The Unbegotten (11 page)

She caught her breath and held it and then cried in a voice of pure hatred, ‘It
is
your fault. I wanted children to bless our marriage and
you
wouldn't have one. Don't touch me.
Don't touch me
! I'll never forgive you for this,
never
.'

 

Nearby, among their neighbours, a young bride was looking in horror at her husband, and after a while, she said in tones of pain and disbelief, ‘We can't have any children. Do you realise that, Hugh? We can't have children,
ever
.'

Nothing her husband could say would reassure her.

She sat up in bed, lovely and full of life, pale, eyes touched with horror: the life-giver who could no longer give life.

Tears began to fall down her cheeks.

 

And there were tears and dismay and disbelief all over the land.

And there was worse: for now that the truth had been brutally told, there were doctors in small villages and small towns, in the hearts of great cities and the suburbs of great towns, who began to think, to realise that they had been called to very few mothers-to-be: the young and nervous with their first born, the weary who wanted to have done with children, the robust with a growing family who loved their families and who wanted more and more. The nation began to see, on that quiet night, began to realise the terrifying significance.

A new, a strange kind of fear clutched at the hearts of many.

A new, a strange kind of hope lifted the hearts of others.

It was as if the whole nation was stirring to awareness that it might not have long to live.

 

 

Reginald Maddern sat looking at Susan, who had no other name he knew.

She was in the big, velvet-covered chair where she had been sitting over coffee. Her legs were tucked under her, her head was on one side. She was no longer asleep but she would not yet admit to being awake. Her eyes had remained shut as Maddern had lifted her off the surgery couch, ten minutes before. Carrying her, hugging her soft, relaxed body against his, he remembered what Smith had said about making a pass at her if he really wanted to make her mad.

If he were to do so now, even in play, she would wake up with a vengeance.

No, he told himself sharply. I've got to win her complete confidence, and that would be botched at the start if I behaved like a lecher. He grinned at himself, then concentrated on the problem, leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. He knew, however, the moment the girl's eyes opened. Was she about to make another leap for safety? He closed his own eyes and breathed very heavily, as if he were going to sleep, and soon heard a rustle of movement at the chair.

He remembered her desire to kill.

He remembered how Smith and his men hated and feared her.

He remembered the tiny gun he had seen in her hand.

He remembered the invisible pressure, of force.

The rustling was repeated. He sensed she was very near. She hadn't run away, then, and wasn't creeping towards the door. Was she bending over him? He had a feeling that her eyes were very close to his, staring with great intensity.

Would
she strike?

Part of his mind screamed out the need to spring away, to put himself beyond danger. The other part cautioned:
Wait.
Hovering somewhere between his conscious and his subconscious was the fact that if he could win her sympathy, could make her talk, then he might be able to help Palfrey and so find a way to overcome the terrible danger to mankind. If she killed him, he would be just one more victim, that was all: he would be little or no loss to anyone.

So, he kept his eyes closed and lay absolutely still. The way his head was bent back stretched his neck. One slash with a knife, one thrust to the jugular, and he would die.

Her breath touched his cheek – she was standing by the side of the chair, then, and leaning towards him. Now he could hear her breathing, above the thunderous beat of his own heart.

He let his eyelids flicker. Immediately, she moved. He yawned and put his hand to his lips, then opened his eyes wider. Susan was back in her chair, legs dangling; and she was staring at him unblinking.

‘Hallo,' he said. ‘I must have dropped off.'

She settled back in her chair, tucking her legs beneath her.

‘Dropped off?' She made the two words a question.

‘Off to sleep.'

‘Oh,' she said. ‘Yes. You are very tired.'

‘Very.'

‘Perhaps you should go to bed.'

‘Soon,' he said. ‘Are you tired?'

‘I am never tired,' she stated simply.

‘You're very lucky.'

‘Lucky? It is natural to me and as people should be. You people here—' she began in a scornful tone, only to break off, with a catch in her breath. She had nearly said too much, that was certain.

‘Susan,' he asked. ‘Where do you come from?'

‘If you ask questions I shall refuse to talk to you at all,' she said severely.

‘Oh, dear.' Maddern sounded crestfallen. ‘I wouldn't like that.' He paused and then suggested brightly, ‘Why don't you ask
me
questions?' He sat up more comfortably in his chair and then noticed some chocolate mints, which he always enjoyed after his evening meal, although constantly telling himself that they made him put on weight. He picked up the box and proffered it.

‘What are they?' she asked, suspiciously.

‘Chocolate mints.'

‘They must be poisoned.' Her voice grew taut and she stared at the chocolates and then at him with a rebirth of the hostility which for a little while had been missing.

He chuckled.

‘If they were, I would have been dead years ago.' He picked up a mint, popped it into his mouth, took another and then replaced the box. ‘Susan, why are you suspicious of everybody?'

‘Everybody is dangerous.'

‘Do you think I am dangerous?'

She studied him, frowning, and then said, ‘I do not wish to think so and I was not warned against you as an individual, but you are one of Palfrey's men.'

‘Palfrey is a good man.'

‘Palfrey is a
devil.'

‘Because he fights you and your masters?'

‘It is enough.'

‘Who are your masters, Susan?' asked Maddern.

‘You are not to ask the questions, remember?'

‘Oh, yes, I'm sorry.' Maddern finished his second chocolate mint, took a third, and was about to replace the box when he hesitated and held it towards her. ‘Sure you won't change your mind?'

‘If you can eat them with impunity, perhaps I dare to taste.' She took a mint and a bit off a tiny corner, very gingerly. As she began to roll it round her tongue he sensed her pleasure at the flavour. She ate a little more and more again.

‘Nice?' enquired Maddern.

‘They have a pleasant taste, yes. What are they called, do you say?'

‘Mints—chocolate mints.' He leaned back, finished the soft, melting mint and chocolate cream, and asked without a change of tone, ‘Why do you want to prevent women having babies, Susan?'

‘Ugh,' she said, with an involuntary shudder. ‘It is like the animals.'

The disgust on her face and in her voice was so plain that he hesitated to push the questions any further. So he waited until she had finished the mint and tried to think. Her reaction to the thought of child-bearing accorded with Smith's story of her dislike of having a pass made at her – disgust. And it also accorded with her brief bewilderment over the phrase ‘Christian principles'. It was almost as if she did come from another world, as if she believed herself to be immune from the laws of procreation.

 

The idea struck savagely at him, and for a few seconds he felt touched with fresh horror. Then, slowly, another question even more hideous came to his mind. He did not want to face it. There was something so bizarre, so unnatural about it that the words themselves seemed to refuse to form in his mind.

But at last they did.

Had she come from another world, one whose physical laws were entirely different from this one?

 

She was so lovely, ethereally lovely, but at times unreal to look at. The perfection of her body, of her skin, of her face, were unreal – certainly he had never seen anyone else remotely like her – she was flawless.

Was she human? Was she real?

He wanted to question her again but did not want to make her angry, and she was on the edge of anger now. He sought desperately for a phrase which would cause no offence and yet win a response, and suddenly he said, ‘So you regard us as animals?'

‘You
are
animals, although it has been made clear that in the upper echelons of culture and intellect some of you are in a much higher sphere than others—near the Bridge of Transition.'

‘From animal life to—your kind of life?'

‘Yes.'

‘Who told you that some of us were near the Bridge of Transition?' asked Maddern, taking another mint so as to make the question seem more casual. Even now he would not be surprised if she flew into a rage because he was asking questions again, but she too was eyeing the mints, and she seemed to answer without thinking.

‘The Master.'

‘Oh. Will you have another mint?'

‘Yes, please.' She took one eagerly this time and bit off nearly half.

‘So the Master sent you here,' Maddern mused.

‘Yes,' she confirmed.

‘It is very dangerous work you have to do,' Maddern stated flatly. ‘Aren't you ever afraid? Wouldn't it have been better if the Master had sent a man?'

She frowned.

‘Why?'

‘The work is more a man's work.'

‘It makes no difference,' she said off-handedly. ‘Man or woman, all do the same work. You do not realise how far you are behind the full development of mankind. We have reached the Summit of Perfection, and now Dr. Palfrey and his agents would try to destroy the summit.'

‘If I know Palfrey,' Maddern said, ‘he wants to build, not destroy.'

‘He serves only to destroy.'

‘You see the same things as he from different angles,' Maddern argued, as if sadly. ‘He thinks
you
want to destroy.'

‘That is absurd!'

‘Is it?' he asked, gingerly.

‘If you were not foolish you would know that it is absurd. We wish to change and improve, not to destroy.'

‘I see,' said Maddern, and then he sank even further back in his chair and stifled an affected yawn, glanced at the mints but did not stretch out for one, and added almost under his breath, ‘it's a pity I'm a fool.'

‘You
are not a fool!' she said, quite fiercely.

‘By your definition I am,' he declared.

‘I do not understand,' she said, crossly. But from the way in which she was looking, her eyes rounded and huge, he believed she did. So he kept silent, until she went on, ‘You agree with Palfrey? You think that we wish to destroy?'

‘Yes,' stated Maddern, mildly.

‘Then you are a fool.'

‘I'm a human being,' Maddern observed. ‘I think you have come to destroy in two ways. First, by killing—by violence. Many people died here in Middlecombe tonight, good men who hadn't a chance to defend themselves. You or your Master slaughtered them.'

‘But they could have done untold harm!'

‘How?' asked Maddern.

‘They could have told the humans what is being done. They could have enabled you and Palfrey and others to work against us. You could even have delayed our progress by years, perhaps decades. They had to be silenced. Palfrey has to be, also. And—'

She broke off, lips parted, eyes rounded even more but with their expression filled with fear. She shifted in the chair, and once actually closed her eyes, before Maddern completed the sentence for her.

‘And
I
have to be killed,' he said.

She did not answer, but her expression told him ‘Yes', and it also told him that she did not like to contemplate his death. He wondered what would happen if he told her that the news had already broken. There was at least a chance that she would fly into one of her rages, perhaps greater than ever because she would be blamed, having failed in the task that ‘The Master' had sent her to do. She was so much more natural, he had broken down so much of her reserve, that he dreaded the thought of a recession which would undo all the good he had managed to do. She would learn the truth soon, but there was no need for it yet.

‘Susan,' he began.

‘Why do you call me Susan?'

‘I don't know your real name.'

‘My name is Azran,' she told him.

‘Azran,' he repeated, slowly and as if with relish. ‘I have never heard that name before. How is it spelt?'

‘There is much that you have never heard before,' she retorted, crossly. ‘A-Z-R-A-N. Azran.' The two a's were short and the name had a pleasing sound. ‘We are not destructive, we are creative.'

‘Thousands—perhaps many thousands—of women cannot have children because of what you are doing,' Maddern stated. ‘They think it is a kind of murder, to prevent them from having children, if they wish.'

‘They simply
breed
,' she said, acidly.

‘Don't you?' he asked.

‘Oh, you
are
a fool,' she breathed. ‘You are an utter fool! If you would only see that we are able to reproduce people, perfect people, ageless people, people who live in their minds and their hearts more than their bodies. Oh, how the bodies sicken me!' She sprang up and for a split second he thought that she was going to fling herself at him, or else to run. Instead, she stood in front of him, striking an almost conspiratorial pose, and she cried, ‘If you could see our world you would believe. You would
know.
You would see none of the deformed, the crippled, the mongols, the retarded, the people who are half alive. You would see no sickness, no agony in childbirth, no poverty, no hunger, no aged. You would see a Utopia. Do you understand, Utopia! Once you had seen it would you ever wish to come back to this decadent world you live in? To live here is like living among imbeciles—Now do you understand that to kill, here, simply preserves life on the Upper Slopes.
Do you
understand?'

‘I might,' answered Maddern very gently, ‘if I could come to the Upper Slopes and see the truth for myself.'

He uttered the phrase Upper Slopes quite rationally. He had no doubt at all that she came either from another world or from a part of this world so isolated and remote that none in the ordinary world had heard of it. It was a place where the bearing of children was considered repellent, where attitudes were vastly different from the world he lived in and where great power could be unleashed. He wondered whether Palfrey knew as much; if not, then, he, Maddern, had made a breakthrough which could be of vital importance. He wanted to talk to Palfrey urgently, but the first priority was to reassure this girl.

Azran.

Not Susan – but Azran.