The Stone That Never Came Down (17 page)

XX

“You! Kneller!”

The voice was as brutal as a blow from a club. Kneller and Randolph, who had been talking together in low tones close to the big window of the former’s office–rain-smeared like half-melted gelatine–spun around in unison to face the door.

“Gifford!” Kneller snapped. “What the hell do you mean by marching in here without an invitation?”

“It’s
Doctor
Gifford!” the intruder barked, and strode towards them, fists clenched. “Oh, I know damned well you think I’m a stupid son-of-a-bitch with no right to call myself a scientist–I know because I’ve overheard you!”

He realised abruptly that his hands were doubled over, and with a visible effort unfolded them and thrust them in the side-pockets of his invariable dark-blue blazer.

“Overheard?” Kneller repeated slowly. “Do you mean you’ve been–uh–bugging us?”

Gifford ignored that. He said, “But I wasn’t such a fool as you thought! Oh, you went to considerable lengths, you displayed considerable ingenuity … but it’s my job to smoke out traitors, and anybody with the wits of a jackass could tell you’re both traitors within an hour of meeting you!”

He was on the verge of ranting; tiny drops of spittle flew from his lips.

“What in the world are you talking about?” Randolph said.

“Your theft of VC!” Gifford blasted. “A theft of government property, what’s more!”

“What theft–?” Randolph said, but Kneller cut him short.

“I don’t know what you mean when you refer to ‘government property’! And I warn you,
Doctor
Gifford–since you insist on the title–that uttering charges of theft at random could involve you in a suit for slander, which I must confess would delight me. I should love to hear you explain in a court of law how you eavesdropped on private conversations, illegally under the Privacy Act of nineteen seventy-six, and decided to let fly with wild accusations because you heard yourself described as what you are!”

Planting his knuckles on his desk, he scowled at Gifford.

With intense difficulty the latter kept his answer down to a similar conversational level. He said, “Government property, Professor. On my recommendation, Mr Charkall-Phelps this morning signed an order requisitioning all stocks of VC wherever they may be located … under the provisions of the National Emergency Act, nineteen seventy-eight!” He straightened to his full height with an expression of triumph.

“I’m sure you thought you were being very clever when you aped Dr Post’s example and filched some VC from these labs. But you made away with so much of it!”

Randolph and Kneller exchanged meaning glances.

“I don’t know what use you have in mind for it,” Gifford went on. “But most likely you’ve been planning to sell it to the highest bidder. I know what you’re like when you’re crossed. I know how desperately you cling to what you think is rightfully yours, determined to milk it for everything it can yield! Regardless of what other people’s best interests may dictate!”

He glared furiously from one to the other of them. “It’s the plain duty of someone who makes an invention essential to national defence to assign it to the government! I say again,
the plain duty!
Not that you’d know what the word means without looking it up in the dictionary, would you?” He sniffed and turned down the corners of his lips.

“I think I know what’s happened,” Kneller said, his face reflecting the great light which had just dawned on him.

“What’s happened is that you stole at least a test-tubeful of VC from these labs and imagined that you could muddle the trail enough to fool me–me, the man with no right to call himself a scientist!” Gifford breathed heavily. “But I got on to you! I felt that breath of suspicion which people in my profession learn to respond to.”

“Your profession?” Kneller said from the side of his mouth, and without awaiting a reply continued to Randolph, “Arthur, the trustees of the Gull-Grant Foundation.”

“Yes. Eager to move us off this potentially valuable site.”

“And Washgrave Properties.”

“Ditto. Eager to buy.”

“And–uh–a certain cabinet minister?”

To that Randolph merely nodded. Gifford, infuriated worse than ever because his bombshell seemed to have left them more instead of less at ease, said sharply, “What are you going on about?”

“We just realised why Charkall-Phelps is so eager to shut us down,” Kneller said. “And was already before VC gave him the excuse. What use do you have in mind, Dr Gifford, for this site–assuming it’s habitable after the radioactivity has died away?”

Gifford blinked rapidly several times. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said at last. “But you know what I’m talking about. You admit you abstracted a quantity of VC in its substrate from these laboratories!”

“I admit nothing of the sort,” Kneller said promptly, and Randolph echoed him.

“Very well, we shall have to place you under arrest, and carry out the necessary tests to determine whether you have indeed illegally ingested VC.” Gifford shouted at the door; it swung wide, and two stolid-faced men walked in, while two more waited in the corridor.

“Warrant cards!” Kneller said.

They were duly produced; all four were from Special Branch, the department of the Metropolitan Police concerned with political offences and subversion, which alone of all the police forces in Britain has reported direct to cabinet level since its inception, with no intermediaries.

“You could, of course,” Gifford hinted, “avoid considerable indignity and discomfort by admitting where you hid the stolen VC …?”

“You,” Kneller said in a calm voice, “are completely and literally insane. Don’t worry, though. Nowadays treatment for your type of paranoia is–”

He drew back the necessary few inches to avoid a wild punch Gifford had aimed at his jaw, and glancing at Randolph shook his head sorrowfully.

“Really, it’s almost a law of nature,” he said. “Defectives of this type find their natural home in the service where suspicious temperaments are at a premium– Oh, really, Dr Gifford!” This time evading a kick with perfect aplomb; it would have hurt like hell if it had landed. “I’m sure this is not in accordance with the regulations you operate under, is it?”

“Heaven give me strength!” Gifford hissed.

“Not unless they’ve been substantially altered,” Randolph said. “I was offered a contract at Hell’s Kitchen once, you know.” He meant the biological-warfare research establishment at Porton Down to which Gifford had formerly been attached. “I recall the wording of the draft clearly, and it said nothing about kicking and beating people who by retroactive decision of the Home Secretary have committed crimes that aren’t actually crimes.”

“Precisely,” Kneller said. “Even if we did remove a quantity of VC for study away from the interference of Gifford’s henchmen, as director of this Institute I was quite entitled to do so, the VC being the property of the Institute.”

“It isn’t your property!” Gifford flared. “It’s a national resource! It could make the difference between our being wiped out as a nation, and our dominating the world again!”

“And,” Randolph said softly, “between you being fired for gross incompetence and sitting on the right hand of Lord Protector Charkall-Phelps when he enters into his kingdom!”

“Take them away before I kill them!” Gifford shrieked.

Puzzled, but obedient, the Special Branch men closed in.

“Bob, we’re back!” called Anne Campbell. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes, please!” Rising from the sofa in the living-room, laying aside the newspaper which, it seemed, he had been reading at the same time as he was watching an afternoon news-bulletin on TV. And four-year-old Elspeth hurried to say hello to him, three-year-old Fiona in her wake.

–I have to confess that when Hector said he wanted us to put up an international celebrity who’d had a breakdown … Well, I should have known better, I suppose. He’s invited lame ducks to stay before, and they all turned out to have some good reason for us paying special attention: that poet who dedicated his next book to us, that poor girl whose husband had nearly strangled her … And the children do like him so much!

As he entered the kitchen wearing the children like a collar and a wrist-muff respectively, she greeted him cordially.

“I ought to say how much I appreciate your hospitality,” he said as he accepted his teacup. “And tell you that I don’t propose to trespass on it any longer.”

“Oh, it’s been no trouble at all,” Anne said. And, after a brief hesitation: “You–ah–you’re going home?”

With a wry smile, Bradshaw said, “I don’t quite feel up to that for a while, to be honest. Since I’m on this side of the Atlantic, I thought I’d wander around Europe for a few weeks first. Go to Italy, perhaps.”

“You think it’s safe to go there at the moment?” Anne countered. “I mean, this military take-over they’ve had …”

“All the more reason,” Bradshaw said.

“I don’t quite see why.”

“Well, the only other visits I’ve made to Europe have been on business, you know. To make personal appearances, or to attend movie festivals–that kind of thing. But there are a few places I’ve always wanted to see. Rome, for instance. Venice. Naples. If I don’t go now, there–well, there may not be anything to see next year.”

“Do you really believe the crisis is that serious?” Anne whispered, after glancing to make sure that the children had wandered out of the room again. “Hector was asking whether I wanted to emigrate, you know. To Canada or New Zealand.”

“I saw an article in the paper I was just reading which says that emigration levels are at an all-time high,” Bradshaw said with a nod.

“Do you think …?” Her voice failed her.

“Do
you
think you should?” he countered.

“I–no. I don’t see why I have to! Oh, it may be sensible, but… It’s the kind of giant upheaval in my life that I want to decide about myself, not have imposed on me!”

“I think the vast majority of people would agree with you. Something’s very wrong, isn’t it, when you get a forced movement of population owing to something other than natural causes, like earthquakes, or floods?”

“Yes, terribly wrong!”

“And it’s started already …” He gazed past her, unseeing, towards the window; beyond it, there were shrubs whose branches carried the last greyish remnants of the recent snow. And beyond them again, houses where people could be seen going placidly about their normal business.

“Well … All hope is not lost,” he said, and drained his cup. At the same moment the front doorbell rang, and he rose promptly.

“That’ll be for me. I hope you don’t mind–I made some phone-calls while you were out, and I’ve booked a night flight.”

“But …” Anne had been going to say that he had no luggage for a continental trip; on reflection, it seemed like a very stupid comment, possibly insulting, and anyhow Fiona was eating something she oughtn’t to and required instant salvation.

“Was it a problem?” Bradshaw asked as he accepted what the man at the door had held out to him.

“Not in the least.” With a crooked grin. “If I can spring a villain from the toughest remand centre in Britain and see him safely away with a wife and four kids, I can pull almost any trick in the book. A forged American passport is nothing compared to what I’ve done already.”

He added a second item to the first. “And here’s your–ah–ration,” he went on. “Those capsules are identical with the commonest anti-diarrhoea remedy currently on sale here. I gave Harry the same thing. Nothing’s more likely to be taken for granted wherever you go.”

“Thanks. Anything else?”

“Best wishes.”

“Thanks.”

“Cis, are you okay?”

She had put her hands to her head and swayed giddily while reading a story-book to Toussaint. Valentine was busy mixing up substrate for VC in precise accordance with the instructions he had received from Kneller via Malcolm, pausing now and then to glance at the TV. A current-affairs programme was on, the usual ragbag mixture, and French troops had been shown mobilising along the Italian border.

–It’s going to be a close thing. If the French and Germans have really agreed to issue an ultimatum …

After a long moment and with infinite effort she said, “Val, I think I’ve been awarded the VC like you said I might.”

“Oh!” At once he abandoned his task; it wouldn’t suffer from the interruption. “Tous’ boy, bedtime–sorry! Cissy isn’t feeling too well. No fuss, hear?”

And there was none. Amazingly.

–Nor has there been, come to think of it, since Cissy arrived. There’s a problem here we shall have to sort out. Cis spent half her childhood raising younger kids; she got the knack by soaking it through her pores. When there are hardly any children, which has got to happen or well eat ourselves out of house and home on this planet, will we be able to …? Shit, of course we shall. Just to watch it happening once will be enough for a lifetime. I keep overlooking what VC can do, even though it’s happening right inside my head. And hers too, now.

He was shivering a little as he rejoined her, from awe.

“I’m okay, Val honey,” she said in a dull voice. “I just wish, though, you weren’t going away tomorrow.”

“Baby, I have to,” he murmured. “It’s important.”

“Sure, I know. But it’s going to be tough without you. I can stand remembering everything I know, but it makes me realise how many things I
don’t
know.”

He waited.

“Like–like why that buckra devil carved you. I don’t get it. Don’t see why he wanted to just ’cause you black. Not like the way I felt when we set out to even the score, you with me? Then I felt I got a purpose, a target I could reach. Even that wasn’t worth it, though. Because … Hell, he probably didn’t know why he treated us so bad, did he? We gave him his own back, and what’s come out of it is more hate. When we need less!”

She looked up at him with huge beautiful dark eyes full of hurt.

“Val, taking that box of candy to Lady Washgrave–did it do any more good than fixing that goddamned shopkeeper?”

“A whole lot,” Valentine said softly. “You saw the news. She’s in hospital, in a coma. Same as I was. Same as Malcolm. Same as Dr Post should have been, except he didn’t go sleep it off in time. Too high, maybe. Too sure the initial dose he’d already inhaled was cushioning him against–”