The Changes Trilogy (42 page)

“He always goes like that,” said Sally. “We never knew when to wake him.”

In the streets the humps of the cobbles were already dry, and the lines of water between them shone in the early evening light. The cafe proprietor on the far side of the basin was pulling down a blue and red striped awning with
CINZANO
written on it.

The General was using the telephone, forcing his fierce personality along the wires to bully disbelieving clerks at the far end. At last he seemed to get the man he wanted, changed his tone and listened for a full two minutes. Then he barked “Merci bien” and put the receiver down. He turned and stared at the children.

“Vous ne parlez pas français?” he said.

“Un peu,” said Geoffrey, “mais …” The language ran into the sand.

“And I too the English,” said the General. “How they did teach us badly! Monsieur Pallieu will speak, and I will essay to comprehend.”

“The General,” said M. Pallieu, “has been speaking to the meteorological office at Paris. We wished to know whether this break in the clouds was just coincidence. After all, you might have felt a change coming, and risked it. But, apparently, he is satisfied that you, Mr. Tinker, did the trick yourself. Now, you must understand that the only phenomenon we have actually been able to observe over England during the last five years has been the weather. Most Western powers—France, America, Russia, Germany—have sent agents in to your island, but very few have returned. Some, we think, were killed, and some simply decided to stay: ‘went native,' you might say. Those who did return brought no useful information, except that the island was now fragmented into a series of rural communities, united by a common hostility to machines of any sort, and by a tendency to try to return to the modes of living and thought that characterized the Dark Ages. The agents themselves say that they felt similar urges, and were tempted to stay too.

“Of course, at first we tried to send airplanes over, but the pilots, without exception, lost confidence in their ability to fly their machines before they were across the coast. Some managed to turn back but most crashed. Then we tried with pilotless planes; these penetrated further, but were met before long with freak weather conditions of such ferocity that they were broken into fragments.

“Despite these warnings, a number of English exiles formed a small army, backed financially by unscrupulous interests, and attempted an invasion. They said that the whole thing was a Communist plot, and that the people of England would rally to the banner of freedom. Of the three thousand who left, seven returned in two stolen boats. They told a story of mystery and horror, of ammunition that exploded without cause, of strange monsters in the woods, of fierce battles between troops who were all parts of the same unit, of a hundred men charging spontaneously over a cliff, and so on. Since then we have left England alone.

“Except for the spy satellites, though even these are to some extent affected by the British phenomenon. They send us very poor pictures, with no detail, but at least we can see the weather pattern. This is very strange. For centuries, the English climate has been an international joke, but now you have perfect weather—endless fine summers, with rain precisely when the crops need it; deep snow every Christmas, followed by iron frosts which break up into early, balmy springs; and then the pattern is repeated. But the pattern itself is freckled with sudden patches of freak weather. There was, for instance, a small thunder area which stayed centered over Norwich for three whole weeks last autumn, while the rest of the country enjoyed ideal harvest weather. There are some extraordinary cloud formations on the Welsh border, and up in Northumberland. But anywhere may break out into a fog, or a storm, or a patch of sun, against all meteorological probability, in just the way you brought the sun to us now.

“So you are doubly interesting to us, Mr. Tinker. First, because you explain the English weather pattern. And secondly, because you appear to be genuinely immune to the machine phobia which affects anyone who sets foot in England. You seem to be the first convincing case in the twenty million people who have left England.”

“Twenty million!” said Geoffrey. “How did they all get out?”

“The hour brings forth the man,” said M. Pallieu, “especially if there is money involved. All one summer the steamers lay off the coast, on the invisible border where the effect begins to manifest itself, and the sailing boats plied out to them. Most had given all they possessed to leave. They came by the hundred thousand. I had twelve men working under me in Morlaix alone, and in Calais they had three whole office buildings devoted to coping with the torrent of refugees. That is what you English were, refugees. When I was your age, Mr. Tinker, I saw the refugees fleeing west before Hitler's armies, carrying bedding, babies and parrots, wheeling their suitcases in barrows and prams, a weeping, defeated people. That is how they came to us, five years ago.

“And nobody knows how many have died. There can, one imagines, be no real medicine. Plague must have ravaged the cities. We know from the satellites that London and Glasgow burned for weeks. And still we do not know what has caused this thing.”

“Why does it matter so much to you?” asked Geoffrey. It was the General who answered.

“If this can arrive to England,” he said, “it can arrive to France. And to Russia. And to America. Your country has a disease, boy. First we isolate, then we investigate. It is not for England we work, but for Europe, for the world, for France.”

“Well,” said Geoffrey, “I'll tell you everything I can, but it isn't much because I've lost my memory. And so will Sal, but I honestly don't think she knows much about what happens outside Weymouth. Really what I'd like to do is go back, if you'll help me, and try and find out—not for France or the world or anything, but just to know.” (And for Uncle Jacob: and he wasn't going to tell them about Radnor, if he could help it.)

“Can I come too?” said Sally.

“No,” said Geoffrey and M. Pallieu together.

“Yes, she must go,” said the General.

“I don't think I like it here,” said Sally. “I think those things are horrible.”

She pointed out of the window at a Renault squealing ecstatically around a right-angled bend at sixty mph and accelerating away across the bridge, watched by a benign gendarme.

“You would soon be accustomed to them,” said M. Pallieu.

“You'd better stay, Sal,” said Geoffrey. “Honestly, England sounds much more dangerous. Nobody is going to drown you here, just for drawing pictures.”

The General grunted and looked at Sally.

“You are right, mamselle, you must go,” he said. “Your brother has no memory of what arrives in England today. He must have a guide, and you are the only possible. Michel, it is necessary.” He spoke firmly in French to. M. Pallieu, and Geoffrey, used now to the sound of the language, grasped that he was saying that the children had not much to tell, but might possibly find out more than previous agents. Then he turned to Geoffrey.

“Young man, with your powers you have weapons that are stronger, in the conditions, than the antitank gun. If we send you to England, what will you do? You cannot explore a whole island, two hundred thousand square miles.”

“I think I'd go and explore the freak weather centers,” said Geoffrey. “That one on the Welsh borders sounds interesting.”

“Why?” The General pounced on him, overbore him, wore him down with stares and grunts. In the end it seemed simplest to tell them about Uncle Jacob's message, and the gossip about the Radnor border.

“Understood,” said the General. “We must direct you to that point. You will find the location and the cause of the disturbance. And when you are returned, you can make us some more French weather. For the five years past we have endured your horrible English weather. The rain must go somewhere, is it not, Michel?”

He laughed, a harsh yapping noise, as if he were not used to the exercise.

“Yes, General,” said M. Pallieu sadly.

Chapter 4

BACK

A fortnight later, in a warm dusk, they were lounging up the Solent under the wings of a mild wind from the southwest, passengers only, on a beautiful thirty-foot ketch skippered by Mr. Raison, a solemn fat furniture designer who'd been one of the first to leave England. The General had chosen him, hauled him all the way up from Nice, because he had once kept a yacht on Beaulieu River, with his own smart teak bungalow by the shore. He had spent every weekend of his English life sailing devotedly on those waters, until he could smell his way home in a pitch-black gale.

The crew was English too. They were brothers called Basil and Arthur. Six years before they had lived near Bournemouth, fishermen in the off season, but making most of their livelihood out of trips for tourists in the delicious summer months. Now they owned a small garage in Brest, which the General had threatened to close down unless they joined the adventure—but Geoffrey, knowing them now, realized they would have come of their own accord if they had been asked in the right way.

The ketch belonged to an angry millionaire, who hadn't been willing to lend it until he received a personal telephone call from the President of France. (His wife had put on her tiara to listen to the call on an extension.) It was the best boat anyone knew of which did not have an engine. The point was that they still knew absurdly little about the reaction of England to machines. Would the people sense the presence of a strange engine, even if it wasn't running? Would the weather gather its forces to drive them back? Sally thought not, but it wasn't worth the risk.

They were going to have to rely on an engine in the end. This was the upshot of the second lot of arguments in Morlaix. (The first had been about whether Sally should come at all, Geoffrey and M. Pallieu versus Sally and the General. Sally's side had won hands down, partly because Sally really was the only one who knew what she was talking about, and partly because the General had enough willpower to beat down three Geoffreys and twenty M. Pallieus.) The problem had been how the children should move the hundred and fifty miles across England to the Welsh borders. Should they walk, and risk constant discovery in a countryside where every village (Sally said) regarded all strangers as enemies? Obviously not, if they could help it.

At first they'd assumed that any mechanical means were out of the question, and the General had scoured the country for strong but docile ponies. But the riding lessons had been a disaster: Sally was teachable, but Geoffrey was not. Five minutes astride the most manageable animal in northern France left him sore, sulky and irresponsible. They persevered for five days, at the end of which it was clear that he would never make a long journey in that fashion, though he could now actually stay in the saddle for perhaps half an hour at a time. But he obviously didn't belong there. The most dimwitted peasant in England would be bound to stare and ask questions.

It was M. Pallieu who came up with the mad, practical idea. He pointed out that the engine of
Quern
had worked, at least. This implied that the English effect was dormant in the case of engines which had been in England all along, without running. England had got used to their presence. Would not the best thing be to find a car which had been abandoned in England and was still in working condition?

“Impossible,” barked the General.

But no, argued M. Pallieu. It happened that his friend M. Salvadori, with whom he played belotte in the evenings, was a fanatic for early motorcars. Fanatics are fanatics; whatever their subject, stamps, football, trains—they know all there is to know about it. And M. Salvadori had talked constantly of this fabulous lost treasure store, not two hundred kilometers away over the water, at Beaulieu Abbey: the Montagu Motor Museum.

When the Changes came, Lord Montagu had been among the exiles; but before he left he had “cocooned” every car in his beloved museum, spraying them with plastic foam to preserve them from corrosion. (Navies do the same with ships they don't need.) Could they not take a car from the museum? They could choose a route that avoided towns and villages. They would come so fast that nobody would be ready to bar their way and they would outrun any pursuit. They might meet casual obstacles, but some of the great old cars were built almost like tanks, enormously simple and robust. They could be further strengthened.… M. Salvadori suggested the famous 1909 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost.

The General had sat quite still for nearly two minutes. Then he had spent two hours telephoning. Next morning a marvelous old chariot trundled into Morlaix, with a very military-looking gentleman sitting bolt upright and absurdly high behind its steering wheel, and all the urchins cheering. So Geoffrey had his first driving lessons on that queen of all cars, the Silver Ghost, taught by a man to whom driving was a formal art and not (as it is to most of us) a perfunctory achievement.

It had not been easy. In 1909 the man who drove had to be at least as clever as his car. Nowadays they built for idiots, and most cars, even the cheap ones, have to be a good deal cleverer than some of their owners. So Geoffrey, sweaty with shame, groaned and blushed as he crashed those noble gears with the huge, long-reaching lever, or stalled the impeccable, patient engine. But he improved quite quickly. Indeed, before the messenger sent by the General to Lord Montagu in Corfu returned, the military-looking gentleman went so far as to tell him that he had a certain knack with motors. The messenger had brought back sketch plans of the abbey and the museum, and, best of all, keys.

So now here they were, heading up the estuary through the silken dusk, with fifty gallons of petrol in the cabin, a wheelbarrow on deck, together with two big canisters of decocooning fluid, spare tires, two batteries, a bag of tools, cartons of sustaining food, bedding, and so on. Beside them lay the “ram,” a device like a cowcatcher to be bolted on to the front of the Rolls—Basil and Arthur had welded it together in their garage, because Sally had said they might need it. But an even more curious item, perhaps, was Sally's pouch of horse bait, in case the Rolls was a flop and they had to trudge into the New Forest and steal ponies after all. The General had dug up a professional horse thief, a gypsy. He had been very old and smelly, and had smiled yellowly all the time, but he'd pulled out of pocket after pocket little orange cubes that smelt like celestial hay. He had whined horribly at the General for more money, but when he realized that he'd been given as much as he was going to get he had changed his personality completely, becoming easy and solemn, and had said that Sally was born to great good fortune.