The Touch of Death (14 page)

The flash came—

From that moment a storm seemed to burst upon the town; flash after flash came as the victims and the cat fell upon each other, and as they touched, spread death. Still racing, the cat turned into a cinema and disappeared.

Soon two or three terrified people rushed out – only to stop and stare at the scene of desolation, at dying people; and to see the flashes.

Then a man's voice sounded above a car engine: “
Don't touch anyone, don't touch, don't touch!
”

It was Bruton.

“
If you touch them you'll die, don't touch—
”

 

 

The screen went dark and the sound faded, but there was no real silence; only a kind of muttering, almost a gibberish. Then a light went on, its glow spreading and brightening, and gradually Banister felt that he was drawn away from the horror of what he had seen. He didn't move.

The others stood up. He recognised Klim – and a moment later, Anak. Everything he had thought about Anak on the screen was justified. There was a strange perfection of feature, a kind of aggressive handsomeness which went far beyond that: he seemed the personification of power, as if he knew quite well that no one in the world could compete with him.

Banister thought, even then: “A self-made
god
.”

Two men half-lifted, half-dragged a third from his seat. The third man was elderly, grey-haired, dressed in dark clothes, an ordinary lounge suit. His eyes were closed; he had fainted. His face would have been unknown to Banister an hour before.

It was the man who had been taken away from the house in the Cotswolds; the prisoner whose capture had led to the horror that they had just seen.

Rita was pulling at Banister's arm. He got up. The old man was taken out. The others waited near the door. Banister felt the gaze of the man named Anak on him; the gaze of the Leader. The eyes were dark, and yet they glowed. There was no expression—

Ah!

That was the thing that was wrong about him, and in a lesser degree, it was wrong with Klim. They talked and behaved naturally, but they did not look natural. Their faces might have been carved out of some kind of stone; and every time they spoke or opened and closed their eyes or turned their heads, it was as if it were being done by a puppet-master who held invisible cords.

But these men were real.

“Anak,” Klim said, “this is Banister.”

“So I imagined,” Anak said.

His voice was accentless and without expression; like his face. It was deep and not unpleasant. There was an edge of sarcasm in it, almost as if he were saying to Klim: “Whom else do you think I would expect to find here?” He looked Banister up and down, not insolently but in a way which would have been insolent in any other man.

“Did you learn the lesson, Banister?” he asked.

Banister didn't answer.

Anak frowned; that was little more than a movement of his thick, black eyebrows

“Did you learn the lesson?”

Rita touched Banister's arm; as if by accident. Actually, she was pleading with him to answer; she was desperately anxious, or pretended to be, that he should not displease the Leader.

He said: “If you mean did I see the power of the
fatalis –
yes.”

“That is what I meant,” Anak said. “I understand that you have shown no grasp or understanding of scientific matters. Does that mean you only pretended to be a scientist?”

What purpose was there in lying now?

“Yes,” Banister said.

“How is it you are immune from
fatalis?
”

“It's a natural immunity.” Banister felt his heart thumping. “I discovered it when I picked up the—” he hesitated, then decided to tell the truth—”the real Monk-Gilbert.”

“I think that is true. Our tests showed none of the blood and body content we would expect to find if you had been treated with an immunising agent.” Anak turned to Klim. “You see, Monk-Gilbert was killed.” To Banister, he said almost casually: “Why did you go about with a false Monk-Gilbert?”

“We hoped to find a source of
fatalis
.”

“Did you?”

“Yes – in New Zealand.”

Anak looked at him intently. Banister felt his heart thumping fiercer because of fear that he would not be believed.

Then Anak said abruptly: “We will go and talk to Morris-Jones.”

 

The scientist lay slumped back in a chair; he breathed through his open mouth with a faint whistling sound. He had a long, lean face with thick lips and a long chin. Near-white stubble bristled on his chin and cheeks. He wore a stiff collar, two or three sizes too large for him, and a black tie.

He looked very tired.

His hands looked old and somehow helpless as they drooped from the arms of his chair.

“I don't think Morris-Jones will give us more trouble,” Anak said. “He has been very difficult. It is important that we should know what he has found out.”

“Of course,” said Klim.

“Perhaps Banister can help us,” Anak said. He turned to Banister, as Rita held a glass towards him. He took it, but didn't drink. “Thank you, Rita. Banister, did you know that Morris-Jones was working on an insulating drug, to be injected into the bloodstream, to protect humans against the effect of what you so aptly call
fatalis?
”

“I knew someone was working on it, I didn't know who,” Banister said.

“Do you know how far they'd got?”

“Not. far.”

“Can never be
quite
sure with Palfrey,” Anak said musingly. “He is sometimes more clever than we think – he gets results, doesn't he? Anyhow, Morris-Jones will tell us just how far he succeeded. I can't believe, I won't believe, that it is beyond the experimental stage, even if Palfrey has found an insulating agent.”

His gaze fell on Banister again, hot with suspicion.

“
Are
you naturally immune? Or did Palfrey find a way—”

“Listen,” Banister said, “I touched Monk-Gilbert, carried him over my shoulder, before I'd ever heard of Palfrey. Palfrey wanted to use me because I was immune. Nothing else made me valuable to him.”

To his surprise, Anak was smiling faintly. “That agrees with what we know of you,” he said mildly. “Now I believe that the laboratory at Morris-Jones's home was destroyed, but Palfrey might well have had someone else working with him, keeping in touch by telephone, perhaps, or radio – so that whatever results Morris-Jones obtained won't be lost. We
must
find that out.”

He sipped his drink.

“Whisky-and-soda, Neil?” Rita said.

“I—thanks,” Banister took a glass.

“Well, Banister,” Anak said, as if he were changing the subject, and it wasn't really important, after all. “Now you see how
fatalis
can be used.” He didn't smile. “Imagine the effect at a large cinema or in a crowded street in London or New York, Chicago – anywhere you like.”

Banister said: “I don't think I want to.”

“Squeamish?”

“You can call it that.”

“I really can't understand you people,” Anak said. He sounded almost impatient, and at the same time, mildly amused. “You seem to think that human life, with its span of seventy years, really matters. Compared with the past and the future and the purpose of life, it is negligible. A few people living in a little country town die. If you read that two or three hundred people died on the roads in England in any month of the year it wouldn't shock you. You'd still drive at seventy or eighty miles an hour if you got the chance, wouldn't you?”

Banister said slowly: “Yes, I suppose so.”

It was the first moment that he felt that he might be able to fool Anak; the first moment of real hope. He experienced a sense of freedom such as he had not known since he had first met Palfrey.

Anak and Klim were looking at him very closely.

“Yes,” Banister went on, more firmly. “I see what you mean.”

He sipped the whisky.

“I should damned well think you do,” Anak said warmly. “All this glutinous pretence at horror and sorrow sickens me. Those people were lucky, can't you see that? Listen to me.” He went across to Banister, and stood in front of him; too close for comfort. “If we'd been able to take pictures inside those walls, what should we have seen? Old men and old women coughing their hearts up – dying by degrees but clinging to life as if it mattered. Young children, suffering, dying – from poliomyelitis, perhaps, or meningitis, or a dozen other diseases that medical science down there hasn't yet cured. If you can see the world as a world instead of as a number of loosely co-ordinated nations, you'd see much farther. The plague, smallpox, yellow fever, yaws, all the diseases that are almost forgotten in Europe and the United States, are still common in the Middle East, India, China, in all the underdeveloped countries. At this very moment tens of thousands of children are dying an agonising death, and hundreds of thousands more are being born into a world which will give them pain and misery, hunger, starvation, sickness, despair. Do you realise that? Or are you another of these weak-bellied lunatics like Palfrey who fight all the time to preserve the
status quo,
because
they
do all right?”

Banister said slowly: “Palfrey is—”

“Oh, I know what Palfrey is,” said Anak, waving his hand to stifle the interruption. “He's a humanist up to a point. He means well, but can't see beyond his nose. Banister, this world is millions of years old; this planet has known human life of one kind or another for hundreds of thousands of years. Our present civilisation goes back how long? Let's be generous and say five thousand years. It's a snap of the fingers compared with time. Human life doesn't count – but the purpose of human life does. The purpose, that's the crux of the whole matter, that's the thing which you people down there don't seem to understand.”

Anak talked as if he were inspired – or as if he believed that he was inspired. There was a burning glow in his eyes, a kind of light that radiated; and there was exaltation on his face. He raised both hands a little above his head, with the fingers curled but not clenched.

“Man, you
must
learn to understand the simple truth. Evolution in man is for the purpose of perfection. The ultimate end of progress is the perfect man. What this world needs is not a crawling, squalling, spawning mass of parasites subject to all the ills and ailments of the world, to all the diseases, curses, superstitions and false gods. What this world needs is a race of perfect human beings – people like
me
.”

Banister heard the last words, but hardly noticed them. Everything he heard convinced him that this man wasn't sane by standards “down below”; but that he had intelligence great enough to challenge any in the world.

Then, as a kind of boomerang, the last sentence struck into Banister's mind.

“What this world needs is a race of perfect human beings – people like
me
.”

Nothing else could have conveyed the same message, the same blind faith in his own destiny.

“We're creating a perfect world, that is what Palfrey has to understand. It will take some time. We are getting nearer, but don't wish to act until we're quite ready. Do you understand?”

He was talking to Banister now, rather than to an audience; his voice was pitched lower, and he looked at Banister most of the time. Occasionally he glanced at Morris-Jones, and Banister saw what the others had probably seen for some time; the scientist was awake.

“That is why I want Palfrey to stop what he is doing,” Anak went on. “We are wasting precious supplies of
fatalis
,
although it is true that we are producing much more, and more easily, than we were. But we are dispersing effort when we should be concentrating it. We are not
ready
for the decimation of the masses yet. They are still needed, down below.”

Banister said huskily: “I don't quite understand you.”

“I'm talking plainly enough,” said Anak irritably. “Decimation of the masses hardly needs explaining. We had to find a killer agency which would not affect anyone we wanted to protect – which was contagious but not infectious, but which could be contagious only for a limited period. That is
fatalis –
we adopted Palfrey's name for it. It is now perfected – we can make carriers immune, can control its effect. When we are ready, we can kill off the majority of the people in India, China, the Near and Far East – all the really backward, semi-primitive and wholly illiterate peoples. It will be no one's loss. But until we can make sure that we can operate the world without them as a labour force, we have to be careful. What we need for the time being, of course, is a graded scale of world citizenship – First grade, Second and Third. Or if you like, ruling, executive and labouring classes or castes. It will take a few years to get everything sorted out, and that is hardly surprising – remember how short a span this civilisation has had. But it is the last stage in the development of man, of course – or the penultimate stage. Under my leadership man will reach perfection. But men like Palfrey, aiding the Governments of peoples who are satisfied to lead their silly, wasted lives, get in the way.”

He paused, as if to gather his vigour and say softly, menacingly: “Palfrey does more harm than anyone, because he has his men in so many places, and because he has learned one lesson – he sees the problems as world problems, not as national. He wants to preserve the world and make slow evolutionary progress towards bettering it. I must convince him that it will be possible to bring perfection in our life-time. If he were to come here, I think he would agree. Don't you?”

Then Morris-Jones sprang at the Leader.

None of those present was prepared, not even the guards by the door. One moment the old man had been slumped back in his chair, his eyes open but glazed, looking as if this were bewildering and confusing him, and he could not comprehend. The next moment, he leapt.

He brushed Banister aside and reached Anak before the Leader could protect himself. His hands clutched at and fastened themselves round Anak's throat. His own throat was a mass of veins which stood out like whipcords. His teeth were bared and his lips drawn tightly back, his eyes seemed to pop out of his head.

He was a big man; and still powerful.