Manalone (14 page)

‘Police states don’t exist without a reason. Somebody must think they’ve got a lot to gain … or fear they’ve a lot to lose … in order to make it worth all the suffering and bother. What was the phrase the officer used? “We’re running short of tomorrows.” Short of whose tomorrows, Manalone? The Masterthinkers’ – or the whole damn human race?’

By this time Manalone had regained the road, turning frequently to see if he was being followed. He could find no evidence of any interest in his movements. The guard had remained at his post, and the officer had returned and driven his vehicle into the compound. This anticlimactic dismissal, coupled with the curious reasons given for his release, only heightened the sense of unreality.

‘You seem to be part of a game, Manalone. Harried yet untouchable. A pawn in some monstrous parody of chess – with tomorrow as the prize and no tomorrow for the losers.’

Reaching home, he went straight to his filing cabinet and took out the ceramic fragment for which the history professor had paid so dearly. He laid it on the table and looked at it moodily for an hour, turning it through every conceivable angle, willing it to tell him something constructive.

The effort was abortive. Even with the image of Oman’s pain as a spur to his imagination, it remained for him what it had always been – a very cheap teapot handle.

His deliberations were disturbed by a vidiphone call. He answered it, to find that the transmitting lens had been obscured by a piece of cloth and he could therefore not see the caller.

‘Manalone – don’t speak, listen.’ The voice, though suffering electronic distortion, was plainly Kitten’s huskiness. The voice was urgent and imperative.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Can you come
down here fast? Paul hid something and I’ve found where he put it. It might be of interest, but you’ll have to hurry. Time’s getting short.’

‘Short in what way?’ asked Manalone, but the call had already been disconnected. There had been no time to protest that the raft at night was no place for an uninitiate like himself. Remembering his condition on returning from his last trip to the raft, he could muster no enthusiasm for the proposal. However, he desperately needed further information, and he was unlikely to get many such offers of assistance.

‘But the pace of events seems to be hotting up. Is this coincidence, or could it be that some sort of crisis is building? Just for the hell of it, it’ll be interesting to see exactly what it is that snaps. Will momentum disappear … gravity run awry … or shall we see the cataclysmic disintegration of teapots?’

Sandra had not returned home from whatever joy-ride had occupied her for the day. The breakfast things were still on the table where he had left them. He suspected she was enmeshed in some more than casual love affair. Once, the idea would have driven him to distraction. Now he could view the signs with equanimity. He had more important things on his mind than worrying about a fickle pet.

He thought of leaving Sandra a note, then dismissed the notion. It would have been unwise to write his true destination – that he was going at night to visit Kitten on the raft – because this would have been open to immediate misinterpretation. Nor was there any point in penning a lie. He dropped the breakfast things into the dishwasher, called for an autram, and sat and pondered about teapot handles until the vehicle arrived.

The last time he had seen the raft from the shore at night had been just after he and Paul Raper had made their unorthodox exit from Cain’s Club. The raft had then appeared to him mystic and alien – a place beyond imagination. From his more recent experience, Manalone found that a readier appreciation of the realities of life on the raft had spoilt the romantic side of his imagination. Certainly anything
could
happen on the raft – but it was axiomatic that roughly ninety-nine percent of the happenings would be bad. The remaining two percent would be merely expensive.

Surprisingly, he
was neither accosted nor molested as he made his way to Kitten’s shack. By some magic of raft-communication she appeared to know he was coming, and was waiting for him at the threshold.

‘What’s all the hurry?’ asked Manalone, as the door was closed.

‘MIPS. They came here earlier today and searched the place. They found nothing, because there was nothing for them to find. But I don’t think they were satisfied. I think they’ll be back with more men to tear the place apart.’

‘Yet you do have something?’

‘Paul used to use one of the drums under the deck out there as a sort of cache. He hadn’t used it for some time, and I didn’t think there was anything still in it. But after the MIPS had gone I went out and had a look.’

‘What did you find?’

‘It’s over there, Manalone. A big old book. If you want it, take it away with you. Otherwise I’ll drop it into the sea. I don’t know what the MIPS were looking for, but I’d prefer they didn’t find it here.’

This conversation had taken place in the dark space just inside the door. Farther in the room a tiny oil lamp shed its feeble light around the interior and reflected from the white and shining faces of the two children whose heads poked anxiously around the edge of their curtain. As Manalone passed towards the light to find the book he looked back towards Kitten, and stopped and drew her by the wrist to where he could see her better. One side of her face was swollen with a startling bruise.

‘Did the MIPS do that to you?’

‘Sure as hell I didn’t do it myself. That’s Colonel Shears for you. Ever the gentleman. Always uses his hands on a woman rather than his boots. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies.’

‘This is diabolical! They’ve shot Paul, and tortured another acquaintance of mine to death. Now they’ve started on you. Has the whole world gone insane, or are these things somehow connected with me?’

‘The MIPS are asking plenty of questions about you, Manalone. You seem important to them – but I sense they’re somehow afraid of you. I think things are happening to other people because they daren’t touch you direct.’

‘Then I’ll take note to stay away from my friends and hang around my enemies,’ said Manalone morosely. ‘But I wish to God I knew what this was all about.’

His attention was
arrested by the sight of the book, which he saw now for the first time. It was old and yellowed and appeared to be a special library volume, to judge from its size and the weight of the paper. Manalone flipped the pages over anxiously, hoping for some blinding revelation, but if revelation was there it was not discernible in the dim light of the small oil flame.

It was a book of sketches, the work of a long-forgotten artist way back in the leisurely 1970s. With true artistic licence the figures were drawn over-large, emphasizing the characters and playing down the background. Superficially it was of historical and artistic interest only, yet Manalone was convinced that a study of its fading pages would provide a clue to what he was seeking. Here was an innocent record of the past, unedited by the hands of the Ministry of Information and Public Security. It was a subjective eyewitness account of the period of time roughly contemporary with the unreal old film. Was it also an unreal old book – or would its pages answer the question as to why it was necessary for the past to be destroyed?

‘Kitten, you’re a
genius. This might be just the thing I’ve been looking for.’

‘Then take it away, Manalone. If Colonel Shears comes back and finds it here, there could well be a couple of children needing a new mumma.’

‘I appreciate the risk. I’ll go immediately. Thanks again!’

He moved towards the door, but as he neared it, it was shaken by a heavy blow on the outside.

‘Open up! This is the police.’

Kitten uttered a small cry and flew to comfort her children. Manalone stood in front of the door, the book under his arm, and wondered precisely what he ought to do. His mildly noble thoughts of dashing out with the book and drawing police attention away from Kitten seemed unlikely to succeed. With his sort of luck he would be stopped on the threshold with the book still in his hands. He therefore perched the volume precariously on one of the roof-support struts in the darkness over the door, and released the doorcatch.

Three men entered. The police militiamen wore the insignia of the local police garrison. Their function was obviously to provide assistance and protection for the third man – a shrewd-eyed person in civilian clothing whose manner and bearing proclaimed him to be a person of considerable significance.

‘
Again that concept of significance, Manalone. Like so many other things, you can’t define it, yet you can recognize it when you see it.’

The third man turned on Manalone with obvious delight. ‘What have we here? This is better than I expected!’ He waved a cased credential in Manalone’s general direction. Unexpectedly, Manalone took it away from him and went over to the small lamp to read.

Colonel
Brian P. Shears

Superintendent of Investigations

Ministry of Information and Public Security

‘So you’re the one they call Manalone?’ Shears’ voice was crisp and incisive.

‘I am.’ Now he was faced with the test Manalone felt an icy coolness possess his faculties. His face automatically adopted the impassive pose with which he habitually faced Sandra’s inquisitions.

‘And you’d be the Colonel Shears who hits defenceless women?’

The senior MIPS man glanced briefly towards Kitten, and there was a trace of amusement in his face. ‘Is that what she told you? Sit down, Manalone, I’ve been waiting for a session with you.’

Manalone looked at the home-made chair dubiously, then sat himself on the bed.

‘Is there some way I can help you, Colonel?’

‘You knew the late Paul Raper?’

‘I did.’

‘How well?’

‘Well enough to ghost many of the science articles which were published under his name.’

Shears nodded comprehendingly. ‘Ah! I thought that was how it was done.’

‘Paul’s dead,’ said Manalone. ‘So perhaps you’d tell me what this is all about.’

‘Certainly. As an accredited technical journalist, Raper was in a position to pick up information, some of which, for reasons of national security, couldn’t be released by the press censor.’

‘So?’

‘I think it probable that you, being his collaborator, may have received certain classified items which should never have come into your possession.’

Manalone felt his fists tighten involuntarily. ‘Information I received, yes – but unless it had been so marked I’ve no way of telling what was or was not classified. Anyway, since Paul’s column was our only publishing outlet, the censor always had the last word. So I don’t see how any breach of security could be involved.’

Manalone
was choosing his words carefully. He sensed that Shears was not particularly interested in the general pattern of the Manalone-Raper literary output. He was interested in something else.

‘Then Raper didn’t discuss security ratings with you?’

‘No.’ Manalone began to see the outlines of a shadowy web in the trend of the conversation. He decided that an attitude of assumed ignorance would be his best line of defence. ‘You can take it from me that no security-rated information was ever imparted to me by Paul Raper.’

Shears’ eyes narrowed. ‘A sweeping statement, Manalone, since we’ve already established that you’ve no idea what subjects carried a security rating.’

‘True! But my function was mainly one of verification. Firstly I never came across anything I couldn’t verify from public sources. Secondly, Paul would scarcely have asked me to verify something he knew he couldn’t publish.’

Shears nodded but without particular conviction. His gimlet eyes revealed the suspicion of a depth of knowledge and conspiracy more intense than Manalone was prepared to admit.

Manalone decided to press his attack. ‘If you could be specific, Colonel. I can soon tell you whether or not I’ve handled work on a particular subject.’

He was playing with Shears, and the MIPS man could see it, even if his police companions could not. Shears dared not be too specific lest he revealed the nature of what he was trying to keep concealed. Incredibly, Manalone was trying to draw the information he needed out of his inquisitor. Somewhere at the back of his mind a small voice marvelled at his audacity, yet warned:

‘Watch it, Manalone! You’re a rank amateur at this game. You’ve no chance at all against a professional.’

Shears’ slight smile seemed to acknowledge the validity of Manalone’s tactic. ‘Very well! Only hours before he died, Paul Raper typed a two-page list of high-security subject headings. He left duplicate copies in his own file, but the originals have never been found. I suggest he gave them to you.’

Only with difficulty did Manalone retain his equilibrium.

‘Fantastic,
Manalone! That sounds like the pop-technology eco-crisis list you took from Paul. Hell, if Shears regards that as a high-security list then he’s got a better imagination than you have! Especially with all the original copies on public file … Yet Paul probably died because of that list … in the same way that Oman died for a teapot handle.’
Inside Manalone something churned alarmingly.

Shears was watching him closely. Manalone made a pretence of consulting his calendar wrist-chronometer, then looked Shears straight in the eyes.

‘I’m afraid Paul couldn’t possibly have given me that list, Colonel. He never reached Bognor on the night he died. He was killed in a crash on the way.’

For the first time, one of the policemen broke his silence. ‘That’s right, Colonel. Raper crashed his car about ten kilometres north of here. He met an express truck and was killed instantly.’

Shears ignored the interruption. Manalone had the distinct impression that the MIPS colonel found his escort more of an embarrassment than an asset.

‘I repeat, Manalone, that I think he gave that list to you. If he did I suggest you surrender it immediately.’

‘How would I come by it?’ asked Manalone. ‘At a séance, perhaps?’