Ossian's Ride (21 page)

Of course this concept wasn’t original. It must have been at least thirty years old. It was the second concept that I was more interested in. The concept of information as an entity in itself, the concept of information as a violently explosive social force. Put two or three hundred engineers, chemists, back in old Roman times and let them be given a chance to show what they could do! Within a decade or two they would have turned Roman civilization topsy-turvy and made a mockery of the apparently important issues of the time.

It was here that I came to the big problem. How came it that I.C.E. possessed this great block of new information, while the older industrial nations did not?

There was one solid argument in favor of the Earnshaw point of view. It was certainly true that the major industrial nations were spending only tiny proportions of their national incomes on acquiring the new block of information—on basic research, that is to say. In the case of the United States for instance, the amount spent was only one-thirtieth of one per cent. Earnshaw had been dead right about this.

Why should a nation drag its feet in such a way? Why should it refuse to press on toward the rich rewards that the second phase of industrialization would give? I believed I knew the answers to these questions.

Our ordinary ideas about social and economic stability depend upon new knowledge not being injected into society at too rapid a rate. Could it be that older industrialized nations, when faced by a choice between scientific advance and preserving a social
status quo,
all preferred the latter alternative? If so, this was certainly a big point in favor of Dr. Weasel’s opinion.

Even so, I couldn’t believe it to be the explanation I was looking for. Scientific advance at a maximum rate would cause one nation to forge slowly ahead of a less progressive nation. The gap between the two would widen gradually decade by decade; the gap would eventually become very great, but only after a generation or so. There would be none of the explosive advance of I.C.E. This could come only from a massive, sudden injection of a large volume of new information. From where? This was the rock on which I foundered whenever I tried to think the matter through to a conclusion.

Naturally I would dearly have loved to get back into the northern peninsula of Kerry. But this peninsula, together with the part of the southernmost peninsula west of Adrigole, was absolutely out of bounds, not only to me but to everyone else with whom I came in contact. This entirely confirmed my suspicion that much of what I wanted to know must lie with Mitchell and his friends. Try as I would, however, I simply could not pick up the track of these people.

It was a great temptation to try my former raiding methods. I thought of attempting to force a route through the mountains to the north of Dingle. I thought of taking a boat down the Ken-mare River and of sailing around Valencia Island and thence across Dingle Bay. I even thought of stealing a helicopter. But a moment’s thought showed all these ideas to be mere wildcat schemes. Such methods had proved exceedingly difficult even when I was outside I.C.E. territory, even when I was unknown to the I.C.E. security police. Now that I was obviously under close watch—as the incident of the
Astrophysical Journal
plainly showed—it would be outright nonsense to try any more cloak-and-dagger stuff. The moment had come for sheer logical reasoning.

As far as material considerations were concerned, I had no cause for complaint. I had a very pleasant apartment in Caragh. I was able to get a quiet cottage in Ballinskelligs Bay, to which I often went down at week ends.

I made many acquaintances but no real friends during the three months before Christmas. It was quite staggering to find everyone wholly incurious about the underlying organization of I.C.E. The general disposition was to follow the statements expressed to me by Earnshaw. Beyond this, nobody seemed to care. Why be curious when one is onto a good thing? Why dissect a goose that is laying eggs of gold?

Or was there a more sinister explanation? It seemed rather unnatural that none of the young fellows of about my own age seemed in the least bit worried about the logical problem that was plaguing the life out of me, the problem of what was really at the bottom of this I.C.E. Moreover, it was quite clear that nobody was being allowed to talk with me too much. I would strike up a short friendship with someone—we might spend a couple of week ends together, perhaps in the mountains or by the sea—then invariably the man would be shifted to some other job, or he simply wouldn’t turn up for an appointment. This happened time and time again, and, although I was angry at first, I eventually came to accept the situation. I had done all I could to reach Caragh, and it was obviously no good fussing now that I was there.

I remembered the remarks of the true canon, the ones about the I.C.E. medical service. Was it possible that all these people around me had been conditioned in some way? I looked carefully at the work of my young colleagues. Was it more competent than original? Frankly, I was too inexperienced to be sure, but more than experienced enough to be suspicious. At all events I was glad that my health was good. I resolved to give nobody the opportunity of shooting any drugs into me.

My one weak spot was food, not eating too much, but that I had to eat at all. I was at pains to think of a plan that would make it exceedingly difficult for anyone to tamper with my food. I made a rigid rule that I would take all my food and drink from large-scale self-help restaurants. I never took any dish that wasn’t on display and that wasn’t reasonably popular, for it was most improbable that a large number of people would be dosed with some noxious stuff just to get hold of me. And I made the situation much more complicated by varying the places where I ate and the timing of my meals in a random fashion—I got some slight amusement by using the non-recurring decimal representation of
π
to make my choices, two digits for each meal.

There was one exception to the disruption of incipient friendships: a young fellow called Womersley persistently kept inviting me out to dinner. Although I had no hesitation in refusing him, I managed for a time to make reasonably polite excuses. When, however, in the face of this discouragement he still kept on, I decided at last to avoid further embarrassment by putting the matter to a test. This really was a mistake, even though I managed to win the first round without difficulty.

I met Womersley, a tall pale fellow of about twenty-eight, one evening in early December. We drove in his car to a restaurant about three miles outside Caragh. As I expected, hors d’oeuvres, salmon and cold meat dishes were on display, so it was not at all awkward to get past the first courses of the dinner with reasonable safety. The sweet and the coffee would be altogether another question, however.

Womersley droned on about the merits of the wild duck he was eating. I answered by saying that the only dish I would have preferred to the salmon would have been curried mutton. The point was lost on him, however, since he was obviously no student of the great Sherlock Holmes. Before choosing my salmon I had left Womersley for a moment to make a telephone call to the Caragh Information Office. I asked the office to call me back in half an hour with some tolerably complicated information about vacant cottages in St. Finan’s Bay, and I gave Womersley as my name.

My companion ordered chocolate ice cream and coffee, and I did exactly the same, hoping that my timing would be reasonably accurate. I was lucky. I kept Womersley talking for a couple of minutes after the waiter had brought the order. This was sufficient. The man came back with the news that Dr. Womersley was wanted on the telephone. I interchanged the ice creams and coffee.

Womersley was bound to be suspicious, if he wasn’t the simpleton he pretended to be. I might possibly have been spotted changing the sweets, although I did this pretty quickly and our table was fairly well out of view in a corner. These considerations didn’t trouble me very seriously, however, for Womersley must now eat the sweet unless he wanted to make an issue of it. And somehow I didn’t think he would dare to make a fuss. My impression is that he was under orders to be discreet in public at all costs. Anyway, he ate the ice cream and drank the coffee—not quite all the coffee, I noticed.

I insisted that we return to my apartment, since I preferred drinking my own brandy to risking Womersley’s. We started a game of chess, probably the strangest I have ever played, both of us expecting the other fellow to fall sick. I studied Womersley’s face carefully as he made his moves, and he for his part stared at me as I made mine, which I did quickly.

The transition was amazing. One minute the man was studying the board, the next he was staring at me, his face contorted with an odd mixture of anger and apprehension.

“You tricky bastard,” he yelled. “You’ll get yourself fixed good and proper for this.”

Then he jumped up and made for the door, but I seized him by an arm and spun him quickly into a chair. I noticed little drops of perspiration on his forehead. He tried to get up but I pushed him back.

“I must get to hospital. Don’t you understand?”

“I understand all right. You’ll get to hospital in good time. But first I want to know who put you up to this business.”

“I don’t know.”

“Stop playing the fool. Who was it?”

“I don’t know. I tell you I don’t know,” he moaned.

The drug was taking effect at an alarming rate. I suppose it would have served the man right if I had kept right on bullying him, but his distress was now so obvious that I simply couldn’t bring myself to persecute him any longer. I rang the hospital and told the Duty Officer that Thomas Sherwood was sick.

It took very little time indeed before a doctor arrived, a man I would say in his late thirties, to my eye not a very pleasant fellow. He marched into my apartment, asking, “Where is he?” in what I took to be an unctuous tone.

“You had better go downstairs,” he added. “There will be an ambulance in a minute or two. You can show the men where to come.”

Without going out of the apartment, I slammed the outer door. Then I tiptoed back to the living room. The doctor was injecting something into the wretched Womersley. The faint groans died away, and I heard the man say, “Well, well, Mr. Sherwood, quiet at last! Now we shall see what we shall see.”

Then I saw red. I took hold of the fellow and slammed him really hard against a wall.

“May I introduce myself. My name is Thomas Sherwood.”

“But ... I thought,” he stuttered.

“You thought that this silly fellow here was Thomas Sherwood. You know you medical people are so full of your drugs and needles that you seem to have no idea of how unpleasant a physicist could be if he were so minded. I might get you to eat a little boron, for instance.”

This took him by surprise. “But boron isn’t ...”

“Boron isn’t a serious poison in small quantities? It would be after exposure to a moderate flux of neutrons, my nasty little man. I’d take you where the neutrons wouldn’t hurt me very much, but where they’d cook the insides out of you.” Then I grabbed him again and slapped him hard with my open hand.

Was I getting as bad as the wretched Tiny? No, I think not. This whole affair smacked of concentration camps and secret police. But something really had to happen now. I.C.E. Security simply could not take this incident lying down. Besides the cards were on the table, and discretion was no longer of much importance.

Just as once before in Marrowbone Lane, I made my plans in a flash. I was out of the apartment in an instant. The ambulance attendants were still in the road outside the building. I told them to go up to Apartment 619. My first intention was to drive away in the ambulance, in some respects an ideal vehicle to escape with. But then I realized that Womersley might be really ill; it might be important to get him to hospital quickly. The drug had certainly acted with an astonishing swiftness, perhaps indicating a serious overdose. I decided to get away by bus to Killarney and thence on foot.

This might appear a wholly precipitate change of plan, but I had long ago made up my mind about the terms on which I was prepared to carry on the fight against I.C.E. I was willing to do what I could single-handed against this powerful organization. I was willing to be jailed; I was even willing to take a severe physical beating, but I was not willing to risk any change in my personality. I am an unrepentant sinner. I would prefer to go to hell as I am, rather than go to heaven as I am not.

It would be the best part of an hour before the bus left, so I dropped into a fairly crowded café. I would then be far less likely to be picked up than if I spent the hour standing around at the bus station. I was shown to a table where a man was eating a sandwich and drinking coffee. I wasn’t hungry, but for the sake of appearance I also ordered coffee and a sandwich.

The best plan seemed to be to cross the frontier at the place I knew so well in the Boggeragh Mountains. The whole nature of the frontier defenses made it much easier to get out than to get in. I thought that if I could get as far as Killarney I would have a sporting chance.

Suddenly I realized that the man at my table was studying my face rather intently.

“I wouldn’t try it,” said he.

“You wouldn’t try what?”

“I wouldn’t try making a getaway on one of the buses, on the one to Killarney for instance.”

Then he laughed in my face. “You haven’t got a chance, my boy. I followed you right from Building J.” Superfluously, he went on. “As soon as I saw where you were heading, I slipped in here ahead of you, and told the waitress to show you to my table. Very simple, eh?”

“Commendably so. If you need any recommendation for promotion I shall be happy to act as a referee.”

“Shall we be going, or would you like to drink your coffee first? I need hardly say that it would be quite pointless to make any attempt to escape. We have you surrounded, and the roads can be blocked at a moment’s notice.”