The Cockatrice Boys (24 page)

“Only if she is entirely willing,” the archbishop told him. “And, Dakin, he keeps talking about dolls. Tell her to bring the dolls, if she has them.”

“What dolls? Oh, yes, I remember.”

As Dakin ran away down the corridor he heard Dr. Wren say, “She is a good, courageous child. I think it likely that she will come.”

In the galley Sauna said, “Dolls? But I only have one left. One got burned up. I fell asleep by the fire … and, when I woke … one of them was quite gone … and the other … I just managed to snatch it out—”

She plunged a hand into her pocket and exhibited the tiny singed mannikin in his black hat and blue cravat. “Poor little object—I doubt he's not worth mending.”

“Well, bring him along; if you really don't mind coming, that is,” Dakin told her. “Dr. Wren said, only if you are truly willing—”

“Now, don't you do a single thing you don't want to, dearie,” said Mrs. Churt.

Sauna sighed.

“Oh, yes. I'll come. I feel better now. And I don't think
anything
could be as bad as what I've seen already.”

Dakin felt, as he followed her along the corridor, that she seemed ten years older. He had a lot of catching up to do.

As soon as Tom Flint laid eyes on Sauna, he started to cry and hiccup.

He was lying on a narrow bunk, wrapped in white bandages from neck to knees. The bandages ended below his knees.

He wept and wailed and prayed, his mud-coloured eyes fixed all the time on Sauna.

“Oh, please! Oh, please! I'm in such pain! All over! Burning, blistering pain! You are the only, only one who can help me!”

The archbishop laid a kindly, supporting hand on Sauna's arm as she stepped into the confined space of the cabin. But she gently shook her head and moved forward.

“Why should I help you?” she asked the man in the bunk.

“You escaped, didn't you? You got away? I didn't take you—right—up to—to—the door. You had a chance to get away. Didn't you? And you took it. You did get away. Here you are, now!”

The eyes, like pools of slime, beseeched her.

Sauna said calmly, “You stopped where you did because a tree had fallen. You couldn't get by.”

“Oh, please, oh, please. Don't hold that against me. Perhaps the tree was meant to fall. And you could do such a noble, noble deed. You could save me for ever.”

“I rather doubt if that is the case,” remarked the archbishop dispassionately.

Sauna looked with care into Tom Flint's bony, damp, beseeching face.

A thoughtful pause ensued. Then she said slowly, “Aren't you still hoping to catch me? Isn't this another try for a last-minute bargain with—with Somebody?”

“No!” screamed Flint, looking wildly round him. “No, no, no, no! I swear it! Never! I swear!”

“Swear by what name?” demanded the archbishop in a voice of iron. “By what authority?”

The man on the bed winced and writhed, as if he had been exposed to searing heat.

“Only help me!” he begged Sauna. “It can't do you any harm. And it will deliver me out of torment. Just give me the dolls.” He kept his eyes away from Dr. Wren.

“But only one doll is left,” said Sauna.

She drew it from her pocket—the small, soiled puppet in his black hat, white shirt, and blue cravat. The trousers were torn. The wooden feet were merely charred stumps.

Tom Flint's eyes lit amazingly at sight of it. They glowed. He made a restless movement. But his hands, Dakin saw, were manacled together.

“Free my hands, please, please! I can't run. I can't possibly escape. How could I?”

Wren and Clipspeak looked at one another.

“What do you think, Archbishop?” asked the colonel dubiously.

The archbishop rubbed his chin.

“I must say, it's hard to see what he could achieve.”

“Undo the handcuffs, then, Clinch,” ordered the colonel.

Clinch stepped smartly forward and did so. The hurt man on the bed rubbed his hands slowly together several times. The movement reminded Dakin of a snake he had once seen, rubbing off its shed winter skin.

He felt a sudden sense of alarm and mistrust. He leapt forward.

“Don't let him touch Sauna!”

The man on the bed had reared up, like a cobra about to strike, reaching for Sauna. Dakin pulled her back. She let go of the tiny doll, which fell into Flint's groping, grabbing hands. Instantly there was a blinding flash and a shatteringly loud crack of sound, as if from a chemical explosion. The cabin filled with thick, acrid, white smoke.

“Out of here! Quick!” yelled the colonel. “Get the gal out first.”

They all tumbled into the corridor, coughing, gasping, and blinded.

“Fetch Snark masks,” ordered the colonel.

But by the time the masks were fetched from the quartermaster's store there was no need to put them on. The sour, choking fumes had cleared as rapidly as they came.

From inside the cabin there was no sound at all.

“Mollisk,” said the colonel, after a few moments, “put your mask back on, go in there with your ray-pistol cocked, and see what's up.”

“Yessir.”

Mollisk went in and came back round-eyed, pulling off his mask.

“Sir, Colonel, you'll never believe this—”

“Well, what?” snapped the colonel.

“He ain't there! Only a big lump of summat—”

Impatiently, the colonel pushed Mollisk aside and went in to the cabin himself, closely followed by Dr. Wren, Dakin, and Sauna.

Mollisk was perfectly correct. On the bed lay a large, brownish, greyish, whitish lump of substance, roughly the size and shape of a man.

Dr. Wren tapped this cautiously with the earpiece of his spectacles.

“Stone,” he said quietly. “The man has turned to stone. In fact, to be quite precise, he has turned into a piece of Flint. I think this must be regarded as a diabolical joke. We are left with the substitute. The real essence of the man has gone—who knows where? But, I think we are safe in concluding, nowhere
at all
comfortable.”

“Your doll has gone too,” Dakin said to Sauna.

“I wouldn't have wanted it, not ever again.” Then, turning to Dr. Wren, Sauna said, “Do you know, sir, I once stole that doll?”

“You did my child?” He did not seem in the least surprised.

“Yes! From Woolworth's! When I was six. And my mam was so angry with me, when I came home with it, that she made me go back and tell the lady at the counter what I had done. And, do you know, the lady,
she
wasn't angry—not exactly—but she paid for the doll herself, and the other one as well, and gave them to me. She said having them would remind me never in my whole life to take a thing that wasn't mine.”

“You were luckier than Tom Flint,” said the archbishop sadly.

*   *   *

“But, sir,” Sauna said to the archbishop later, when they happened to be alone together.

“Yes, my child?”

“What has all this been
about?
Who was Auntie Floss,
really?
And Tom Flint? Why did he snatch me? And who was with him? And what did they have to do with the monsters? And what was the book that Auntie Floss kept nagging at me to go and fetch? Why couldn't
she
get it—if she could get all the way from Manchester to Scotland? And what was that awful voice—the one that said ‘unloose the tempest,' the one Tom Flint called Master? Who was
He?
”

Sauna's voice wobbled a little; some memories were still hard to face.

Dr. Wren considered. He said, “You know that always, from the very beginnings of life as we know it, there has been a continual, non-stop conflict between good and evil—the forces that we call good and evil?”

“Has there?” asked Sauna doubtfully.

“Of course there has! The whole universe is balanced between pairs of opposites—good and evil, night and day, up and down, winter and summer. And, on the whole, the state of equilibrium is maintained. But every now and then one side weighs heavier than the other. Things begin to tilt. More often in the direction of
down,
of darkness. Chaos encroaches. It is what we call the Sleep of Reason; society begins to crumble—”

“Wait, sir, wait! Stop! What's the Sleep of Reason?”

“It is what happens when the level of wickedness in several people's minds begins to combine together and forms a force that can, temporarily at least, overcome the forces of honour and good sense and law. What—for instance—caused the hole in the ozone layer? It was greed and stupidity, a rush to make profits before the dangers of new industrial processes had been thoroughly explored. So, what resulted? Monsters found their way in.”

“But—but,—but someone
sent
the monsters—who did that? Why?”

“It was the total sum of all that greed and wickedness in people's minds. We give it a name. We call it Satan, the Prince of Dark. Human beings who surrender totally to this force may become temporarily endowed with
super
human attributes—but only temporarily. Like Mrs. Monsoon, like Tom Flint. It is borrowed power, soon spent.”

“Why did they want that book? Why did they want
me
to fetch it?”

“Every few generations,” said Dr. Wren, “there will be born a human intelligence far in advance of his time. Plato, Galileo, Leonardo. Of this kind was Michael Scott. It is thought he anticipated Einstein, that he had discovered nuclear physics, a parallel universe—and, also, terrible ways in which one human group might wreak havoc on another. Such a book, in the wrong hands, might lead to unutterable devastation. His secrets are safer forgotten, until human society has progressed far enough to be able to use them unselfishly, for the good of the whole universe.”

“But,” said Sauna, still thinking of Aunt Floss, “why couldn't they get the book themselves? If they had all that power?”

“There had to be a human instrument who could understand and serve this purpose. You were the choice of the higher powers—the dark angels—perhaps because you were Michael Scott's descendant. And may have mental abilities of which you are still unaware. Aunt Floss was too old and crazy, Flint too untrustworthy. They were soon discarded. But you were young, with unknown potential.”

Sauna found that she did not wish to think about this suggestion. She said, “Will there always be good and evil, sir?”

“So far as we can hypothesize. But they may be on different levels—ones that we can only guess at.”

Sauna shivered. The prospect of this eternal struggle was daunting and tiring. Uli laid his head on her knee and sighed deeply, and she rubbed his bristly brows.

Dr. Wren looked at her with sympathy. She had, he thought, probably a long, unguessed-at course ahead of her, a hard way, very likely a dangerous one.

“But your Cousin Dakin will help you,” he murmured, half to himself.

“When is King Edward's Day?” Sauna enquired, after a moment or two.

“It is today. On it there is a powerful conjunction of occult planetary forces, when our opponents should have reached their highest peak of strength. From now on their power will dwindle; I think we can hope for a period of peace and quiet.” He smiled. “Until they are ready to make another attack. But by that time we, you and I, may well be in our graves, somebody else will have the job of fighting them off.”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” said Sauna, yawning. “Who was King Edward?”

“An obscure Scandinavian monarch with a talent for astronomy…”

But Sauna had fallen asleep with her head resting on Uli's shaggy brow.

*   *   *

Colonel Clipspeak said to Dakin, “My boy, you did well. Very well. And I am bound to say that Sergeant Bellswinger always spoke highly of your work. I am going to promote you to ensign, with automatic advance to sub-lieutenant at the end of eighteen months.”

“Can I go on playing my drum, sir?”

“Harr—um. Sub-Lieutenants do not usually play drums—”

“I wouldn't want to leave off doing that, sir.”

“Well—well—if we are stationed in London you may go to regimental music school. Now, can you send Miss Sauna to me?”

“She's asleep, sir.”

“Well—when she wakes.”

*   *   *

When the monstrous lump that had been Tom Flint was hoisted up—it had to be done with heavy lifting tackle—the shape flew apart into an uncountable number of lumps no bigger than pieces of fudge. These were all shovelled off the train and dumped along the rail-track.

“Just what was needed for the repair of the permanent way,” said Ensign Pomfret cheerfully.

When the next day dawned it could be seen that the landscape around Dollar was littered with wreckage and thousands of dead monsters.

“Oh, why do there have to be battles?” sighed Sauna, making her way to the colonel's cabin. She had slept for fourteen hours, after having been carried to her bunk by Dakin and Mrs. Churt.