Contango (Ill Wind) (11 page)

“He’ll do it soon,” said Parceval.

Brown’s heart began to beat more quickly still, and then all at once
to ache with a peculiar and almost intolerable apprehension. His own son had
been killed like that—pioneering in the air in the early days of
flying. He called to mind that dreadful day before the War; and then he
called to mind the eager, smiling face across the table in the French
train—he saw it continually, that smile of such undaunted belief in
things that Brown was more than a little doubtful about. He thought as he
stood: “We are old men, Parceval, Mathers, and I; and we stay here,
safe and contemplative, watching that youngster risk his life.”

Just then something that looked like an elongated drop of quicksilver
detached itself from the tail of the aeroplane and began to slew round in a
wide circle. It moved at first too fast for Brown to see anything but its
shape and colour; but after a few seconds it swooped nearer to the
water-level and exhibited details of whirring propellers and fins that
glistened in the sunlight. “Like a baby Zepp, by Jove!” exclaimed
Mathers, trying to focus it in his binoculars. Then, in the midst of
seemingly effortless cruising, it checked its horizontal motion and all at
once plunged headlong. It was perhaps thirty or forty feet high when that
happened, and the dive took it just beyond the lake into a swamp at the
water’s edge, where it buried itself nose-foremost with only the
tail-propeller visible above the reeds.

“Come on, let’s get him out!” yelled Brown, and began to
run towards the scene, the others hastening after him. Striding up to his
knees in mud and water, he kept thinking: “He’s there, he’s
in that thing—it’s all my fault—it wouldn’t have
happened if I hadn’t met him on that train—I MUST get him
out—what CAN be happening to him all this time?”…

He and the workmen tore and tugged at the metal monstrosity for nearly a
quarter of an hour before they finally succeeded in dragging it to firm
ground. Then they prised open the small entrance door, which had jammed, and
pulled out a limp and huddled occupant. He was pale and unconscious, though
not visibly injured.

“Where’s an ambulance?” Brown cried to Parceval.
“Didn’t you think of having one ready? Damnation, man, tell me
where I can send to for one….”

But there was no need, after all, with the two cars at hand; and in less
than half an hour the youthful experimenter was being treated quite
satisfactorily in a nearby hospital.

That evening Brown, Parceval, and Mathers motored to London and dined at
Parceval’s town house in Belgrave Square. They had already received a
telephone message from the hospital to the effect that Palescu was suffering
from no more than shock and very slight concussion, and would doubtless be
quite well again in a week or so. Brown was mollified and relieved, but still
rather retrospectively indignant. The good news made room again, too, for his
own personal anxieties, the more so as Parceval hadn’t yet given him
any answer about the loan.

“Well, Parceval,” he said, when the servants had gone out and
they could talk freely, “I’m sure we’re all glad that the
boy’s all right. He’s had a lucky escape, and we’re lucky
too, I should say, in not being partly responsible for a tragedy. As for the
precious invention he risked his life over, it seems to be exactly what I
said—not of the least practical use.”

“No?” Parceval queried. “I thought myself it
wasn’t too bad for a pioneer attempt. After all, it didn’t drop
like a stone.”

“Small consolation HOW a man drops if he DOES drop. Personally, I
don’t see how you could ever expect people to trust themselves to such
a terrifying contraption, even if it were made to work properly.”

Parceval filled up Brown’s glass. “Well, I certainly admit
that Palescu’s gyrector doesn’t look like having many commercial
possibilities.”

“Then for heaven’s sake don’t let’s encourage the
fellow to run any more risks with it.”

Parceval turned to Mathers. “What do you say?”

Mathers agreed with Brown that there should be no more experiments if
there were definitely nothing practical to hope for from them, which he
feared was the case. “Unless, of course, the idea should be adapted to
some other sort of use.”

“Such as?” Parceval said quickly.

“Well… perhaps the landing of mails, for instance.”

“I see. I was wondering if by any chance you and I had been struck
by the same notion.”

“Come on, Sir George, let’s have it. Your notions are usually
sound ones.”

“This may not be a sound one at all. It’s completely up in the
air—in more senses than one.” Parceval half-smiled, and then
continued, speaking to Mathers, though it was on Brown that his beady,
heavy-lidded eyes were turned more frequently. “Briefly this. There may
be, as you hint, other uses besides the one our Roumanian friend seems to
have thought of. There may even be uses outside the world of commerce
altogether. Just let me put a hypothetical question. What would have happened
if that gyrector, as he calls it, had been filled with explosives, and
instead of coming clown into some soft mud in the middle of Essex had dropped
from three or four miles high on to the roof of the Bank of
England?”

Mathers and Brown spoke instantly and together. Mathers said: “I
don’t see anything very new in that—the Germans used aerial
torpedoes in the War, didn’t they?”

Brown exclaimed: “You mean if—if it had been filled with
explosives instead—of—of having a man inside it?”

Parceval shook his head to each of them separately and then jointly to
them both. “No. Not at all. I mean explosives and the man. The man to
steer, of course—that’s the whole point of the invention. You
see? You see, Mathers? Hardly something that even the Germans thought of, eh?
I think you’ll admit that it is a rather—novel—sort of
idea.”

After a long pause Mathers responded thoughtfully: “Yes, it’s
an idea, Sir George. By Jove, yes, it is an idea.”

Brown said: “Good God, what an appalling notion!”

Later, in arm-chairs in the long leathery room which Parceval called the
library, and with coffee and liqueurs before them, they discussed the matter
further. Parceval argued that it would be, on the whole, a very humane
weapon, since it would remove all necessity for promiscuous bombing of
defenceless cities. The gyrectors would be aimed unerringly at the objects
they were intended to destroy—docks, railways, government buildings,
and so on—not houses, hospitals, or crowded streets.

“And though, as you say, Brown, it means certain death for
the— er—the operator, in what way does that introduce any new
or especially dreadful element into warfare? Isn’t it common enough for
soldiers to face certain death? And it would be instantaneous, remember. No
suffering, no mutilations, no lingering for days on barbed wire. A clean
death, you may call it.” He paused impressively and lit a cigar. And
there was, he said, another thing in its favour. It had always seemed to him
that one of the most terrible features about war was the way it took toll of
the strongest and most virile among the world’s manhood. Wasn’t
it curiously obtuse that the survival of the fittest, nature’s harsh
but salutary law, should be reversed by civilised nations whenever they
fought in battle? “This development I’ve been trying to sketch
out would make for the redressing of that unfortunate balance.” He
spoke suavely, as to a company of invisible shareholders. “It would
give the physically second- rate man a chance to serve his country and
display heroism no less than the first-rate.”

It was at this point that certain troubled emotions in Brown, combined
with the undoubted fact that he had drunk too much, became articulate in the
guise of a rather macabre whimsicality. “Hear, hear,” he cried,
banging his liqueur-glass on the table-top in mock applause. “You make
a damn fine speech, Parceval. Call up the C3s in the next war! And then
we’ll have all the old ladies writing to The Times to complain of the
number of UN-fit men they see in mufti! But perhaps you’d organise your
suicide club on a voluntary basis? Let ’em all register in peace-time
and draw a dole and wear an armlet or something.”

“Well, if you MUST joke about a serious matter—”

Brown’s fingers suddenly snapped the stem of the empty glass he was
holding, and there was a pause while he muttered an apology and bound his
thumb, which had been cut slightly. Then he went on, more steadily:
“D’you really think, Parceval, and you too, Mathers, that a
fellow boxed up in a tin coffin is going to spend his last moments caring
whether what he hits is the right roof or the wrong one?”

“Why not? Is it any harder than going over the top? Or than a gun-
crew trying to register hits even though they know the enemy cruiser is bound
to blow them to atoms within the next half-hour?”

“Maybe you’re right.” Brown’s voice sank to a
whisper, then sharply rose as he added: “But, anyhow, I know what
I’D do if you were a brass-hat and I was a Tommy inside one of the
damned things. I’d steer it miles and miles behind the lines till I
found you and then chase you with it!”

Parceval smiled quite tranquilly. “You’re a humourist, Brown,
I can see. But the fact remains—and in this I’m quite serious,
even if you aren’t—that we have here something that may have
possibilities. MAY—I won’t say more than that. What we saw this
afternoon was, of course, little better than a fiasco, yet—”

“You’re not going to have that fellow risking his neck again,
surely?”

Parceval’s voice cut suddenly icy. “Not HIM, Brown, I promise
you that. Perhaps somebody else whom you’ve never met and aren’t
likely to worry about. You’re only a sentimentalist, you
know.”

“WHAT?” It was certainly the last accusation Brown would ever
have levelled against himself.

“A sentimentalist, I said. You’re also quite drunk, and your
thumb’s still bleeding, by the way…. Now listen to me. This invention
may or may not be capable of the adaptation I have outlined. The chance,
however, seems to me worth taking. What I propose is that we—the three
of us—should form ourselves into a small syndicate for its
development. You, Mathers, with your motor-factory, would be a great
help—that is, of course, if the venture appeals to you.”

“It does, Sir George. Decidedly, it does.”

“Good! But it isn’t all quite plain sailing yet. First of all,
we must buy out Palescu’s rights. We want to be absolutely fair to the
young man, but at the same time we must protect ourselves, and it will be
equitable, I take it, if we bid for what he has offered us—namely, the
rights of his invention as a means of landing passengers from aeroplanes. Any
other value it may subsequently acquire as a result of OUR efforts will
clearly have nothing to do with him at all—which is why we must
negotiate cautiously. I know what inventors are like—I’ve had
experience of them before now. Once our charming young friend suspects that
the War Departments of the world may be interested in him, he’ll begin
to fancy himself a Hiram Maxim right away. Nevertheless, as I said, we must
be scrupulously fair. What would you suggest, Brown, as a rough estimate of
the COMMERCIAL value of the invention?”

“I’ll see you damned before I have anything to do with the
business at all.”

Parceval’s lips tightened. “Very well. Then it rests between
me and Mathers. I’m sorry you feel inclined to miss the boat in this
affair, Brown. I should have thought you’d have been rather glad of a
chance to make a little spare cash just now. However—” He paused
meaningfully, and then continued: “I really don’t see why you
need be so cantankerous about it, anyway. There’s no particular reason
why you should join us if you don’t want to—I merely offered you
the chance because it was through you that I got into touch with Palescu, and
also because I wanted to put something good in your way. I can’t think
why you should be so bad-tempered about it.”

Neither could Brown. He could not have explained, at that moment, exactly
what was causing his mood of quite hellish exasperation. Was it the
cumulative effect of losing money, of becoming steadily poorer and poorer for
ten years? Was it the combine’s recently issued balance-sheet, which
had seemed more puzzling the oftener he sought to interpret it? Was it
Parceval, whom he had never liked, but who had never before stirred him to
such a pitch of mental and temperamental soreness? It was hardly likely to be
any scruples as to the ethics of manufacturing war material, since Brown and
Company had been doing this for years whenever they got the chance. Nor could
it be the prospect of a sharp deal with Palescu, for Brown had learned by
sufficient experience that if you did not outwit inventors they would
joyfully outwit you. None of these reasons separately could account for his
feeling, and yet all of them together might have induced it, plus something
else that was vaguer and hardly analysable—just a general awareness
that the world was rotten, hopeless, something to hold one’s nose over
while one made a business of scrabbling in the muck in search of… well,
what? Money?

And at that point Brown found himself yielding a bemused attention to
Parceval’s eloquence as he described the possible success of the new
enterprise. Profits—fabulous and unbogus, mystic entities that had
become almost as rare in the business world as strawberries in
January—dividends by the hundred per cent, orders that would reopen
workshops, concessions that would entice a trickle of gold from all the
corners of the earth. Rottenness festering in the sun and producing, for a
few who were lucky enough, this precious yellow flower. A world that could
refuse to buy such things as water-tube boilers and articulated compounds,
yet could not, because it dare not, decline the purchase of a new weapon of
self-destruction. The supreme, the Midas lure—something for which no
government would ever hesitate to tax, to starve, and to pawn. Helpless,
hopeless… and yet, what could one do?