Snow White and the Giants (24 page)

"Goodby, Val," said Miranda.
She turned away. She didn't speak to Dina.
I think at the last she was afraid, more afraid than she had ever been
before, that something would happen to wrest success from her grasp.
She had never really expected success, not with Greg a member of the
party. Now she was a big winner, dazed, with the ticket in her hand,
waiting for the result of an objection.
I looked down at Greg thoughtfully. Though he had never done a thing to
endear himself to me, I found myself rather sorry for him. I said so.
"He'll have psychiatric treatment," Miranda said. "Before, he'd have
refused it. Now he can't."
"You think he'll adjust?"
"Why not? He's only fourteen."
I blinked. I had never directly asked how old the giants were. I knew
Miranda was thirty, but she was their teacher.
"And the others?" I said. "You said Greg was in a younger class,
didn't you?"
"No. I said he was in a lower class. He's not very bright, you know. The
others are . . . they're twelve." She had not looked at me since she
said goodby.
And that was how I left her -- terrified to speak to me again, to meet
my eyes, in case I should say or do something that would bring everything
tumbling about her ears.
She even forgot to tell me to bury the suits afterwards.
Dina and I made our way back through the dying fire. Trinity Hall was not
easy to find: there was no pile of charred skeletons there any more. But
we found it. I was satisfied.
We went past the castle and the dump. It was still pretty dark. Clear
of the fire we took off our suits and buried them iu a piece of dirty
sacking I found in the dump, beyond the fire area.
Knowing something of the progress of the fire, the giants had chosen a
quite perfect base for their doorway in time, the copse, and an equally
perfect route to it. Even now, when there must be thousands of people
round the ashpit that was Shuteley, we were able to walk out of the town
and along the river to the copse without being seen . . . the only roads
or tracks were
from
the town, and they petered out at the dump and at
Castle Hill. We did see a small party of men in blue suits examining the
blockage of the river, but we were easily able to keep out of their sight.
So they were all little giants of twelve, I thought. Well, it wasn't
really astonishing. Already in 1966 girls were developing at eleven
instead of fourteen or fifteen, and at twelve they could be five feet six,
150 pounds and 39-24-37. Boys were slower, but that was coming too.
Dina didn't talk, and I was glad. I'd been bludgeoned physically and
mentally for forty hours or so, I'd killed a couple of people and been
killed once myself. I'd been shaken figuratively until my teeth rattled.
I had felt too much or too little in the last forty hours. I hadn't been
a hero, I hadn't been a villain. I hadn't been very clever and I hadn't
been very stupid.
But I was, I hoped and believed, ending up rather better than I had
started. I was far more the master of my fate.
We took the route along the bank that the giants must have taken. But
there was no longer a bridge, and the boat was on the other side.
"We'll have to swim," I said.
Dina started taking off her clothes.
"No," I said. "We don't want to leave anything here."
"I didn't mean to leave my clothes. I'll carry them."
"Just swim across as you are, Dina," I said wearily.
She paid no attention. She took off her blouse, skirt, nylons and shoes
and folded them into a neat bundle which she held clear of the water as
she slipped into the river.
In my exhausted state I came very close to an angry outburst, but managed
to check it. This was the new Dina. She used to do exactly as I told
her. Now I'd have to get used to her thinking for herself.
I had a bundle, too, the fire-suits.
I should have buried them that night. I should have done a lot of other
things too.
I didn't do any of them. I simply took off my pants, dried myself and
went to bed, not even bothering to find out what, if anything, Dina was
doing, not thinking about Sheila beyond taking note that she hadn't been
back at the house.
An arm shook me firmly, insistently. I opened my eyes reluctantly.
It was 10:30 on the bedside dock.
Sitting on my bed was a large, middie-aged man I didn't know. Yet his
face wasn't entirely unfamiliar.
"Mr. Mathers," he said, "I'm Chief Constable Wilson.
Sorry to disturb you like this, but it's important."
"Sheila?" I exclaimed, sitting up quickly.
"Your wife is quite all right, Mr. Mathers. Doing a grand job, in fact.
And I've seen your sister. She didn't want to let me in, but I persuaded
her."
I swung my legs out of bed.
My nakedness in some other summer might have slightly surprised Wilson. As
it was, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
I put on a dressing-gown. "What do you want?" I asked bluntly.
"Forgive the intrusion," he said. "There isn't time to do things the
usual way -- "
"Never mind that," I said. "What do you want?"
"I'm just getting the picture, Mr. Mathers. You know about the fire,
of course?"
"Yes."
He pantomimed surprise, and I thought: This man knows something.
"You did?" he said. "You might have slept right through it, out here. I've
seen one or two fire service people, the police, of course, some of the
people who escaped . . . "
"And now you're seeing me."
"Yes. You haven't been in touch with your company yet, have you?"
"No."
He didn't say anything about the fire being tragic, fantastic, incredible
-- these things were said in the first few minutes and then the situation
was taken for granted.
"Well, first . . . I gather you were out of town at a roadhouse when the
fire began. You returned and found some firemen at the New Bridge. You
gave them some advice -- good advice, I believe -- and then your wife did
some very useful work with homeless people. After that you disappeared
for the rest of the night. What happened, Mr. Mathers?"
Without warning I was faced with a choice I hadn't foreseen.
All through I had believed Miranda, on the whole.
And now I faced the beginning of a situation which might mean ruin for
Sheila and me and our children. Miranda said it did. I was going to be
blamed for everything. My kids were going to grow up wanting to pretend
I wasn't their father.
I'd saved two hundred people at the Trinity Hall, but nobody knew I had
saved them.
Chief Constable Wilson was not here to cast the first stone. He was
simply, as he said, getting a first impression of what had happened. He
had heard what happened at the New Bridge, and perhaps that was all he
had heard. He might easily have called on me merely because I had shown
some presence of mind, had given Sheila a useful job to do, and had then
gone off on my own, possibly with a purpose . . .
But this was the start.
I did not, however, have to let things simply take their course.
I could take events by the scruff of the neck. If I did, it might mean
ruin for Miranda's world. Her river of time might be blasted into an
entirely different course. It might not be the best thing for me either.
Nevertheless . . .
I opened a cupboard and took out the fire-suits. "Ever seen anything
like these before?" I asked.
The die was cast. After I showed Chief Constable Wilson the fire-suits,
I couldn't have retreated if I'd wanted to. Certainly they were not
impressive to look at, though the baffling way they adjusted to any human
body and the still more baffling way in which they sealed and unsealed
themselves without buttons or zips or adhesive would make anyone sit up
and take notice. But sooner or later somebody would have tested them in
a fire, and then a bigger fire, and would finally have discovered that
in such suits, people could walk through a furnace.
I didn't want to draw back. Neither did I make any effort to advance.
In the next few hectic hours I talked to a lot of people, of increasing
importance -- and I started with the chief constable of the county. I
didn't see Sheila or Dina. Too many people wanted to ask me questions.
I told them about Maggie Hobson, and was the first to tell them she
was dead. (It took days, of course, before even a preliminary casualty
list could be drawn up.) I wasn't really shifting blame from me to her;
I was telling them what they were going to decide for themselves.
I told them a few more things about the fire, things I could not possibly
have known in any way they considered "rational." I did not admit,
nor did I deny, that I had been in Shuteley while the blaze was at its
height. They could hardly make me tell them anything they refused to
believe . . .
About Miranda and the giants I preserved a reticence
which ensured that the most improbable facts were reluctantly accepted instead of rejected out of hand. I told
them nothing; I admitted a few things under pressure.
But I did claim credit for Trinity Hall. I told them how the alarm was
given, and hinted . . .
And before I saw Sheila, in the evening of the day after the Great Fire
of Shuteley, I knew that I'd made the right choice -- for us.
You can't make a scapegoat of a man who knows more of the facts than anyone
else. A man who knows things and you can't figure out how he could possibly
know them. A man who knows more than he will tell, unless you've worked out
three-quarters of the answer first.
Yes, for us I'd made the right choice. And perhaps for Shuteley, for
my world. The knowledge, the unwilling certainty, that there had been
something supernatural about the fire made the whole thing easier to bear,
to accept. For those who had lost people they loved, too, there was hope.
They might still be alive, somewhere.
But had I done the right thing for Snow White and the giants? Had they all
ceased to exist -- or had they found the Gift back among them, worse than
ever before? Had I dropped a biliion hydrogen bombs on the world of 2097?
Well, my attitude proved that I'd been doing Miranda and the giants an
injustice all along in finding them inhuman about
our
world.
About
their
world, I couldn't care less.
[back cover blurb]
SHE WAS
THE FAIREST
IN THE LAND
NO MATTER WHERE
SHE CAME FROM -- OR WHEN!
VAL CALLED HER SNOW WHITE
BECAUSE OF HER GLOWING PALE SKIN
AND HER BLUE-BLACK HAIR.
BUT HER FRIENDS FRIGHTENED HIM.
THEY WERE TOO PERFECT
TO BE QUITE HUMAN.
THEY WERE TOO CALM, TOO DETACHED.
WHEN HE DISCOVERED
THEIR POWERS, AND THE USES
TO WHICH THEY MEANT TO PUT THEM,
VAL KNEW THE MOST AWFUL
OF HIS FEARS HAD BEEN
MORE THAN JUSTIFIED!