Cryptozoic! (20 page)

Silverstone's rather strained countenance relaxed. "Well, I was taken up
with her too. Women are my weakness, happily. Now, thank you for getting
me out of that room. Undo Howes and we will go."
"I tied Howes up for a purpose. He did a cruel thing to me, just to ensure
I was sufficiently overwhelmed to obey him without question. I'm not going
to be used as anyone's tool."
"We're all someone's tool. That's what society means. You're a very
emotional man, Bush, but we have no time for emotion just now. David Howes
is a vitally important man, and we must have him with us."
We're all someone's tool. . . . It was not a particularly lofty thought,
in Bush's estimation, but it was a way of making sense of human affairs.
One used and was used. He had used Ann. Howes had used him. He would use
Howes. He would use Silverstone.
Howes and Silverstone had power; they could gain more power. Back in the
present -- in 2093 -- they could help Bush if he would help them. He could
find through them the liberty to paint, to group, again -- he needed to
create as a sleeping man needs to dream. If his art was going to survive,
he had to give up some of the pettiness of being himself.
He stooped down and began to untie Howes, who was already opening his eyes.
As he fumbled with the knots, Silverstone said, "You may know there was a
coterie of intellectual exiles here in Buckingham Palace from our time.
I have explained my message to them and they have gone to disseminate it."
"Message? Have you gone religious?"
"My teaching. I wish Wenlock were here, now our quarrel is made up. Even
I can hardly grasp what I have discovered. It turns the world upside down,
quite upside down. We must mind as soon as possible."
"I can't go without Ann."
"I know. We need Ann. She will be back in a moment with my parcel,
which was left downstairs. How are you, Captain?"
Howes grunted. He sat up as Bush untied him, shook his head to clear it,
looked at Bush. "You know about Ann? That she's alive?"
Bush nodded.
"Sorry, Bush. Your uncertain temper was to blame. When you fired the
doctored light-gun at her, she threw herself down, and when I'd gassed
you I made her agree to pretend she was dead. It's about time you had
a shock. It might be good for your sadism!"
"You're sick!" Bush said. He turned away in disgust. Ann was hastening
along the corridor, a large plastic case under her arm. Silverstone grasped
the parcel; Bush grasped Ann. She smiled up at him, with a raised eyebrow
and an echo of her old distrust.
"Why did you do it?" he asked.
"You dare ask me that? Why did you shoot me? Don't answer! I know the
answer -- you don't trust me, you daren't trust me, because you daren't
trust yourself!"
He lied to her. "The gun went off by accident."
"You're lying! I saw the intention in your eyes as you pressed the button."
"I was mad with disappointment -- you know that! You know I thought you
were bringing back Howes to kill me. It was only because I loved you,
Ann, I went wild as I did!"
She dropped her gaze and said sulkily, "You don't trust me."
"We're all going to have to trust each other now," Howes said. "Because
if we don't mind out of here quickly, Grazley and his men will be on to
us again. We could shoot them out of hand where they lie -- perhaps Bush
would care to do it -- but I prefer to mind before they recover."
"Excellent idea, Captain -- though I think you are unfair to Bush. He pulled
us both out of the hands of the Popular Action party, and we owe him our
thanks," Silverstone said. "Now, I have my parcel: link arms and give
yourselves a shot of CSD. Hold the discipline in your minds, and let's
get away from this madhouse. We're going to mind back to the Jurassic,
all four of us."
"I thought we were returning to 2093," Bush said.
"You'll take orders," Howes said, producing an ampoule, rolling up his
sleeve, and pressing it into his arm.
"We have a little business to attend to -- someone to collect -- in the
Jurassic," Silverstone said, clearly trying to make up to Bush for Howes'
ill manners.
Bush shrugged. "I want to talk to you, Ann," he said in a low tone as
he also prepared to mind.
She said in a subdued way, "I don't want to talk. David's told me just
enough of the Silverstone undermind theory to daze me completely -- "
"Ann, let's go, please!" Silverstone said. "No talking.
Ready, Captain Howes?"
Howes had already linked arms with Silverstone. Now he caught Bush's
arm as Bush took Ann's.
"Let's go," he said.
Chapter 5
ON THE DECREPIT MARGINS OF TIME
Buckingham Palace: the savannahs of the Jurassic. There was little
difference between them for a mind-traveler in one important respect:
both lay eternally under the curse of silence, three-dimensional but
hardly accessible to any sense but sight. And no pterodactyls flew.
The four of them arrived together, and an immense tiredness settled down
on Bush. He looked with disfavor at Silverstone and Howes. The whole
roughneck episode in Buckingham Palace disgusted him, as he recalled
the good resolutions and feelings of godliness with which he had left
Breedale. Any attempt he made to participate in the events of the world
disgusted him; he needed silences and solitudes again, and reflected
cynically, "Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely." The meaning of
his weapon's failure to work was not lost on him.
They were standing by a slow-flowing river, the dull blue-green jungle
stretching behind them, while ahead lay plain and mountain. Nothing moved
but the river. The sky was full of rolling cloud-cover, as Bush always
recalled the Jurassic.
"We will continue with the plan we agreed on," Silverstone said.
"Captain Howes, if you and Ann will proceed and collect our other friend,
I will rest here with Bush."
"We'll get moving at once," Howes said. "You take a nap, professor.
You look as if you could do with one, too, Bush. We'll be back in two
or three hours, if all goes well."
Ann waved, and without more fuss she and Howes departed, walking with
the lethargic tread of someone still under the influence of CSD.
Silverstone began at once to unroll a light bed from his pack, advising
Bush to do the same.
"We are quite safe here. I chose this spot because it is a couple of miles
away from human habitation. The captain and Ann will collect someone and
then we make the rest of our journey."
"Professor -- I'm exercising some self-restraint because I realize I am
only a pawn in this game, but will you please explain to me whom we are
meeting now and where we are going next?"
"You're too preoccupied with little things, my friend. But -- so am I . . .
I keep worrying because I broke my wristwatch and don't know the time --
the time! A time! And yet I know every wristwatch is obsolete. I'm an
inconsistent man."
"So am I! Genius is inconsistent. Do you remember your childhood?"
"We must get some rest. But I will answer your first questions." He began
to unwrap the plastic parcel he had brought with him from Victorian times.
"You were an artist of some sort, weren't you?"
"I
am
an artist. You don't cease to be an artist!"
"Well, you stop manifesting it, shall we say?"
Bush looked for irony, but forgot what he was about as the panel emerged
from the parcel.
"We are going to meet the man who executed this. He will grasp my findings
when I explain them, seminally if not intellectually. It is necessary for
any new thing in the world to be interpreted to the public at large not
only through scientists but through artists -- that has been the eternal
role of the artist, and this man shows he is ideal for my purpose. Look
at this fine work of his."
Bush was looking. "It's a Borrow. He's great, isn't he?"
Without fuss, Borrow had established several areas of darkness in his
groupage, inter-related by motes of color which combined here and there
into dominant masses so presented that they might have been atomic nuclei,
Cities or stars; the scale of the whole being thus thrown in doubt,
other ambiguities could take on double or even treble meanings. Some
parts seemed rather coarse and ill-felt, but they were inseparable from
the whole, as if Borrow had here extended himself, thrown off the role
of the dandy, and tried to face simultaneously all of himself and all
of his world.
It was a groupage that appeared to Bush less perfect than the montages
he had inspected at The Amniote Egg, but infinitely greater; he knew
unhesitatingly that this was a later work to which the earlier ones stood
as preliminary exercises. This was Roger Borrow as late Turner, late
Kandinsky, late Braque, late Rellom, late Wotaguci. It was incredible
to Bush that the unfiery Borrow could have produced such a statement;
yet it had his friend's signature all over it, impersonal though it was.
And Borrow was coming back to join them with Ann and Howes . . .
He realized he had been staring at the work for many minutes. Parts of it
were, parts of it seemed to be, in slow contrapuntal motion; his attention
was drawn to the ominous grinding of human circumstance, to the measured
shifting of galaxies and protons, and to the time strata that gathered
like a ripening storm over his world. Now he looked up at Silverstone.
He didn't even want to ask where they were going when Borrow arrived.
"As you say, let's get some sleep, Professor."
The sound of voices. Ann stooping to touch his arm. He sat up. No time
seemed to have passed since he closed his eyes, yet his head was clear
again. Something had been happening in there -- his father had laughed
or his mother smiled -- but now he was able to occupy his consciousness
again; straightway, he remembered the masterpiece.
Pressing Ann's hand, he got up and went over to shake Borrow's hand.
"You've spoken for your time," he said.
"The Amniote Egg did it -- being tethered there, at the command of all
and sundry. I was made to find a means of self-expression."
"It's more than that. Ver told you it was more than that, I'm sure."
Borrow showed signs of wanting to change the subject.
I left Ver holding the fort," he said. "Norman Silverstone has sounded
the trumpet for adventure. It'll be new to me. I'm nervous as a kitten."
He looked entirely calm. As ever, he was neatly dressed, wearing an
old-fashioned two-piece, his pack slung nonchalantly over one shoulder.
A strange prophet of the new order, Bush thought -- whatever the new order
was going to be.
"We're all nervous, Roger, but at least the Jurassic's safer than the
Victorian Buckingham Palace."
"Don't bet on that," Howes said, breaking in on them. "It's live with
agents back at The Amniote Egg. We were certainly recognized, and it is
only a matter of time -- short time -- before they get organized and come
and sort us out. There's a price on Sllverstone's head."
"Then I must have something to eat," Bush said. "I'm starving."
"No time. Professor Silverstone, will you get us moving?"
The professor had woken as smartly as Bush, and rolled up his light bed.
As he came forward, Bush noticed how anxious he looked. He saw also
that the Dark Woman was back, standing some distance away, patiently
looking on. Stifling an impulse to know her, he reflected that she was
as inaccessible as the anima of his mind for which he sometimes took her.
Silverstone said, "Except for you, Mr. Borrow, we must all have CSD still
in our veins. Would you please inject yourself? I'm delighted you could
come. Will your wife manage The Amniote Egg without you?"
"Sure. She has a chucker-out to help her." Borrow was pressing an ampoule
into the artery in his left forearm and wasted no time on polite chitchat.
"You are going to be a sort of amniote egg for the times ahead of us --
you and Mr. Bush, I hope, with your united artistic talents. The human
race has to launch away from what was as definitively as the reptiles
launched away from the amphibians, and I hope you two will form a part
of the vehicle that effects the transformation."
"Captain Howes told me where we are going."
"Good." Silverstone turned to Bush. "Then you are the only one who is not
informed of my plan. Take Ann's arm -- Ann, you link with Mr. Borrow,
and you, Mr. Borrow, with the captain. I'll take your other arm, Bush,
and we'll go into the discipline together. We are going to mind to the one
place we can all reach where we shall be safe from rude interruption --
beyond the Devonian Era, as far as we can into the Cryptozoic."
"You know about the air change in the early world?"
"Indeed. We shall sink until we can only just breathe."
"Is that really necessary?" Borrow asked. "How about a remote stretch
of the Carboniferous? Good place, plenty of cover. The enemy can't comb
it all."
"I'm fully aware of that. But they can comb some of it, and I want no more
close escapes such as we experienced in the Victorian days. Captain Howes
is a military man; he can bear them, but I cannot. So, the Cryptozoic it is
-- and I fancy that if we run into trouble, other powers will provide."
He pointed a finger towards the Dark Woman, at the same time nodding
politely to her.
They linked arms, Bush taking care to clutch Ann tightly. He refused to
say anything, not only because he saw that Howes still nursed a grudge
against him and might make trouble, but because he had the firm belief
that he was stranded on a shore from which reality was receding like a
tide. Even the suggestion that some sort of artistic commission might
come his way had failed to move him.
All he could think of, as an automatic part of his mind rattled off the
relevant sections of the Wenlock discipline, was the idiotic simile his
father had once used to explain the ages of Earth to Mrs. Annivale: the
dial of the clock image, with the world being prestidigitated at midnight
and the wee small hours being filled with the dread volcanoes of creation
with hands dragging round the dial to the tune of everlasting rainstorms
and the quarters sounding in a bare room as magma seas rolled. Daylight
came, the alarm shrilled, stirring some peptic chains to motion under the
sleeping clouds. The long dull morning had worn on quite a pace before the
first teeth in the first mouths bit into the first flanks, and not until
time for elevenses did the sail-bearing pelycosaurs of the Permian drop
in for coffee. Only at a few seconds to midday did mankind show a leg --
at which time, according to the imagery, darkness fell and the whole
thing began all over again: except that in this particular revolution,
five of those leg-showing mammals were going to be fighting their way
back towards the dawn.