honoured to have you.’

  ‘Thanks all the same, but no. Out of the question.’ He felt a distinct pleasure in making the flat refusal. ‘I don’t work well with other people, I’m afraid. Too much of an eccentric.’

  ‘If you joined us, from the very beginning you could have as much leave as you wanted to write whatever you want to write about Brazil.’

  ‘No thanks. Really.’

  Mandrake shrugged one shoulder, and spread his hands in a graceful parody of despair. ‘So be it. Of course you will enjoy writing a book, or whatever, about your cavemen. Though really they don’t seem so exceptional to me. Attached to their surroundings, yes—but then so are most people. And most people, I find, are remarkably unimaginative and stupid.’ The words lashed out with a viciousness that made Queston jump; but when he looked at the Minister the dark eyes were smiling blandly into his again. ‘As for the accidental deaths,’ Mandrake said easily, ‘well, very sad, yes—but is stray volcanic activity so rare? Or in the least significant?’

  ‘In a limestone area like this one it isn’t just rare. It’s impossible.’

  Mandrake laughed gently, and patted him on the arm. ‘Calm down, calm down. Your natives have quite a hold over you, haven’t they?’

  ‘The thing I want to analyse,’ Queston said, stung, ‘is the power that had a hold over them. And when I do—’ He stopped, silently cursing himself. And the Scotch.

  ‘Yes? ’ said Mandrake.

  Well, go on, the small censor in Queston’s brain goaded him. Tell the professional planner what you really believe: that the more closely involved a man becomes with a place, the nearer the place gets to gaining the upper hand. And that in the affair you have been through, this was an appalling example of the place deciding to take over. The caves, the earth, for their own reasons, deciding to destroy the men. So that it becomes desperately important to work out, now, how often this has happened before—and how it can be stopped from happening again. Tell him that you aren’t sure whether you’ve gone off your head through being too much alone, but that this is the thing you want more than anything to do now…

  And he might have set out, as in a confessional, all the wild echoing ideas, if he had not had a sudden irrational picture of the man at the airport; the man who had fired at Mandrake, and shouted: ‘Murderer—’

  He said: ‘O well, I’ll see how it goes.’

  The encouragement in Mandrake’s face died like a candle flickering out. In its place Queston thought that he saw for a moment a kind of warning, the resentment born in the important man who is denied his customary respect.

  ‘As you please.’

  The aeroplane jolted gently once, twice, three times; the pitch of its engine had been deepening steadily, and now it coughed into the roar that said they were on the ground, and slowing to the tolerable land-based speed of the runway. Queston wished they could see the earth; admirable though it was to cross the Atlantic in two and a half hours, he had a faint romantic yearning for the green-brown patchwork below that heralded England from one of the old six-hour
windowed jets.

  But there was still the impact of the first sight of a country through an aircraft’s doors. And the impact of the new Britain was upon him sooner than he expected.

  They stood waiting as a steward spun the control wheel on the giant curved door, and Mandrake turned and held out his hand.

  ‘We shall meet again, sooner than you think. You will be working for me before long.’ He gave Queston a brief, opaque stare, his head tilted arrogantly, and turned back as the steward opened the door. Brunner, with a patronizing nod, slipped past Queston to follow the Minister down the steps to the ground, and the two other Ministry men unobtrusively but firmly did the same.

  Over their heads, Queston saw four men in navy-blue uniforms at the bottom of the steps, looking like policemen but somehow not quite; and beside them a large black car with its door held open. Mandrake ran very quickly down the steps and into the car, his small deputation following him; and immediately the car swung round and drove away rapidly across the runway. In less than a minute from the opening of the aircraft door it had disappeared. Queston stood blinking at the top of the steps, and saw the steward grinning at him.

  ‘Guess they’re not taking any chance,’ the man said companionably. ‘We had to radio ahead for that little lot, after some guy took a shot at him at Kennedy. Seems screwy to me—why should anybody be so keen to assassinate him?’

  It was not long before he began to understand. His clearance at London Airport took longer than he had remembered. He was given lengthy forms to fill in that he had never seen before.

  ‘The last British entry stamp here is dated—1970, is this correct, sir?’

  ‘That’s right. I’ve been in South America for three years.’

  The man flicked through the pages: ‘—Mexico, Argentina, United States, Venezuela, Brazil—’

  ‘I’ve been around,’ Queston said lightly.

  ‘You have, haven’t you, sir? ’ The voice was colourless, but it managed to convey a faint disapproval.

  ‘The passport’s up to date, isn’t it?’

  ‘O yes, sir—now if you’d just complete that form.’ Queston wrote his name. Date of birth, place of birth, parents’ names, parents’ place of birth…

  ‘I haven’t an address yet.’

  ‘Do you know where you’ll be going from here?’

  ‘A hotel, presumably.’

  ‘Had you any particular hotel in mind, sir?’

  Queston stared. ‘I used to stay at the Copley, in Bruton Street.’

  ‘Ah, London, I see. Well, if you’d leave that space blank for the moment, sir, our bookings officer will telephone the Copley and see if they have a room. Then we can book you in, and the hotel can go on the form.’

  ‘Really, you needn’t bother. I can hunt about when I get to London.’

  ‘It’s no bother, sir.’ The man spoke unemotionally; he was calm, youngish, wearing a dark-grey suit in place of any uniform, but he had a distinct air of authority. ‘We are required, you see, to know your whereabouts for the first week.’

  ‘Well, I don’t remember all this fuss before.’

  ‘No,’ the man said. Queston waited for him to explain, but he only indicated the form again. ‘There is only one other formality—you will see it requires the names of three referees.’

  Queston read the neat print. ‘Persons with a familiar and sound knowledge of the applicant—’

  ‘Damn it,’ he said, ‘I’m not an applicant. I’m a British subject.’

  The man said: ‘You are applying for re-entry into Britain, sir.’

  Queston shrugged, and picked up his pen again. He wrote the names and addresses of his bank manager, his solicitor, and after a slight hesitation, James Thorp-Gudgeon. He said as he handed the form back: ‘Strikes me it must be simpler to be an immigrant.’

  ‘There are no immigrants now, sir. Of any kind.’

  The scrambled voice of the loudspeakers boomed in another part of the airport building, unintelligible. Queston looked down at the glossy orange varnish of the counter; suddenly it seemed very bright, very clean.

  ‘No immigrants?’

  ‘O no sir.’ The man’s face, as he looked up, was smooth and tranquil; his faint smile was condescending. ‘It must be two years now—but then, you’ve been away a long time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Queston said slowly. He glanced round. In the twenty minutes or so he had been standing at the counter, no other passenger had approached. And there had been all those empty seats on the aeroplane. He let the beginnings of uneasiness wash over him.

  Another man appeared, bland and featureless as the first. He muttered, and the first man smiled at Queston, holding out his hand for the form. Queston handed it to him in silence.

  The man looked over it, his lips moving soundlessly as if counting. ‘That’s excellent, Mr Queston, thank you… now there is a room for you at the Copley, booked for a week. I expect you will not be there longer than that.’ He spoke without question, as if it were a certainty. ‘But if you would let us know if you do move elsewhere during that time. And we shall be getting in touch with you during the next three days or so. Only a formality, of course.’

  Some instinct stifled the several reactions of indignation, alarm, ridicule. Queston said curtly: ‘Of course.’

  Deliberately, in all his time in London, he visited no one that he knew. He conducted his business at the bank, bought quantities of books, lived dutifully in the Copley Hotel: where another man in a dark suit, showing credentials of the immigration authorities, came one morning to inspect him, murmured vaguely, and went away.

  That afternoon Queston began his search for the condition of a hermit. The details were still evolving in his head, but he knew very clearly that he was seeking to be alone, completely alone with his work, for a long time. He was amused to find that it seemed far more complicated a business than preparing to go abroad for a number of years. He had never realized how much easier it was to run away.

  He walked up Piccadilly to a great glass showroom and bought himself a car. That was easy, at any rate: easy, at least, to buy a British car. He had wanted a Mercedes, but met a curious evasive reluctance; he settled instead for a black gas-turbine-powered Lagonda saloon. It was an extravagance which gave him immense pleasure; he knew that he would never need speed, and that the car would languish unused for most of its life, but the sleek menace of it seemed to him a symbol of his own deliberate rootlessness. Nothing could hold him down; the car was his antidote against the ideas which must close over his head now if he was to force them into a book.

  ‘She’s a beauty, sir,’ the salesman said. He stroked the Lagonda surreptitiously, as if reluctant to see it disappear.

  The car would be delivered at his hotel in three days’ time. Queston wrote out a remarkable cheque and was bowed reverently into the street. He walked up to Piccadilly Circus, looking about him properly for the first time since he had arrived.

  The square-built blocks and overhead pedestrian ways of the Circus had been barely finished beneath a bristle of scaffolding when he had last been there. Now there was no scaffolding, and already the white facias and the one looming neon-spangled wall had a dingy, second-hand look. Outside the Tower Hotel he paused, his attention caught by a scarlet hoarding lettered in neat roman type. ‘Piccadilly Tower: adults 50c., children 25c. Public lift to a panorama of London’s skyline.’

  He went up, in a lift buzzing with twenty sticky children and two harassed nuns. At the top, a uniformed guide began his mechanical chatter on the open, steel-fenced platform; the wind eddied round, unexpectedly chill. Queston moved away from the clustering children without attempting to listen; hearing only the wind moaning through the fence, he looked down at London.

  He looked for a long time. The whole skyline seemed unfamiliar. After a few moments he managed to pick out Nelson’s Column, the Old Bailey, St Paul’s; and beyond them the Monument and the Barbican. But all around, in white sprouting groups of three and four, he saw tall intrusi
ve blocks that had not been there before. One grew from Covent Garden, several beside the river, many more in the area that must, he thought, be the City. He stared, puzzled, then turned back. The guide had paused, and was standing wary and paternal as the children pressed round him against the fence. He was a short, square, elderly man; Queston tried not to smile as he noticed the enigmatic word m.o.p. neatly embossed in gold on the peaked cap.

  ‘What are those towers all over the place?’

  The guide looked at him reproachfully. ‘You wasn’t listening to me, was you? ’ He had eyebrows of white wire; the long upcurving hairs at their corners beat time gently as he spoke.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. Sorry.’

  ‘Well now,’ the guide paused deliberately, exacting proper penitence. ‘If you had of been listening to me, you’d have heard me say they was the true new heart of London.’ He produced the words with a flourish, as if expecting applause. Queston waved a hand impatiently.

  ‘Well, but what are they? Offices, I suppose.’

  ‘Offices! ’ The man looked shocked. ‘No—they’re homes.’

  ‘Flats, you mean? All of them?’

  ‘Every one.’ He looked at Queston pityingly, with a hint of suspicion. ‘You a foreigner, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then. Those blocks, they’re the London Plan. You know.’

  ‘What plan?’

  ‘Struth—’ the guide said in disbelief. ‘Well. All them flats, see, they’re full of London families. Thousands of them. Real London families, born and bred. You’re not a Londoner, now, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. You couldn’t live in one of them, see. The Ministry put them up special. Been going on for years now, it has, the Plan. Funny you not knowing about it. That beats all, that does.’ The suspicion increased; the eyebrows twitched like antennae.

  Queston said hastily: ‘I haven’t been to London for some time. Amazing how out of touch one can get.’ He clucked his tongue sycophantically, an amazed bumpkin. ‘Really, I had no idea all this was going on.’