The Unbegotten (5 page)

Palfrey had paused.

Maddern, astonished by the vividness with which he remembered these words, as accurately as if he had learned them off by heart and repeated them time after time, was held by the steadiness of those eyes, and marvelled that even for a moment he had thought there was weakness in this man.

Then Palfrey had added, very quietly, ‘—and from all corners of the globe and beyond. For this is the space age and we face dangers far greater than our forefathers conceived. Yet I believe that the weapons with which we can fight such dangers are the old-fashioned ones of truth, honesty, integrity and courage.'

His voice had fallen silent. The picture of his face had faded, and the screen went blank.

There wasn't a screen,
Maddern reminded himself almost savagely. That had been recollected vision, held fast in his mind for months, perhaps years. He shook himself. He felt almost as if he had been asleep; dreaming. Suddenly, he was alarmed. What time was it? How late
was
Palfrey? It was nearly a quarter to three, and a quarter of an hour
was
late.

As he stepped towards the passage there was a clanging of a bell from the old-fashioned bell-pull at the side of the front door. He hurried forward, eager and anxious at the same time.

This must be Palfrey, unless something had happened to the man of such renown.

Maddern opened the door, and Palfrey stood there.

 

 

Maddern marvelled yet again that he had not realised how big a man Palfrey was, especially noticeable as he stood framed against the low doorway with its centuries-old beams.

‘Hallo,' said Palfrey. ‘Nice of you to wait.'

‘Your men would have kept me in, wouldn't they?'

‘I trust not,' said Palfrey, with a wry smile. ‘Although I confess these particular men are certainly behaving in a somewhat arbitrary way.' He had to stoop because the ceiling was so low, and he looked apologetic. ‘You may not believe it but they are frightened about the future of man.'

‘Aren't we all? Do come in,' went on Maddern. ‘Will you have some coffee? Tea? Anything?'

‘I'd love a cup of tea,' said Palfrey. ‘And are you fairly free for time this afternoon?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then a cup of tea and some aspirins—I've picked up a very nasty headache.' He put his hand to his head and winced. ‘In fact, I did pretty badly on my way here.'

Maddern was suddenly, firmly, a doctor again.

‘Let me have a look,' he ordered, and as Palfrey obediently bent his head, his pale fingers probed. ‘Hmm—you've a nasty graze. Did someone hurl a brick at you?'

‘No. I thought I saw Sue, and dodged—and fell on to a rockery stone.'

‘Oh. Tell me if this hurts—Ah. Sorry—Nothing serious but you ought to have it washed and cleaned. I'll do it in my surgery while the kettle's boiling for tea.' He led the way out and Palfrey followed, quite meekly. In fact the first sign Palfrey showed of any resistance was when he saw the man on the couch.

‘Good Lord!' he exclaimed. ‘Childers as well as the girl! Your work?'

‘Yes. I got mad.'

Palfrey gave a snort of a laugh, but the laugh was cut short by a wince; it did his head no good at all.

‘Like you got mad with Smithy this morning?' he asked.

‘If the man at the door was Smithy, yes. Sit down,' Maddern ordered. ‘I can boil the kettle here—' He was at a sink, filling the kettle.

‘How often do you get as mad as that?' Palfrey asked.

Maddern plugged the kettle in, and turned to Palfrey, whose back was to the porcelain sink and who was looking at an anatomical chart fastened to the wall, over the couch. He parted Palfrey's hair again, grunted, and then draped a towel over shoulders which, although they sloped, were very wide indeed. Maddern picked up a wad of gauze and held it under the tap. Before he answered, water dripped on to the back of Palfrey's neck.

‘Not often.'

‘How
often?'

‘Occasionally, I suppose, if it matters.'

‘Say once a month?'

‘Oh, nothing like as often as that! Two or three times a year—hold tight, I'm going to sponge that bump—Nothing like as often as I used to in fact—Hmm—More blood and dirt than damage, I think.'

‘Good,' said Palfrey, feelingly. ‘So you used to get mad much more often. Why?'

It was really none of his business, Maddern thought, but the conversation had led to this subject quite naturally. It crossed his mind that Palfrey was using his headache and his bumped cranium as an excuse to sound a little ingenuous and to get information without appearing too inquisitive. Did that matter? Maddern had been angry a dozen times today, but now he felt comparatively at peace. Certainly there was no point in picking a quarrel with this man, who had enough to worry about already. And in any case he had recalled Lilian more often, today, than for a long time past.

He said simply, ‘My wife died, ten years ago.'

‘What angered you?' asked Palfrey, gently.

‘Losing her.' Maddern was very busy, using a diluted antiseptic on the raw patch then parting the fair silky hair to look for other bruises. There was only the one, but there was much more grey hair than there had seemed to be from a distance or even standing by him.

‘Losing
her,' Palfrey echoed.

Maddern said gruffly, ‘I suppose the truth is that I was so angry because there was nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could do. It was leukaemia. My God!' A stirring of anger came again. ‘Here we spend tens,
hundreds
of millions of pounds on researching into weapons, or into industry, but when it comes to research for medicines no government really takes any trouble or spends more than pin money. It made me mad then and it makes me mad whenever I think of it. And in any case—' Maddern's voice changed and grew stronger. He picked up a tin of antiseptic spray and hissed it over the patch in Palfrey's head. ‘Be careful how you comb your hair today then you'll be all right.' He turned round to the kettle, which was on the boil. ‘In any case,' he repeated, ‘I am by nature a cantankerous and rebellious individual except where my work is concerned. I hate being pushed about by anyone, whether they are policemen, secret service agents, or what.' He was making the tea. ‘I hope you don't mind tea bags.'

‘I shall judge by the taste,' replied Palfrey.

Maddern found himself laughing.

‘Here are a couple of Phenotabs,' he said. ‘They'll act quicker than aspirins. If you'll sit back for ten minutes, I'll come and join you.'

‘Thank you,' Palfrey murmured.

Maddern led him into the big room, and started out as Palfrey put his legs up on a pouffe. He went back to the surgery and tidied up, then put a pillow under the girl's head. Doing so, he turned her head towards the window and light shone on her lovely face; a face of delicate colours and a rare beauty. She looked like a doll.
Nonsense.
She looked like a beautiful woman; but a miniature woman. He checked her pulse; it was steady and slow now, as he would expect.

And she had tried to kill Palfrey's man.

His ten minutes were nearly up when the telephone bell rang, and he answered it at once.

‘Dr. Maddern.'

A man said, softly, ‘Dr. Maddern, you have a young woman in your house.'

‘That's right!' said Maddern.

‘She is known as Sue or Susan,' the man answered.

‘What
name?' Maddern demanded, more to gain time to think than because he hadn't heard.

‘She is a Sue or Susan,' the man repeated in his curiously soft, persuasive voice. ‘And Dr. Palfrey is with you, also.'

‘Supposing he is.' Maddern began to feel angry.

‘Do not allow Palfrey to talk to Susan,' the speaker ordered. It was a threat or a warning, in spite of the quiet voice and precise words. ‘Do you understand that? She is not to talk to Dr. Palfrey, nor is she to go away with him. That is most important.'

He held on for a few moments, and his breathing sounded over the wire; it was almost as if he were having difficulty in drawing breath. Then there came the sound of the receiver being hung up, very gently, and the line went dead. At first, Maddern hardly realised that, he was so incensed. And just when he had thought he was calmer! How
dare
any man order him about? My God, if the caller were here. . .

Maddern put the receiver down slowly and stood rigid for a few moments, until anger subsided. Then he went out by the front door and stood watching the idyllic scene: the last roses, fading, but still lovely. The leaves of trees already touched with the yellows and browns of autumn promise. It was a perfect day, the tall trees in the casde grounds, beech, elm and birch massed against the sky. As he watched, he heard the sharp tap, tap, of a woodpecker's beak.

At last, Maddern turned, closed the door, and went in to Palfrey. Palfrey lay comfortably, at full length. His head moved but he did not stir until Maddern stepped in front of him. His eyes were open but drowsy with sleep.

‘Hallo,' he murmured. ‘I must have dropped off.'

‘Do you good,' said Maddern. ‘How much rest do you get?'

‘Not enough, doctor!' Palfrey sat up cautiously then turned his head experimentally in each direction. His face brightened. ‘My head's clearer,' he said, with relief. ‘You are a worker of miracles. Thank you.' Now he sat upright as Maddern leaned against a seventeenth-century oak coffer on which stood a well-polished copper kettle. ‘How are you?'

‘I had a telephone call from a stranger just now warning me not to allow you to question the girl, Sue or Susan, or to take her away,' Maddern told him. ‘And I didn't like it much.'

‘No,' said Palfrey. ‘You wouldn't.'

‘Palfrey.' Maddern's voice became sharp. ‘I want to know more about this affair. I'm personally involved, now. I want to know what I'm involved in.'

‘Yes,' Palfrey said, in the same tone as he had just said,

‘No.' He shifted his position and went on, ‘I'll tell you soon. But first, how mad
do
you get?'

‘What has that to do with it?' Maddern asked roughly.

‘A great deal. You could be an enormous help to me, but any man who can't control his temper would be less help than hindrance. Quite recently I was involved in a case when a man who had lived a lonely life after a happy marriage helped me.
He
was extremely able and efficient. But then, he got angry rather than mad.'

‘I can control myself,' Maddern retorted, stiffly. ‘I'm not at all sure I want to help you. I shouldn't worry about that too soon.'

Palfrey smiled, very gently.

‘You'll want to help,' he said, and stretched out a hand as if in supplication. ‘No, don't take umbrage at everything I say. We'll never get anywhere if you do.'

Maddern snapped, ‘We won't get anywhere if you don't come to the point.'

It was far too ill-mannered, of course. He was venting his anger on Palfrey who had perhaps done the least to deserve it. He didn't fully understand himself, and yet in a way he was not surprised. He felt irritated much of the time but usually kept his moods to himself. He would feel like flaring up at a patient or a nurse, or at Mrs. Witherspoon, but usually retained enough control to suppress the impulse. Since he had met this Palfrey, he had not been able to keep so tight a hold on himself. He needed no telling that helping the delivery of the last child to be born in Middlecombe had upset him badly, and the visit of Palfrey and the Special Branch police had further disturbed him.

Palfrey, expressionless, said, ‘No, it won't. The point is that there are three areas of Great Britain where the population rate has come to a stop, and all animal life including human appears in danger. It's possible that there are other areas of the world where the same thing is true, including regions from which we might normally never hear. In other places it would be regarded as a happy natural phenomenon and not cause alarm. All
I
know is that we don't yet know the explanation and we have to find it. Didn't you have a flash idea at the hospital this morning?'

‘Yes,' Maddern admitted.

‘What was it?'

‘The possibility that someone is using this area as an experimental one for controlling population.'

‘Ah,' breathed Palfrey. ‘Ah. That's my fear, too.'

‘Why the devil don't you find out?'

‘I only started trying to a week ago,' said Palfrey.

Maddern hitched himself up on the coffer, heavily.

‘What took you so long?'

‘That's another good question, although you've already had the answer. Reports didn't reach a high enough authority earlier.'

‘I don't believe it,' Maddern retorted flatly.

‘Nevertheless, it's perfectly true. When did
you
first begin to worry?'

‘Oh, months ago.'

‘Months? Nine, eight, seven, six—' Palfrey broke off. Now his face had a hawk-like look as if he had been touched with anger, too.

‘About five, I suppose.'

‘What took
you
so long?'

‘We've had long periods during which there has been a big drop in the birthrate before,' Maddern answered. ‘This isn't a heavily populated area. I put it down to the over-use of the pill, which came late here, and the fact that a large proportion of our young people go to the big cities and some women attend the visiting clinics. It really wasn't more than three months ago that I began to worry.'

‘And when you began to worry, what did you do?' asked Palfrey.

‘Talked to some of my colleagues.'

‘Were they worried, too?'

‘Some of them were, but no one saw anything sinister in it—just peculiar.'

‘Ah. How long was it before you
all
began to worry?'

‘I suppose, two months,' said Maddern.

Oddly, this sharp form of interrogation close to a cross- examination did not worry him. He saw what Palfrey was getting at and understood why the other man, in turn, should feel angry. This time Palfrey paused for a few moments before going on, ‘And what did you do then?'

‘We called a meeting—oh, I know, I know,' Maddern went on, slipping off the coffer and beginning to pace the room. He chose to walk where the oak beams were at their highest, so hardly had to bend his head. ‘It wasn't until two months ago that we sent a report to the Western branch of the Hospital Board and to the General Medical Council. We dallied. Didn't want to face up to the facts of the situation. Did the doctors in the other areas do the same?'

‘Yes,' answered Palfrey.

‘And now you get blamed for delay!' Maddern stood straight in front of Palfrey, and went on with real feeling, ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't worry,' Palfrey said. ‘It's just not important now.'

‘But it's true.'

‘Yes, it's true,' said Palfrey. ‘The local doctors dithered and the medical and hospital boards procrastinated, so it's only a matter of ten days since we had any information at all. We had unofficial reports that something odd was happening. I went to the place in Wales first.
Their
last newborn was born eight days ago.'