Switchers (9 page)

‘You hasn’t any manners to mind!’ shouted Lizzie.

‘Listen who’s talking!’ yelled Kevin, and he stormed out. Tess made to follow him, but in the dim hallway of the little cottage she hesitated and stopped. She could hear the old woman muttering to her cats, and she crept back and stood beside the hall door, where she could hear but couldn’t be seen.

‘They’s all the same, Tibsy,’ Lizzie was saying. ‘They’s all the same, isn’t they, Moppet?’

Tess heard the springs of Lizzie’s chair creak as she sank into it. ‘But we’s done it again, hasn’t we? I’s done it again. You gets offended sometimes, doesn’t you? But you forgets. Them people never forgets. They didn’t even let us tell them about the krools, did they? They was in too much of a hurry to get offended and be gone.’ Her voice went quiet and Tess suspected that she was close to tears. ‘Now what’s we going to do?’

Kevin was halfway up the little path before Tess caught up with him. She was very relieved that he hadn’t Switched, because she would have had a lot of difficulty finding a rat, and as for a pigeon or a hawk, it would have been hopeless. The fact that he hadn’t changed meant that there was still a chance.

‘Wait, Kevin,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘I want to talk to you for a minute.’

‘Talk?’ he said. ‘That’s all people ever do. Talk, talk, talk. They talk so much they get on each others’ nerves and what happens then? They have to bloody well talk about it!’

‘Don’t be like that, Kevin.’

‘Why not? What’s the point of all that talking, eh? Now you want to talk about that stupid old woman, and we wouldn’t be here in the first place if it wasn’t for her talking too much.’

‘Will you just listen for a minute?’

Kevin sighed and turned to face her. His eyes were grim and determined, and her heart sank. He could disappear so easily, just vanish from her life into the skies or the underground passages of the city and she would never be able to find him again.

‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘The old woman is like you. She doesn’t understand people either. She doesn’t know how to behave.’

Kevin looked away from her. ‘It just proves my point, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s a waste of time trying to understand people.’ But Tess knew that he was disarmed now.

‘All right, then,’ she said, and then, in Rat: ‘Girl going into her house. Rat crawling into the hollow couch.’

Kevin looked at her again, and she could see that his anger was dissolving.

‘Maybe it will all turn out to be a wild goose chase,’ she said, ‘but we can’t just give up without finding out. We have to hear what she has to say.’

‘It’s one thing hearing what she has to say and another thing understanding it! Where does she get that accent from, anyway?’

‘I don’t know. She’s not from around here, that’s for sure. Maybe she’s from England somewhere?’

‘More like Mars, I’d say. But if you want to hear more of it, go ahead. I’ll wait here.’

‘No. You come with me. Come on. She’s sorry now.’

‘And so she should be.’

Tess looked back towards the house. ‘Do you know something, Kevin?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You care a lot more about people that you think you do.’

‘Oh, do I?’ His voice was full of contempt. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because if you really didn’t care, if you really thought people were so useless, then they couldn’t upset you, could they? Because you’d never expect anything better.’

Kevin didn’t answer, but looked at Tess suspiciously. She began to walk back down the path towards the house and after a while he followed.

A
T THAT MOMENT, IN
the sealed and bug-proofed room in the Pentagon, there was another meeting going on. Many of the same faces were there, but there were one or two changes. Colonel Dunkelburger was absent. And the newly elected President of the USA, Mr Dan Doyle, was there at the head of the table.

The meeting had been in progress for some time and the two tapes had been played by General Snow, and then played again.

‘Maybe those guys in the snowmobile just woke up a polar bear or something?’ said President Doyle.

No one ventured to answer. In the light of what they had just heard, the question seemed to answer itself. After a while, the President said: ‘Well, what are we supposed to think? That there’s some kind of aliens up there or something?’

Again no one answered. Quite a few of those present had already come to the unpleasant conclusion that there was no other explanation.

‘Hey,’ the President went on, ‘all kinds of things happen to guys when they’re out in the snow too long. They get snow blind. They get cabin fever, that kind of thing. Hell, my great grand-uncle Zacchariah was holed up in the mountains for sixteen weeks once with nothing but a pair of wolverines for company. He was never the same again.’

General Wolfe cleared his throat. ‘Er, that’s quite understandable, Mr President.’

‘Sure is,’ said Doyle, brightly.

‘But, the thing is, I guess maybe this isn’t quite the same kind of situation.’

‘No, I’m sure it isn’t. But from what I can see, we got nothing at all to go on except a hell of a lot of snow. These things happen sometimes, you know? Two years ago we had a drought that went on a bit too long, and suddenly everybody was saying that the end of the world was nigh. People were saying the Russians were behind it, and maybe they were. But we didn’t panic. We didn’t go off bang and start losing our heads about it. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I reckon that if the USA can win one Cold War, we can win another.’ He slapped his knee and laughed aloud. One or two of the others tried their best to join him, but failed.

General Wolfe cleared his throat again. ‘That’s very good, sir,’ he said, ‘and there’s no doubt at all that we all have to take that kind of attitude to this, uh, little problem we have out here …’

‘Frankly, sir,’ said General Snow, glancing disdainfully at Wolfe, ‘we feel that this problem may be a bit more serious than that.’

‘You think the Russians are involved?’

‘No, sir. We have no reason to suspect that. In fact, from what we can make out, they’re having a much worse time of it than we are. What I’d like to bring to your attention, if I may, is that these weather conditions are like nothing that’s been seen on earth in recorded history. The satellites are sending us pretty uncanny pictures. Those storms are radiating outwards from the polar circle in something approaching perfect symmetry, and it’s kind of hard to believe that whatever is causing that is a natural phenomenon.’

‘Well, that may be,’ said President Doyle, ‘but I find it harder to believe that it’s an unnatural one. I just can’t go for these alien theories, gentlemen. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s OK, sir,’ said General Snow. ‘No one expects you to. But whatever we all of us personally suspect or believe, we need to decide on what kind of action we’re going to take.’

There was a silence, while everyone followed their own thoughts, and then the President said: ‘Maybe it’s the FCOs.’

‘FCOs, sir?’ said Dunwoody.

‘Yeah. You know. The gas they use in those little spray cans? Pfft. Pfft. Deodorants, that kind of thing. Maybe we should ban them. Would that help, maybe?’

‘Er … that’s CFOs, sir,’ said Dunwoody, ‘and we already banned them.’

‘With all due respect, sir,’ said General Wolfe, ‘I think we have to be prepared to go a little further than stamping out deodorants to get to the heart of this mess.’

‘Right. OK. I see you guys mean business. I like that. That’s the true American spirit. So, what do you want to do? Do you want to throw a few nukes in there to be on the safe side? It’s OK by me if you do. It’d be good for public morale. Show that we’re doing something. Show the rest of the world that America cares.’

‘It’s … that’s a very good idea, Mr President,’ said General Snow, ‘but I think it might be a bit risky.’

‘Risky? Why? There’s nobody up there, is there?’

‘Not as far as we know. But the effects of atomic radiation can be a little unpredictable, as you know. The winds can blow it around the place and into inhabited regions. And besides that, there’s the little problem that nuclear weapons aren’t too popular with the public right now.’

‘OK. Nukes are out, then. How about … let’s see now … how about saturation bombing?’

General Wolfe’s jaw dropped. ‘Saturation bombing of the whole Polar region?’

‘Too big, huh?’

‘Way too big, sir.’

‘Well, how about starting in the middle and work your way outwards? See what happens?’

‘It’s a little beyond our resources, sir,’ said General Wolfe. ‘And as a matter of fact, while we’re on the subject of resources—’

‘You looking for a raise? You got it. I like your attitude to this problem.’

‘Thank-you, sir,’ said Wolfe. ‘Would you mind making a note of that, Mr Dunwoody? But what I was coming round to saying was that General Snow and I have been having some discussions. We feel that in order to get a better understanding of the Arctic situation we’re going to need to get more satellites up there. We also need to get more planes in the air to overfly the area with radar, and we need some pretty damn fast research into anti-stealth detection equipment. We need more planes up above those storms and more planes down in the middle of them, taking pictures with radar and infra-red and every other thing we got at our disposal. We can’t fight this enemy until we find out what it is, sir, and for that we need a bigger budget.’

‘Ah,’ said the President. ‘Well, you know money is kind of tight right now. You’re all aware we’ve got an increasing number of refug—er, visitors from Canada and Alaska staying with us for a while, and it’s looking like there’s going to be a bit of a crisis on the home front if this weather keeps up.’

‘That’s just my point, sir,’ said Wolfe. ‘We need funds to do whatever is necessary to avert that crisis.’

‘Oh, yeah. I see. Well, I guess you guys had better produce some figures.’

General Snow nodded, and Wolfe opened his briefcase.

Lizzie was delighted to see Tess and Kevin back, though she did her best to hide it.

‘Here they are again, pussums,’ she said. ‘You just never knows, does you. Forgot your tea, did you? Never mind, kettle’s nearly boiling.’ She poked it again and it swayed and spat water on to the fire where the drops fizzed and steamed.

‘Find your chairs, find your chairs, they’s still there, no cats back in them yet. Plenty of chairs, the cats hasn’t worn them all out yet, make yourselves comfortable while I makes the tea. Come in, Oedipus, before you gets shut out.’ She closed the hall door firmly behind a black tomcat and leant on it for an instant, smiling at Tess and Kevin as brightly as she could manage. Then she fell into such a frenzy of activity that it made Tess nervous just to look at her.

‘Where’s the milk, eh? Has you had it, Moppet? No, no, that’s yesterday’s milk. Where did I put it now, I wonder? Well, there’s not many places it can be. Oops, kettle’s boiling, let’s just get these tea leaves out into the garden. Does you know that, Tessie?’

‘What?’

‘Tea leaves is good for the garden. Nothing better. Straight out the window on to the grass they goes and the hens scratches them in. Nothing better. I never puts no manure on that grass out there and there’s no greener grass in the country.’

There was nothing Tess hated more than being called Tessie, but she bit her tongue and said nothing.

‘Warm up the teapot, now,’ Lizzie went on. ‘Have to warm the teapot, does you know that, eh? Does you warm the teapot? Takes all the good out of the tea if the teapot isn’t warm. I never gets a decent cup of tea anywhere except in my own house. All these teenagers, see? They never does anything properly. They hasn’t any patience. Not yourselves, of course, yourselves is different. Yourselves has good manners. See how you sits there so quiet and not rude at all. Mind you, I’s still sure they told me you was a rat. Hard to know the difference sometimes. Specially these days. Things was different when I was young. We was moving around, see, always on the go, we was. Here today, gone tomorrow. But the one thing we brought with us wherever we went was our manners.’

Kevin was looking steadfastly down at the floor between his feet.

‘Not that we was gypsies, mind,’ said Lizzie. ‘We never had anything to do with that sort.’ She paused for a moment and looked around, as though not quite sure where she was. Then her pale blue eyes brightened. ‘I suppose that milk is still out in the pantry. Of course it is. It’s cooling down, that’s what it’s doing. Don’t go away now, little Switchers. I’ll be back in a second.’

Tess nudged Kevin’s shoulder. He looked up sternly, then dropped his guard and smiled. Lizzie came back and bumbled around in cupboards for a while, collecting an assortment of chipped cups and odd saucers. At last, after what seemed an age, she handed them each a piping hot cup of tea and sat down in her chair with her own.

Tess took a sip of her tea. It was hideously sweet, but what bothered her more than that was the hair in it that stuck to her tongue. She picked it out as politely as she could. It was short and white and rather thick. Lizzie’s hair was white, too, but it was long and silky and tied in a tight french knot at the back of her head. There was no way this hair belonged to her.

Kevin seemed to approve of the tea. He sat back in his chair and sipped it slowly. ‘Very good,’ he said to Lizzie.

‘Ah!’ she said. ‘You speaks then? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all.’

It was the worst thing she could have said in the circumstances. Kevin scowled and retreated back into sullen silence.

Tess risked another sip of her tea. It tasted better now that the hair was gone, but there was still something about it that was slightly off-putting. ‘I suppose we’d better get down to business,’ she said.

‘Business?’ said Lizzie. ‘What business? I can’t stand business. Never has anything to do with it. All them fields out there is mine, you know, and there’s a track worn to my door with business people coming to try and buy them off me. What does they want with them, says I? I never seen a farmer in a suit like they wears.’ She laughed suddenly, long and loud. ‘I tells them to take their business back where they came from and keep it out of my fields.’