The Flood (19 page)

“Yes, thanks,” Palfrey said, and picked up a receiver. “Hallo, Jim.” Kennedy had been transferred to Number 10 only this morning. “Well, Cromer cliffs are riddled with the things and the town’s being invaded.”

“So are the cliffs at Westcliff,” Kennedy said in a cold, aloof voice. “We’ve had
octi
samples rushed down from the Fen district, the Wash and Scarborough, where the cliffs are swarming with them. There’s been a small tidal wave at Filey, and the Holiday Camp there is flooded, and is being evacuated. The Cabinet’s in session.”

Palfrey said: “I’m coming back at once. Jim, listen. Malic acid’s our one common factor. Concentrate on fruit orchards, mountain ash, bilberry trees – any growth which has malic acid in it. Woburn knew what he was talking about.”

“You know, we’ve got something,” Kennedy said tautly. “Since we’ve started the malic acid angle, we’ve discovered that the Westcliff business started at an orchard. The first place affected at Scarborough was a house with a big garden and some prize apple trees – that’s on the report. In Wales the flood started near some mountain ash.”

“Tell the Old Man that,” said Palfrey swiftly. “And let’s have all fruit-growing districts under special watch, evacuate them where necessary, and dig—”

He stopped.

“If you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” said Kennedy, “it isn’t any good digging trenches to stop the thing spreading from trees. Bees could carry it.” He paused. “Wasps, flies, earwigs, ants, birds, the wind.”

Palfrey said: “All right. But dig, all the same, if we can trap the beasts anywhere it would help. No luck with any drying agent yet?”

“No. But now we’ve plenty of
octi
we can step up the pace.”

“Any more news of Woburn’s radio call?”

“No.”

“Pity,” said Palfrey, and turned away from the radio; forced a smile at the operator, and said: “Thanks.” He watched General Carfax getting up from his desk. The big Russian was at the door, looking at the last of the traffic moving off the cliff.

“Well, if we must get out, we must,” the General said, and tapped his pipe out on an ash-tray. “But when I collect that fiver, Dr. Palfrey—”

His words were cut off.

There came a roar as of an explosion big enough to wreck a town. A great, devastating, deafening, breath-taking roar of sound. It sent men staggering. It stunned Carfax. It was accompanied by a quiver in the earth so violent that Palfrey was thrown across the room. Windows smashed and glass fell inwards, Andromovitch grabbed the door for support.

There was no flash.

After the explosion there was a roaring sound, like thunder coming from under their feet. It roared and it rumbled, the earth quivered, the walls of the hotel shook. As the noise dimmed, slowly, different sounds came floating in. Shouting. Screaming. The humming of motors. The crash of cars and lorries smashing. And there was a hissing sound, the hissing which was never absent when the
octi
erupted.

“If we get out of Cromer alive,” Palfrey said, “we’re going to be lucky.”

They got out alive.

Sitting in a jeep with a driver by his side, Palfrey behind him and Andromovitch with his legs hanging over the side, General Carfax spoke in a curiously precise and jerky way. If it hadn’t been for Palfrey’s warning, they would never have escaped, and the townsfolk would have been annihilated. So he and those of his men who had survived were alive because of Palfrey. So were the thousands of holiday-makers, who didn’t understand what had happened, and did not realise that practically the whole of the town had vanished.

The first eruption had come near the spot where Palfrey had found the apple teeming with tiny
octi.

Carfax didn’t know whether it had been sent away before the collapse of the cliff. He did know that the whole of that section of the cliff had vanished, and that the sea was well inland, in spite of the cliffs.

It was as if the earth were rotting away, like the apple.

Carfax left them, to establish Field Headquarters, and they reached a spot where the roads from Great Yarmouth, Hunstanton and King’s Lynn met; a focal point in Norfolk. Here they ran into the streaming crowds, the first of the real panic; refugees who had been given no warning had struggled through the floods, watching their loved ones die.

Women were crying the names of their children.

Men were walking on, hard-eyed.

The water was coming in.

The jeep was splashing through inches of water.

They reached some high ground, ground fifty or sixty feet above sea level, and for the first time for an hour Palfrey gave word for the jeep to stop. They were in a field of barley some way past the refugees, the nearest of whom were ten miles behind.

Dawn was breaking over the east; the first light of a dread day.

They looked back.

Where there had been great fields and fertile land, corn and barley, potatoes and beet growing ready for the harvest, there was water. Great unending lakes of water. Here and there the roof of a house showed above it; or the top of a tree. On little patches of high ground, cattle and sheep gathered, dark, frightened dots. They could see the refugees, wading or driving through the water and the mud, with a terrible desperation.

And the water was coming after them.

Palfrey, Andromovitch and the driver, a young lieutenant, didn’t say a word, but there was a ridge of water, following the first crowds of the helpless. It was like a clearly marked line on the ruffled surface. It came on, remorselessly. The Severn bore was something like this, but moved more swiftly. This came slowly behind the refugees, as with stealth.

Palfrey felt his arm nudged.

“Try these,” the lieutenant said gruffly.

He was handing Palfrey a pair of field glasses. Palfrey put them to his eyes, and focused them; and suddenly it looked as if people were only a few yards away. Men, carrying children pick-a-back. Women, holding babies on their shoulders. Older children, floundering. Old folk, holding on to each other, kept staggering. Now and again the young ones would turn to look, and help, but in the few seconds that Palfrey stared he saw two old women and one man go down. They disappeared beneath the water, and their children, with their own children to look after, turned and saw what had happened and then faced the west again, leaving their dead.

Knee deep.

Waist deep.

And all the time the water was catching up. That line was already breaking over some, catching them and throwing them on their faces into the water, and then under it. Here and there people swam. Here and there others tried desperately to dive and find someone who had sunk. A dog was swimming. Cars and trucks, bicycles and motorcycles were already bogged down.

There was a strange silence.

The dawn had come without a sound, for the birds had gone.

“Let’s get moving,” the lieutenant said, “or it’ll catch us up.”

Palfrey sat at the wheel of the jeep as it splashed through a foot of water on the Mile End Road. Buses and cars were moving in both directions, all packed with people. Most shops were open, their owners trying to sweep the water out. Doors of tiny houses were open, too. There could be no cellar within a mile of the Thames empty of water. A few boats had been brought in from the river itself, and were being rowed vigorously. Some stood outside houses and shops, while men and women were lowered from the windows.

Palfrey said: “They’ve had radio warnings all night, and they wouldn’t listen, they just weren’t ready.”

“You do not believe in death until it comes,” said Andromovitch.

Palfrey shrugged.

They went through the City, through water all the way. Around St. Paul’s there was a lot of dry land, but at Ludgate Circus the water was pouring down into Farringdon Street and Fleet Street. Nearer the Strand it was much deeper. Fewer people were about, but boats were everywhere. Some were motor-boats. River police were busy, point duty police stood knee deep in water, directing road and water traffic, as imperturbable as if this was a morning with the day’s traffic still to come.

Trafalgar Square was almost submerged, with water lapping at the base of the lions, filling the fountains. The road by the National Gallery was dry, so far.

Whitehall was flooded.

There was well over a foot of water in Downing Street. Here, troops as well as police were on guard. Hundreds of people were at the end of the street itself, standing in the water, waiting silently as if for an oracle to speak. A mounted Chief Inspector on a magnificent bay splashed up alongside the jeep.

“Sorry, sir, must ask you not to stay here.”

“Yes, of course,” said Palfrey. “But I’m expected. Palfrey. I—”

“Oh, yes, sir! Better not try to get the jeep along the street, though Mind getting your feet wet?”

Palfrey smiled wryly.

People watched, gaping and gasping at the sight of the giant Russian and Palfrey. They went inside. There was no formality, no great evidence of panic. No effort was yet being made to pump out the ground-floor rooms, but a secretary in a black coat and grey trousers greeted them politely, and said that they were expected on the first floor.

Another secretary passed them along to the room where Kennedy was. He wasn’t alone. The Prime Minister, tall and grey and seeming oddly aloof, was standing by a window. There were other members of the Cabinet, and Kennedy, at a radio station.

The Home Secretary turned round. “Ah, Palfrey. What news?”

“If there’s any news, I hope to get it from here, sir.” Palfrey moved towards him, looking tired and drawn. “All the low-lying land is inundated, of course. The rest—” he shrugged. “It depends how much water there is, and how many of the
octi
exist.”

“This - this apple rot.” The Prime Minister spoke, sounding almost as if he were choking.

“I can give you information about that, sir,” Kennedy broke in. “We’ve now had five orchards examined in the worst of the flood areas. In several places, apples which have rotted through the
octi
have been found floating, sometimes actually on the trees. Several Kentish orchards and several in the Vale of Evesham have been found to contain apples and other fruit being rotted by
octi.
Districts in Wales, Scotland and the Lake district with mountain ash growing extensively have been badly affected. Specimens are being sent in from them all.”

Palfrey said: “All
octi
alive?”

“So far.”

The Prime Minister said: “We can fight a war, but we can’t fight a thing that won’t be killed.”

“There’s some evidence that potassium cyanide lessens the water content of the
octi”
Palfrey said. “All forms of cyanide and all acids will be tried as soon as the specimens reach the laboratories.”

“Can you— can you even begin to guess how widespread it is?” the Prime Minister asked.

“Yes,” said Palfrey, very quietly. He looked into a pair of tormented eyes; those of this tall, lean, graceful man who knew that he carried the burden of a nation on his shoulders. “I think water will cover most of England within a few days if we can’t stop it spreading.” Palfrey was studying a sheet of graphs. “We’ve already had small floods in the Pennines, more in the west of Scotland, some in the Cotswolds, Wales, Scotland. We ought to attack Ronoch Castle forthwith, but—”

“If we attack, Davos says—” the Prime Minister began.

Palfrey didn’t speak.

“Oh, I know what you think,” the Prime Minister said, “he’s probably stalled, probably fooled me. But he’s made another threat.”

Palfrey said softly: “Has he?”

“A radio message came in just now,” the Prime Minister told him. “Davos says that at the first sign of a raid he will destroy the Castle and the island, which holds the laboratory and the research station. If we’re to take the island, it must be by stealth.”

Palfrey moved abruptly.

“Any man as crazy as he is could mean it,” he conceded.

There was so little to say, less to do; the decisions weren’t his, and he thanked God for that. He had never been nearer to absolute despair as in the moment when he looked from Andromovitch to Kennedy, who was speaking into the telephone.

“Yes, that’s right,” Kennedy was saying. “Where did you find them? . . . Hampshire, near Winchester . . . How many rotted apples? . . . Seventeen, from nine different trees, yes, and others started . . .
What.”

He shot a swift, burning look at Palfrey, and brought a swift, piercing flash of hope which affected everyone else in the room as keenly as an electric shock. Palfrey and the Prime Minister moved towards him. Andromovitch kept still, others edged forward.

Kennedy said: “Just a minute.” He flicked a switch, and a moment later said: “Go ahead.”

A man’s voice came into the room.

“Right-ho. Three of the apples, taken off the same tree, were half eaten through, but there’s no sign of life in the creepie-crawlies. No apparent cause or explanation, either. The things had started to rot the inside of the apple, then dried up. They’re just little dry flaky pieces now, rather like rotten apple skin.”

Palfrey said: “How long will it take me to get to that farm?”

The orchard was small, and lay on the lonely road between Winchester and Stockbridge. About it was meadow land, with some cultivated fields. The little house where the fruit farmer lived was built of weather-boarding, with a brown tiled roof, spotted with lichen. The woodwork needed painting, but the garden was beautifully kept, ramblers clustered in a red, yellow and pink mass near the front door, dahlias grew tall and bushy. A little woman in the early thirties, with a four-year-old at her skirt and a baby in the dilapidated pram on the tiny porch. A policeman stood outside the door, looking very hot. There was no sign of water; in fact the grass was yellow and brown from the long summer’s heat, only the flowers and the vegetables in the garden at one side had been watered.

“Drought in the middle of the flood,” Palfrey said slowly.

The woman was staring at Andromovitch, unbelievingly.

“’Morning, sir,” greeted the constable. “Is it Dr. Palfrey?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Ogden’s over in the orchard, sir, with the Superintendent and Dr. Mallow. I’m to take you there at once.”

“Yes, thanks,” said Palfrey, and looked at the woman. From the room behind the porch there came the sound of music; a dirge which added gloom to disaster.

The woman was frightened; that showed in her eyes. All women were frightened; for themselves, their children and their men.

Palfrey smiled, gravely. “You know, Mrs. Ogden, I’ve a feeling that we might be able to stop these floods yet. I’m more hopeful now than I’ve been for some time. You haven’t had any here at all, have you?”

“We’ve hardly had a drop of rain since the middle of May,” said Mrs. Ogden eagerly, and the relief in her eyes was the second good thing of the day. “Jim was only saying that if we didn’t get some soon we’d have a winter drought, and in some ways that’s worse than summer drought. Do you
really
think—”

“I hope we’re through the worst,” Palfrey told her.

He moved after the impatient constable. The sun cast his and Andromovitch’s shadows past the man, crept gradually upon a hedge, then beyond to the apple orchard. It wasn’t large; there were perhaps two hundred trees, all of the dwarf variety, none so tall as the Russian. Some way off, the heads of three men could be seen; in a different spot, two police helmets showed. The fruit was not yet ripe, although here and there some apples were reddening; and two trees of Worcester Pearmains were ready for picking.

There was the sound of men’s voices.

Palfrey felt a sense almost of compulsion to stay away from the three men, to live in the hope that the news had given him, rather than risking killing hope. But he walked on, brushing a wasp away from his hair, hearing the buzzing as several circled round them. The usual country scene lay about him; fruit ready and more promised, warmth rising from the ground as well as coming from the sun. The smell of new-mown hay. The sight of fowls pecking among the trees, some way away from the first group of men.

Palfrey drew up.

“Good morning, gentlemen.”

The Superintendent might have been another Campbell of Scourie; big, florid, perplexed, perspiring. The police surgeon was a dapper man in the middle forties. Ogden was handsome and bronzed. He wore a blue open-necked shirt, and blue jeans; his dark, curly hair was cut short, his arms told of a brawny, hairy strength. He looked more puzzled than scared.

On a small folding table beneath one of the trees were several apples, partly rotted. The police surgeon picked up a magnifying glass as Palfrey introduced himself; there was a chorus of greeting, then: “We’ve sent some into Winchester, where the public analyst is having a go at ‘em,” the doctor said. “Can’t see anything offhand that’s responsible for the rot.”

“Hardly surprising,” Palfrey said. In a mood that was first cousin to fear, he took the glass. “Thanks.” He studied the apple, and saw with a sense of fierce excitement that there was no doubt that tiny
octi
had been here, even though they were dried up and wasted. The shape was clearly discernible.

A wasp alighted on the bench. Palfrey ignored it. He sensed that the other men were almost holding their breath, as if expecting the oracle to speak. He was no oracle, had never felt so dumb. Here were dead
octi;
here was a cause for tremendous hope, but – what had killed them?

He asked: “Any apples with live bacteria, do you know?”

“We’re searching the orchard,” the doctor said.

Palfrey smiled apologetically at Ogden. “You’d know if any trees have more brown blight than usual, wouldn’t you?”

“As I told them, there are two over in the corner going away I don’t like at all,” said Ogden in a deep, countryman’s voice; the broad vowels suggested that he came from Dorset. “This tree” – he pointed upwards – “and the one over there, they were the two that worried me. If the rot spread from tree to tree I could see myself with a mighty poor crop this year, and I depend on the apples, sir. Not that it seems to matter much, with the floods . . .”

Palfrey was looking up at the tree from which the dead
octi
had fallen. There were hundreds of ordinary, healthy looking apples on it; Bramley’s, he thought. Here and there, one had the brown rot. He peered at these, and saw that the rot was like the ones on the bench; was in fact dead
octi.
Somewhere in this orchard there was secret knowledge which might yet save—

A wasp alighted on the doctor’s hand. He shook it off, and then ducked as it circled about his head.

“Damned pest!” he said viciously. Obviously he was living under great nervous strain; perhaps his imagination was too vivid. He looked tired out, too. “I wish I knew how to exterminate them, if—”

He broke off.

Ogden said: “It’s been a bad year for wasps, Doctor, and they’re a nuisance just here especially – you’re nearly treading on a nest now.”

The doctor exclaimed: “What?” and darted away.

“Just a few weren’t trapped when I destroyed the nest and then sealed it up,” Ogden went on. “They keep trying to get in. It’s always the same. Had several nests near the house, and this was the first one we found in the orchard, Had to keep them down, because of the fruit,” he added, and shrugged. “Not that it’s much use, if you
could
find a way of exterminating them, Doctor, it would be worth a fortune to us fruit growers. Why—”

He stopped.

He was looking at Palfrey, and Palfrey’s expression made him break off. The others also looked at Palfrey. There” was something in his expression which brought tension into each of them; burning tension which made their muscles rigid. And Palfrey felt the palpitating of his own heart, felt that he could hardly breathe.

In a thin, strained voice he asked: “When did you destroy this nest, Mr. Ogden?”

“It’d be about six o’clock last night.”

“Underneath this tree?”

Ogden pointed to a spot where a new sod of earth had been put down; obviously he had located the nest, dug cautiously round it, and then put in the poison and filled the hole up so as to prevent any wasps from flying out.

“Right there,” he said, and swallowed again. “I had to go out last night to pick Mary up, that’s my wife – she and the children were at her mother’s, in Winchester. So I couldn’t leave it as late as I wanted to, I knew there’d be a lot of the devils outside, but most of them would be done for.”

He stopped.

Palfrey asked: “What did you use? Cyanide of potassium?”

“Why, yes! It’s legal, and—”

“Perfectly legal,” Palfrey agreed in that strained voice. “You put powdered cyanide of potassium down the hole, and poured in water. That right?”

“It’s the usual way.” Ogden was still on the defensive.

“Cyanide of potassium,” breathed Palfrey. “These rotted apples are all on the lower branches.” His eyes looked like fire. “Where was the cyanide stored?”

“In an old battery container,” Ogden said.

For a moment Palfrey didn’t speak.

Into the silence of the hot morning there came the sound of a man’s voice, raised quite calmly, and carrying easily across the orchard.

“You there, Super?”

The Superintendent started, shaken out of his preoccupation.

“Eh?” he muttered, and then realised what had been said, and raised his voice to a bellow: “Yes, I’m here, George! What is it?”

“Found the apples with the dry rot,” George called. “Fair teeming with maggoty things, they are.”

Palfrey said: “Ogden, have you some of that cyanide of potassium left in the container?”

“Why, yes, I— I always keep some. I—”

“Get it, please. And some water.” Palfrey’s eyes seemed to burn as the farmer turned and hurried away.

Under the magnifying glass the apples which were being rotted by the
octi
looked as if they were alive. Tiny little wriggling, writhing dots were inside the crust. The rot had started at the stalk, and seemed to have eaten the core and the inside of the apple away, leaving the skin whole but badly discoloured. On the tree there were a dozen other apples, all affected like it; and on the ground beneath the tree were
octi
by tens of thousands, so tiny that they were hardly visible to the naked eye but, under the glass, looked like a swarm of tiny ants.

Ogden came hurrying, breathless, with an old car battery containing the white crystals, a watering can, and two homemade masks, little more than thick gauze pads.

“Never like to. . . take a chance with the stuff,” he gasped. “It could kill—”

Chokily, Palfrey said: “It could save us.” He lifted a little of the lumpy white powder with a pair of tweezers, and laid it close to the rotting apple which teemed with the dreadful life. He put on a mask, lifted the watering can, and sprayed the apple.

There was a sharp, hissing sound as the cyanide turned to gas.

There was a little puff of visible gas.

There was sudden, deathly stillness in the apple.

Cyanide of potassium, after contact with a tiny residue of acid from the old car battery, destroyed the
octi.

The news was going out over the ether, on radio and television, within half an hour. It was being flashed by telephone and radio-telephone, on long and short wave, right round the world. All telephone lines were cleared, the air itself was cleared in every country, so that the authorities could use every means of communication for the one message. It read:

“It has now been established in England that the cause of the flooding which has created much alarm is a water-carrying insect called
octi.
It has also been established that these
octi
breed in all fruits and all berries, especially apples, bilberries and the berries of the mountain ash. They form what at first appears to be the common brown rot disease, but quickly change its character. The
octi
fall from the fruit and berries at a certain stage in development and then develop full growth very quickly. It has further been established that cyanide of potassium when specially treated and in gaseous form kills the
octi
instantaneously.

“It is therefore ordered in Great Britain under the Emergency Regulations, and strongly recommended in all other countries, that all orchards should be inspected forthwith for apples with any form of dry-rot; these apples should be sprayed with the specially treated cyanide gas, and the whole orchard sprayed, extensively.

“It is further recommended and is compulsory in Great Britain that a trench should be dug round any affected area – or even an area where infection is only suspected – to a depth of ten feet, and that this should be filled with water and sprayed with cyanide gas, so as to fumigate the ground.

“Prompt action along these lines will, it is believed, arrest the floods.

“Neglect or failure might extend the floods to new areas, causing further great material damage and heavy loss of life.

“In Great Britain, therefore, it has been declared an offence punishable by death to fail to notify the authorities of the presence of
octi.

“All military personnel will be assigned to the task of inspecting orchards, large and small, and gardens in the country and also in town areas. The police, Home Guard, Civil Defence Forces, all voluntary organisations are requested to concentrate on this one task: to search for brown rot and, immediately on finding the slightest evidence on any tree, apple, pear, plum, report it to the nearest police station. Emergency supplies of the required form of cyanide of potassium are in production, sufficient to meet the national emergency. Supplies will be distributed by all police stations and all military depots.

“The public is warned not to carry out the work themselves, owing to the great danger . . .

Men and women read this announcement over the radio continually. Men and women appeared on television to give it time and time again. Loud-speakers were set up in public places. Every radio shop broadcast the news and the message. At short intervals it was relayed by telephone to large factories, offices and residential neighbourhoods.

The whole of the country stirred.

And in the world beyond the flooded borders a similar great surge of activity began, to stem the flood of disaster.

The floods receded.

In Ronoch Castle, Woburn and Eve were standing together, in the Tower Room, when the first announcement came over the radio.

At first it sounded like another warning; another statement of impending doom. They had no hope left, except a chance to live and help to create the new world that Davos had seen with his dreamy madman’s eyes.

The calm voice of the announcer talked of stopping the floods.

Woburn said: “Listen!” and they turned and stared at the radio loud-speaker, built into the wall on the Castle’s diffusion system. With every word, the truth became clearer.

Eve’s eyes, dull and unbelieving, became feverishly bright. There was a moment almost of ecstasy. Woburn felt excitement coursing through him, and saw the way the news affected Eve. One moment they were standing in front of each other, utterly still. Next, their hands moved and touched; then they were in each other’s arms, laughing and almost crying with the new hysteria, of relief, of the knowledge that the floods would recede, that Davos could no longer survey a drowned world from the ark of his own madness.