The Iron Woman (4 page)

Finally, Lucy snatched her hands away and pressed her palms over her ears.

‘Let’s see this Waste Factory,’ shouted Hogarth. ‘Let’s have a look at it.’

In the dusk the factory resembled a small, separate city, glowing with a thousand lights. Smoke from thirty chimneys climbed straight up in the still air then flattened out, as if under a ceiling, making a floating carpet over the town beyond. The whole factory throbbed like a vast car engine running under its lifted bonnet. And yet, Lucy knew, inside it was teeming with people.

It had been built outside the town and right beside the river. At first, it had merely crushed old vehicles, for scrap. Then it had begun to recycle waste, of certain kinds. Then it grew bigger, and began to recycle waste of all kinds. Now it collected waste from other
countries
. It grew bigger, with incinerators burning night and day. It grew bigger, with acres of oildrums, painted all colours and piled in teetering stacks, full of nameless waste from different industries, and different countries. A fleet of articulated trucks came and went constantly, bringing in the waste, or taking waste out to be dumped in other places.

Nearly everybody in the town, and in the villages around, worked there. They called it ‘Chicago’.

Lucy and Hogarth stood on the opposite bank. Even in the dimming light they could see the pipes pouring foam out of the factory’s side. Lucy counted fifteen pipes. A strange smell came off the river too. Like the bitter taste of a knife blade. But she knew that the smell often changed.

Suddenly, over the drumming of the factory came a new sound. They looked downriver.

What Hogarth thought was a clump of trees seemed to be moving. The sound came again, a roaring wail – like a siren.

‘It’s her,’ hissed Lucy.

They watched as the Iron Woman came wading up the river. Horrified, they saw her reach out and grasp the top of a tall cylinder, which looked like a gasometer enmeshed in pipes and ladders. The screech of tearing metal told them what was happening.

‘If she breaks the pipes,’ cried Hogarth, ‘everything will pour into the river.’

‘Iron Woman!’ Lucy almost screamed. ‘Iron Woman!’

And at once the Iron Woman became still. Then she loomed larger. She stood above them.

‘We’ve been looking for you,’ cried Lucy. ‘This is Hogarth. He knows the Iron Man.’

The gigantic figure kneeled on the river bank. Her
huge face came down, her eyes came close. Hogarth found himself looking into her strange black eyes.

How different! he was thinking. She’s really not much like the Iron Man at all. She seems to be differently made.

But what he said aloud was: ‘I’ve come from the Iron Man. He has a plan. He knows what to do.’

Those eyes, it seemed to Hogarth, smiled somehow. And a rumbling became a voice. ‘Some plans,’ it said, ‘are bad.’ It sounded just like thunder, coming from everywhere at once and crumbling away into the far distance.

‘No, no!’ cried Lucy. ‘It’s a way to stop the
rubbishers
.’

The great black eyes seemed to grip both of them, and the voice came again. ‘They have to be changed,’ it said. ‘Not just stopped.’

‘That’s the Iron Man’s plan,’ cried Hogarth. ‘To change them.’

Lucy had no idea what Hogarth was talking about. She only knew she had to stop the Iron Woman ripping down Chicago. And Hogarth had no idea either. He had simply said the first thing that came into his head. But now he’d started he knew he had to go on, even though it was a complete lie.

‘The Iron Man is on his way,’ he said. ‘To help you. He’ll be here tomorrow.’ He spoke very loud, as if to a
deaf person. He was already thinking what he had to do.

The Iron Woman stood erect. Her arm rose and pointed. Her voice rumbled through them: ‘Tomorrow I shall be in that wood. If Iron Man does not come, I shall finish what I started. I shall tear this factory out of the ground tomorrow night. Then he can come and eat it.’

The Iron Woman climbed out of the river past them, and disappeared into the dark woods.

‘Home,’ said Lucy. ‘My parents will be worried.’

But as they half walked, half trotted towards Lucy’s home, it was Hogarth who was worried. He had to find a telephone.

At last they came to a kiosk. He reversed the charges and gave the number that only he knew. He listened to it ringing. How strange to know that it was ringing actually inside the Iron Man’s head.

Then came a click, then silence, then: ‘Y-e-e-e-e-e-e-s.’ That funny, familiar voice.

Hogarth told him everything. And he kept repeating: ‘You have to come quick – by tomorrow.’

But the Iron Man said nothing more. Hogarth held the receiver, listening into the great silence – the silence inside the Iron Man’s head. ‘You do hear me, don’t you?’ he cried.

But suddenly – a click and brrrrr! The Iron Man had switched off.

Hogarth stood for a while. He knew the Iron Man
didn’t waste words. But would he come or wouldn’t he? Had he understood or hadn’t he?

Next morning, Hogarth took his binoculars to the marsh. But he waited near Otterfeast Bridge, where Lucy was going to meet him. He sat on the bank, over the drain, spying here and there through his binoculars. After a while, he noticed something floating towards him on the slow current of the drain. It turned out to be a carp – a huge carp as big as a collie dog. He raked it in with a stick and sat looking at it. He had heard that carp were very hard to kill. You could keep them alive for days in a wet sack. But something had killed this. He was counting the big scales when Lucy arrived on the bridge.

‘I know what we’ll do,’ she announced. ‘We have to go to the factory and tell them to stop. And if they don’t stop pouring out poisons their factory will be pulled down tonight.’

‘Nobody will believe that,’ said Hogarth. ‘They won’t take any notice of us.’

‘Yes they will,’ cried Lucy. ‘Because I’ll give them the fright.’

‘The fright?’ asked Hogarth. But then tried to snatch his hand away as Lucy grabbed it. He was too late. Yes, yes, now he realized what she meant. And it was as bad as he remembered. He had to brace himself. It was
instantly full blast. It didn’t need any warming up. There it was – terrible as ever – as if it had never stopped.

He tore his hand free.

‘That will scare them all right,’ he gasped, ‘if they can hear it.’

‘Of course they’ll hear it. I’ll grab their ears. And you too, you grab them too.’

Hogarth did not say what he was thinking. He was afraid that he might not have the scream power. Maybe only Lucy had it. But then – what if he did have it? He imagined catching hold of some man by both his ears and watching his face as the noise blasted through him, altering his brains.

They set off. Soon they were at the great main gates of Chicago, which stood wide open.

Lucy and Hogarth dodged in past the crush of grinding and banging lorries that seemed to be fighting their way out through the gate and in through the gate at the same time, in clouds of concrete dust.

Lucy was thinking: If I keep telling myself that I know exactly where I’m going and exactly who I want to see – then nobody will stop me.

She pushed in through the plate-glass doors of the main office block directly behind a man in a suit who clutched a briefcase and walked with bounding strides as if he had only seconds to get where he was going.
Hogarth followed her just as three men burst out of the lift and came hurtling across the reception hall almost running and out through the glass doors, rearranging their folders and papers in their arms as they went, and talking very loud all three together as if they had planted a bomb on a short fuse somewhere inside the building and were trying to disguise their getaway.

Lucy seemed to know what to do. Hogarth thought: Well, her dad works here. She knows the ropes. Actually, Lucy had no idea – except to find the Manager’s office and go straight there. She looked past the unhappy screen of rubber plants and saw the plan of the office block on the wall. She marched across, past the little fountain and its bowl of plastic lilies, and Hogarth
imitated
her.

He had enough sense to know that if they glanced towards the receptionist and caught her eye, she would ask them what they wanted – and that would be the end. She would say: ‘Please wait over there.’ Then she would phone for somebody who would tell them that nobody could speak to them that day. And their attack would have failed. Luckily, she was busy. Hogarth watched her out of his eye-corner, bent over her jumble of computers and fax machines, her hands scrabbling through heaps of papers as if her fingers chased each other. The phone was tucked between her cheek and her shoulder, and the top of her bowed curly head was
plainly saying: ‘Please don’t interrupt me.’

The Manager’s office was on the fourth floor. Hogarth and Lucy went to the open lift. Two men got in beside them. Lucy pressed the button for the fourth, one of the men for the second, the other for the third. Neither spoke to the other. Both stared at Lucy and Hogarth but neither opened his mouth. Both for some reason looked very angry.

Well they might, if they had known what was coming.

A few seconds later Lucy and Hogarth were walking down the blue carpet of the corridor between doors, and there it was, at the end – a brass nameplate:

J. Wells

MANAGER

One knock from Hogarth’s knuckle and Lucy
walked
straight in, Hogarth behind her. He closed the door.

They paused. It was a large, bright room. The whole facing wall was one big window on to the mass of
steaming
pipes and towers, where half a dozen factories of different kinds seemed to have been jammed into one.

The man sitting behind the desk had his back to them, and was staring out into that jungle of steel while he crowed into a telephone: ‘Anything is possible! Absolutely anything is possible. This firm’s unspoken motto is “Impossible is not a word.” It’s as good as done. Right! Right! Yes! Of course! Wonderful! Magnificent! Good!’

Laughing, he turned, put the phone down – and saw Lucy and Hogarth.

He had a large space of face which seemed larger because it went right over to the back of his neck. His eyes, nose and mouth were all pinched together in the middle of it, as if they had been knotted tightly by the little ginger moustache. His ears, Hogarth noticed, were unusually large. Big ears, Hogarth’s father would say, mean long life, but Hogarth was also thinking they would be good to grab.

‘Who the devil are you?’ If the Manager hadn’t been so astonished he might have been more polite. Also, he smelt trouble.

But Lucy had already stepped forward. She pointed her right forefinger straight at the man’s moustache, like a pistol.

‘Your factory has poisoned the river. It’s killed all the fish. It’s poisoning all the creatures. It’s poisoning the marsh. You have to stop it. Today. Now.’

Her voice really rang out.

The Manager couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Please get out,’ he said quietly, and his hand went to the phone. He was used to this kind of accusation – though not from a wild-faced girl in his own office.

‘If you don’t stop it, this minute,’ Lucy shouted in that strange, solemn voice, ‘your factory will be destroyed. I’m telling you, it will be destroyed. Or worse.’

And then she remembered the writhing baby in the tunnel of fire and her voice rose to a yell: ‘You’re
poisoning
all the creatures and you’re also poisoning me.’

He had picked up the phone. ‘John, spot of trouble. Get somebody into my office quick.’

Then he came round the desk. He was a thickset, tough-looking fellow. He had started his career as a scrap-iron dealer, a weightlifter, a lover of hard edges who delighted in pounding big posh saloon cars into small cubes. This is it, thought Hogarth. He’s going to throw us out. What do we do now?

But he strode past them and held the door wide.

‘Out!’ he snapped, without looking at them.

But then something truly amazing happened. Lucy ran at him and grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the door. Hogarth knew what that meant. Even so, he was astounded by the change that came over the Manager’s face. It contorted, as if a pan of scalding water had been tipped over his legs.

‘Aaaaaaagh!’ he screeched. ‘Aaaaaaaaaagh!’ And he reeled away across the room, with Lucy hanging on to him like a little wolf being dragged by a lumbering moose.

Suddenly another man stood in the doorway
shouting
: ‘What the hell’s going on?’

Hogarth saw his chance. I’ll give it to him, he thought, right where he can’t miss it. And he jumped up
to grab the man’s ears. The man caught his wrists, but even so Hogarth managed to catch one ear. And it worked. The man’s mouth gaped, as if he had been stabbed in the back. ‘O God in heaven!’ he bellowed and banged back against the door, trying to get his hands to his quite big ears. But whatever he did, it made no difference, and he began to flail at Hogarth, who closed his eyes and bowed his head, ignoring the blows and simply hanging on. He knew what the man was hearing because he himself could hear it.

It was a very unusual sight there in the Manager’s office. The two men writhing and lurching about the room, bouncing off the walls as if they were being electrocuted, like balls in a pin-ball machine, while the girl and the boy clung on and were dragged after.

The shouts brought in others from other offices. All at once Hogarth was struggling and squirming in the hands of two men who lifted him clear of the floor. At the same time a blonde secretary writhed her vivid lips and slapped at his face and head with her bony hands, screaming: ‘Little beast! Little beast!’

He got a glimpse of Lucy’s legs whirling in the air, and a group of figures wrestling around her.

But whoever touched either Lucy or Hogarth had to deal with the blast of cries – the roar of screams and groans, as if loudspeakers had been clamped over their ears and the tortured cries of the creatures were
colliding 
in the middle of their brains. Even the woman’s slaps hit her with bangs of scream.