The Touch of Death (12 page)

 

Banister didn't move.

All the horror he had felt at Rotorua came back to him. Here or there, in this world or the other, it was the same: sudden death; murder.

The younger man came out of the partitioned room.

“Take him away,” he said casually to the attendant who had touched the grey-haired man. “I'll see him when he comes round.” He was a tall, lean-faced, healthy-looking man with practically no hair, a round mouth and round, strangely innocent-looking eyes. “Hallo, Rita, I'm sorry about that.”

“What happened?”

“Klim was on the television this morning, Wanting quicker results. Old Prof Nottley wouldn't play. He said that he wasn't going to rush experiments for me, you or Klim! Then he said he would destroy the experiment, and—we've had ‘em like that before, I thought we'd better not take the chances.”

“No,” said Rita, slowly. “You were quite right.”

The young man smiled at Banister.

“Hallo, Banister – I've been hoping we could have a chat before long. It would be nice to hear what London's looking like! I haven't been there for six years.”

Banister said: “London is looking about the same as it was when you people started this murder game, and as it will look a hundred years from now.” His voice was very thin; cold. “So you kill them off here too, Rita.”

“Kill?” echoed the young man. “Nottley's not dead. We didn't give him a full dose. We're getting on top of this thing now – can regulate the dose, so to speak.”

“Kill or maim,” Banister said bitterly.

“Neil, don't jump to conclusions,” Rita broke in. “There has to be discipline, and—”

“Oh, discipline for aye!” said the young scientist, with an edge to his laughter. “Plenty of that. He's all right, Banister – we just put him to sleep for a few hours. It's a strain for these older chaps. Mistake to bring ‘em, I always think.”

“I'll believe he's alive when I can see him breathing,” Banister growled.

Rita began: “Neil, don't—”

She stopped abruptly, deeply troubled again. She looked up, intuitively. High on the wall, close to the ceiling, there was a glowing television screen; she knew that she was being watched. She seemed to fight for self-possession, for the right expression on her face.

She succeeded, looking much calmer.

“We'll show him, Mick.”

“Right!”

The scientist led the way to the door through which the white-haired man had been carried. There was a narrow passage, then another room, with several easy-chairs, couches, tables, magazines – this was a kind of rest-room. Professor Nottley lay on one of the couches, looking completely relaxed. Banister had only to watch him for a few seconds to know that he was alive.

“Come and have a look round now you're here,” said the man named Mick.

He turned towards another door, and opened it. This, like the others here, had a lock; but the key was not turned in this one. Mick stepped through.

Rita exclaimed: “Mick!”

Banister was just behind the young man, and saw over his shoulder. He stood quite still. So did Mick – until he backed away abruptly, and closed the door. He turned round, looking startled and shaken.

“Sorry, Rita,” he mumbled. “I must be crazy.”

Rita didn't speak.

“I meant
this
door,” Mick said, and moved quickly towards another door.

Passing Banister, he looked at him; something in his eyes was different from anything Banister had seen in anyone in this place. It was a conspiratorial, yet a questioning look; it told Banister that the door hadn't been opened by accident, but intentionally – to give him a glimpse of what was inside.

Banister could still picture that . . .

 

Beyond the door which Mick had opened was a chamber, a kind of tunnel; inside this were old men and women, dozens of old men and women, labouring; working until the sweat ran off their backs and scraggy chests. They dug and they shovelled – drilling holes in the solid rock. It was as if the centuries had been rolled back, and there were the horrors of the Middle Ages; or as if the pages of the years had turned, and there were the forced labourers of Hitler's regime, working, sweating, dropping, dying.

Banister had seen the old men, working.

He had seen the old women, also.

Old men and old women, naked to the waist, slaving, digging, tunnelling, handling the picks, handling the pneumatic drills; with a man with a whip standing over them.

 

“You see, what we're doing here is a development of jet-propulsion,” the young man named Mick said. He spoke breathlessly, as if he were still trying to cover up his “error”. “Speed's relative, of course. These midget aeroplanes can travel at a thousand miles an hour. They're not really ‘planes , as you know them down below – more like engines with a light framework or fuselage. The aero-suits we've developed for people dispense with the need for fuselage as it's known down there.

“We use these machines regularly,” he went on. “Klim's travelled in one this time. They seat two, even three at a pinch. By flying very high, they don't make any recognisable sound down below. People there think it's freak thunder. The beauty is their range – they can fly round the world without stopping, yet can land on a postage stamp. Well, more or less!” Mick laughed – and it sounded like a nervous laugh. “Nottley was one of the great back-room boys of jet propulsion. Came here three years ago—”

Banister could almost see the headline in the newspapers now:

 

SCIENTIST DISAPPEARS

Jet-propulsion Pioneer

Search for Professor Julian Nottley

 

“I thought you'd recognise him,” Mick said. “Well, he's one of many who have—er
volunteered
to come and help us.”

There was no mistaking his emphasis on the word volunteered – “you and you and you”. Banister recalled the Army chestnut, knew that Mick was really saying: “Nottley didn't volunteer, he was forced to come here.” Mick's round, grey eyes were bright, in that moment, and the hint of nervousness disappeared.

It soon came back.

“Down below, they've only just started to cope with the problems of space and distance. But we're really making progress. Still, we have nearly all the best brains, and one
volunteer's
worth ten conscripts. I'm sure you agree.” He went off jerkily again. “We tackle both the stratosphere and the deep oceans. In many ways ocean travel is more secure than air travel – got its limitations, of course. Thing we're looking for, my particular baby, is one that can both fly
and
travel fast under water. Haven't quite got there yet. I—”

A television screen flickered.

“Is Miss Rita there?” a girl asked. “If she could come to the office as soon as possible, please.”

Rita touched the adjacent switch.

“I'm coming—I'm in Project Ninety-seven at the moment.”

“Thank you, Miss Rita.”

The screen went dead.

“Neil—”

“Sorry you can't stay longer,” said the man named Mick. “See you some time. Skiing, perhaps – winter sports all the year round.”

He grinned.

He mouthed at Banister: “Two o'clock today.”

Rita led the way outside, down the lift, along the street to her room. They didn't speak. She knew what Banister had seen, and would realise that he would never accept it as part of goodness. But for one thing, he would have been in a fury of agitation.

What had Mick been trying to tell him?

“Two o'clock today – skiing – volunteers who were nothing of the kind . . .”

Two people were waiting to see Rita. Neil went into his own room, and looked up at the blank television screen. It could glow at any moment, and he was aware that from the moment it glowed, he could be seen by whoever was looking in; seen and overheard. There wasn't a moment when they were really secure from everyone else, and yet Mick had talked.

The door opened.

“Neil,” Rita said abruptly, “don't tell a soul what you saw. Put it right out of your mind. If they thought you'd seen that, you wouldn't have a chance.”

Banister said heavily: “I can understand that. What I can't understand is you.”

“Never mind that,” she said. “Just forget it.”

“I'm suffocated in here,” Banister growled. “I can't breathe properly. The whole place is driving me mad. I feel as if the walls are going to fall in on me, if I don't get out I
will
go mad.”

“It's often like that when you first come,” Rita said desperately. “It's a kind of claustrophobia, but it soon goes. You'll be all right.”

“I've got to get
out
,” Banister growled. “I've got to breathe some fresh air. Seeing that out of the window this morning did it, I hadn't realised how much I was missing.”

“I'll see if I can arrange for you to go out,” Rita promised.

 

She did not say from whom permission came; but it came.

At two o'clock Banister went out of the mountain city, into the brittle sunlight of the mountains. He wore fur-lined clothes, and found that he could move more freely than when he had first arrived. The sun was warm. A few other people were about, and most of them waved to him. He carried skis over his shoulder as he went towards the run – probably the one which he had seen from the window.

He came within sight of the chalet.

Mick was there with a young woman in a red beret, and with two small children, a boy and a girl. They were just beginning to ski, and Mick and the woman had chosen a gentle slope. The boy had a chubby face and round eyes, which marked him as Mick's son beyond doubt. He was starting down on his own, obviously for the first time. The girl clung tightly to the woman's hand.

“Don't be scared,” Mick said to the boy, “do it the way I showed you.”

The child began to lever himself forward, then gradually moved of his own volition. A spark of fear showed in his blue eyes; then that faded. As he kept his balance, confidence came, and with confidence the excitement of success. He slid downwards thirty or forty feet before he toppled over. Mick ran towards him and picked him up. The boy was laughing delightedly; the girl began to laugh.

“You try with Meg,” called Mick to the woman.

He glanced up and saw Neil, nodded, and then turned back to the boy.

Neil went to the top of a run, where a dozen people were standing. A few were already on the way downwards, graceful figures, swinging this way or that as they swerved past outcrops of rock and stunted trees and great mounds of snow. It was a year since he had been on skis.

He felt the first rush of wind, of exhilaration, of excitement.

He started a run.

It was good. It was even good to be alive. The nightmare figures that he had seen seemed to fade. There was speed and the rush of the wind past his cheeks, of the wind-pressure against his body. He felt as if he were on top of the world, as if nothing could go wrong.

At last, he came to a standstill. No one seemed to be near in this great sloping field of virgin white. He turned and looked up at the peaks towering above him. One was near, and others were in the distance, a world of mountain-tops and snow and bright-blue sky. Crags overhung the valley. A few skiers were coming down, one tumbled suddenly and disappeared in a flurry of snow.

Banister started the long climb back.

The quickest way, he thought, was to cut behind some outcrops which were overhung with snow on one side. That cut him off from sight of the people up near the chalet; but they were so far away that they could only see him clearly with glasses, anyhow.

He reached the outcrop.

He saw a movement where the snow seemed to heave as if under some great convulsion, but it wasn't that, it was a man who appeared from the depths of the snow, a drift which had looked impenetrable.

“Hallo,” said the man named Mick.

“Next time, why don't you frighten me to death?” Banister managed to say.

Mick grinned.

“Don't want you dead! Listen. I've only four or five minutes. I came down through a shaft we've driven from behind the chalet. Only a few of us know about it—I hope! This is probably the one place in High Peak where we can talk without being seen or heard.” He drew a deep breath. “You
are
a Palfrey man, aren't you?”

Banister said abruptly: “Yes.”

“Brought here by force?”

“Yes.” Banister sensed the need for urgency, also sensed the kind of thing that Mick wanted to know. There was urgent fear in the back of his mind; that this might be a trick to encourage him to think that there were rebels at High Peak. He had to make a decision swiftly, and this one didn't take long. “I'm a neophyte, for conversion – they hope.”

“Any luck?”

“I'm not impressed.”

“All right,” Mick said. “I'm taking my life in my hands in trusting you. Heard you were a Palfrey man, never known one of those who couldn't be trusted. There are about twenty of us, planning a break.”

“When?”

“As soon as we can. This year—next year. Never mind
when
.”

“It matters.”

“Why the urgency?”

“They're killing too freely.”

“Tell me.”

“Death on contact with the hand, arm, anything – they've wiped out several villages. They're using it as a form of blackmail.”

“That's Anak,” Mick said. His eyes looked hard, his mouth set for a moment; he appeared to forget that time was precious; he seemed suddenly to be much older than he was. “He's deadly. I can't help it, yet. We might manage it next month, but it might take longer.”

“Where are we?”

“Antarctica.”