The Plague Dogs (51 page)

—how long have all those people been up there, Rowf? What a—"

"I don't know. I only looked out myself just now. We've -never seen anything like that, have we?

What are they all. doing and what do you think it means?" I "Such a lot of them!"

I A mile away, on the opposite side of the Moss, the fridge of the Dow Crag was covered with human figures, black against the sky. Some were standing still, while Ipthers could be seen moving along the undulant top, trail-ling down towards Goat's Hause and thence out of sight Ifbeyond the brow.

Rowf growled. I- "I can hear them talking—can you?"

"Yes—and smell them—clothes, leather, tobacco. I was I afraid yesterday—I said, didn't I?—I was afraid they'd come: but I didn't think there'd be all those."

"Do you think they're looking for us? They're not farmers, are they?"

"No. They look more like the sort of people I remember my master talking to, in the old days.

There are women up there, as well as men. They all seem to be peering over the edge, look, and some of them are going down where—to where the man was.''

"I'm hungry," said Rowf.

"So am I; but we can't risk going out now. We'll have to wait—wait—what was I saying? The tod said—everything's so confused—the garden—oh, yes, we'll have to Ijpiit till—till it's dark. They mustn't see us, not a mouse."

"Starve, then," said Rowf, scratching his staring ribs against the rock wall.

"We've done that often enough. Getting easy, isn't it?"

A drizzle began to fall from the clouds drifting up Dunnerdale from the west. In half an hour mist had blotted out the mile of moss and fell lying between the sightseers on the Dow Crag and the watchers in the cavern. Rowf stretched, and shook himself.

"Hope they get wet. It might be worth going across there tonight, when they've gone. A crowd of people like that's sure to have left some bits of bread or something. But we'll have to take care. There might be men still watching.

' They hate us, don't they? You said so."

Snitter, staring into the blown rain, made no immediate answer. At last he said slowly, "I—

know. And yet—I don't understand. My—my master's out there somewhere."

"What on earth d'you mean? Talk sense, Snitter! Your master's dead—you told me so. How can he be out there?"

"I don't know. The mist blows about, doesn't it? I'm so tired of it. I'm tired of being a wild animal, Rowf."

Snitter ran outside, lapped from a shallow puddle in the turf and sat upon his hind legs, begging.

"The gully in the shed floor—the lady with the gloves. It's all different since the second man died, and the poor tod. I must have dreamt the tod, because I saw him—after he'd gone—they tore him to pieces. It's the mist that makes everything so confused. And the tod said something very important, Rowf, that I was to tell you, but I've forgotten—"

"That's a change," said Rowf brutally. "Listen! Isn't that the sound of a man's boots? No, somewhere over there. We'd better get a good long way back inside. This is no good, is it? We shan't be able to go on like this—not for long."

FROM SNACKET J. MOREE, THE WONDER KING

Twenty-Seven Eighty-Four, Okmulgee Oklahoma 74447 Dear Sirs, I am a promoter and exhibitor of wide experience and distinction, having worked in this profession for many years in three continents and now sole director of the celebrated Three Continents Exhibitions Inc. I enclose a brochure relative to the work of this company, from which you will observe that its exhibits have been tributized by the Sultan of Nargot, President Amin of Uganda and others of worldwide note and fame. Exhibits during the last five years include the triple-breasted priestess of Kuwait, "Doghead" Slugboni, a former associate of Al Capone, and Mucks Clubby, the boy evangelist who at the age of eight convinced thousands in Texas that he was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. These are only a few of the high-class exhibits characteristic of world-famous Three Continents service to the public. It is my view that the

"Plague Dogs" would constitute an exhibit of superior quality and on the assumption that they are still legally the property of your Research Station I am I prepared to offer four thousand dollars for their outright purchase in good condition. Please wire your reply or if you prefer call collect to myself at the above address. Trusting to I talk to you soon,

Best, Snacket J. Moree (The Wonder King).

"We're going to be inundated with this sort of thing and Jail manner of other rubbish, I dare say," said Dr. Boycott, [endorsing] a direction at the foot of the letter and throwing it into his OUT tray.

"I don't know why that should have come here. It should have gone straight to Admin., i, and they're welcome to it."

"I've had two or three loopy phone calls this morning already," said Mr.

Powell. "We really need someone put to deal with that sort of thing until public interest dies down a bit. It's such a fearful interruption to work, you now."

"I'll mention it to the Director," replied Dr. Boycott, "but I can tell you now that we're not going to get anyone Mttra just at the moment. You know the Secretary of State's called for an urgent memorandum listing practicable deductions and economics throughout the station—apparently he intends to give some sort of undertaking in fhis speech in the debate tonight.. There'll probably be drastic changes both in work and staff. Goodner'll be almost certainly, but that's very much for your ear just at the moment."

' I see," said Mr. Powell. "Anyway, chief, can you Countersign this report on the kittens experiment—the tang-worm infections? That was what I really came in for.''

I'm afraid none of the experimental forms of treatment were successful; and most of the subjects died, as you'll notice."

"Oh dear," said Dr. Boycott, reading. "What a shame! 'Death of almost entire group'—h'm

—'preceded by'—h'm, h'm—'excessive salivation, impairment of locomotion and vision, muscular twitchings, panting, respiratory distress, convulsions'—how disappointing! Are the experimental treatments concluded now?"

"'Fraid so, for the time being. They've all been given a very fair trial.

Davies says it would be pointless to continue without further consultation with Glasgow, and anyway we haven't any kittens left, not until next month. That's why I've completed a report at this stage."

"I see," said Dr. Boycott. "Well, it can't-be helped. Anyway, more painful matters seem to be looming all round just at the moment. What about the monkey, by the way? How long has it done now?"

"Forty and a half days," replied Mr. Powell. "I believe it's going to die. I wish—I wish to God

—"

"That's very unlikely," interrupted Dr. Boycott swiftly, "if it's been fed and watered in accordance with the schedule. But obviously it's the worse for wear. You must expect that. It's a social deprivation experiment, after all."

"Rowf! Rowf—the rhododendrons, can you smell them?"

Amid the stirrings of glabrous leaves and the glitter and hum of summer insects, Snitter recognised with excitement the old, familiar spot where his body had made a hollow in the peaty soil.

Rowf, awake instantly, bristled, sniffing and peering in bewilderment and darkness.

"What? What do you mean?"

"That damned cat's been here again, too. I'll cat it! Til it chew its tail off, you see if I don't!"

"Snitter, lie down! Go to sleep."

"I'm going to, don't worry, When the sun gets round just a bit more it strikes right in here, do you see, between those two branches? I tell you, it's the most comfortable place in the whole garden.

I'm glad you're here too, Rowf: you’ll like my master; he's a really good sort,"

Snitter wriggled carefully along the shale, flattening his back to squeeze under one of the stouter branches.

"The leaves flash in your eyes, don't they, when they catch the light? Used to make me jump now and then, until I got used to it."

And now it really did seem to Rowf that they were both surrounded by a grove of dark-green leaves, cemuous on their short, tough stems; by brown, fibrous, peeling branches and great speckle-throated, rosy blooms. Yet all these he perceived as figmentary and as it were in motion, present while forever slipping away in the edge of the nose and the tail of the eye, superimposed upon the shale and the rock walls, covering them as a shallow, flowing stream its bed; or still more insubstantially, as smoke from a bonfire drifts over the trees and bushes of a garden. His hearing, too—or so it seemed—

had become clouded; nevertheless a faint, sharp call, like an audible recollection of a human cry rather than the sound itself, came to his ears from a distance and he jumped up, turning towards the cave-mouth, where moonlight and stars showed faintly luminescent beyond and outside the ghostly den of foliage.

"That's only the paraffin man," said Snitter, settling himself comfortably. "He usually comes round about now. Can't you smell him and his van? Fairly stinks the place out, doesn't it?"

A spectral odour of paraffin stole through the vault, indistinct yet undeniably present, like the twinking of bats at twilight. Rowf trembled where he crouched. His very senses seemed outside his own body. He heard a car pass by, over the curve of the world and down the other side. Above him an invisible flock of starlings flew cackling on their evening way, an impalpable bluebottle settled on his ear, and always the long, oval, glittering leaves nodded and rustled about him.

"Here he conies," whispered Snitter gaily, "out of the door, look, old brown coat, scarf and all.

On his way to poke some paper into the red box, you bet!

Look—no, through here—see him? Come on, let's give him a surprise!"

But now Rowf could perceive nothing. There was only the glimmer of the rocky wall and something like a bank of mist blowing nearer and nearer across a desolate, windy field.

"Here he comes!" said Snitter again. "Can't see him now for the bushes, but you can hear him, can't you? He'll go right past us in a moment."

Rowf turned his head, trying to catch a glimpse of the approaching footsteps crunching on the gravel with a sound faint as that of blown leaves.

"O tallywack and tandem!" whispered Snitter, quivering with mischievous excitement. "Here we go! You can jump the gate all right, can't you? It's not a high one, you know. Don't be nervous—he always loves a joke."

The mist enveloped Rowf completely. He lay tense in a directionless, scentless obscurity where there was neither up nor down, a void in which a raindrop would become lost on its way from clouds to earth. He opened his mouth, but no sound came forth to break the windless silence.

Suddenly Snitter's body struck violently against his own. He fell to one side and found himself struggling and kicking on the floor of the cavern. "Rowf! Oh Rowf, it's the huntsman, the huntsman with his red coat! They've torn the poor tod to pieces! They're coming! They're coming!''

As the spare, bent-kneed huntsman came panting through the rhododendrons, knife in hand, Snitter tried to burrow under Rowf's flank and then, in frenzy, bit him in the haunch; a moment after, he fled yelping out of the cave, away from the smoke-breathed, shadowy hounds bounding into it through the cleft in his head. By the time that Rowf, cursing and bleeding, had picked himself up and followed him outside, he had already reached the upper end of the tarn. When sheer exhaustion brought him to a halt at last by the beck above Long House Farm, he did not at first recognise Rowf, turning on him, as he came up, with bared teeth and white, staring eyes. Rowf, still half-stupefied by the illusion which he had shared and by his two-mile pursuit of Snitter down the hillside, dropped, panting, on the other side of the beck, and after a time Snitter came hesitantly across to him, sniffing him over like a stranger, but saying nothing. Little by little—as though his sight were clearing—he returned to the surrounding realities of night, of the fell, the chattering beck, the clouds and starlight; and an hour later the two got up and wandered away together, refugees without destination or purpose, except never to return to the cavern.

Thus it was that when, on the following afternoon, a section of No .7 Platoon, B Company, 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, patrolling the southern and eastern faces of the Grey Friar, entered and searched the old coppermine shaft, they found no more than either No .9 Platoon, patrolling the Goat's Water area, or No .10 Platoon, searching from Walna Scar across to the fellside north of Dow Crag. The mysterious Plague Dogs had vanished once again.

CONFIDENTIAL To: The Director, A. R. S. E.

Your confidential instruction, reference KAE/11/77, of yesterday's date, relating to and covering a copy of the Secretary of State's personal letter to yourself about the necessity of effecting, as an urgent and immediate matter, reductions in expenditure throughout the station, asks heads of sections to submit two reports by close of play tonight: the first to deal with experimental work and projects (both

"going concerns" and those "in the pipeline") which can practicably be either deferred or dropped altogether; the second with feasible reductions in staff, either by transfer to other scientific establishments or alternatively by outright dismissal. This report deals with the second of those matters.

It is recommended first, that it would be both prudent and practicable to dispense with the supernumerary post of "assistant" to Tyson, the livestock keeper and shed warden. This "assistant" is a local school-leaver of sixteen named Thomas Birkett, who was engaged more or less casually last August on the suggestion of Tyson himself. The post is surplus to establishment and this in itself may be felt to constitute a good and sufficient reason for terminating it forthwith, since it might well come under criticism in the event of station staffing becoming subject to any kind of independent examination from outside. In addition to that consideration, Birkett has not shown himself, during the few months he has been here, to be much of an asset, and il seems doubtful whether even Tyson would be likely to put up much resistance to his departure. The matter has not, of course, been mentioned as yet to Tyson, but I will discuss it with him if the proposed dismissal is approved. It will be appreciated that one effect of retrenchment throughout the station will be to diminish Tyson's work, and the departure of his "assistant" could undoubtedly be justified to him on those grounds.