Don't Look Now and Other Stories

  I had a sudden recollection of the youngster at the bar, pouring out the orange juice and calling himself a guinea pig.

  "What's Ken's part in all this, then?" I asked.

  MacLean paused in his walk and looked straight at me.

  "The boy has leukemia," he said. "Robbie gives him three months at the outside. There'll be no pain. He has tremendous guts, and believes wholeheartedly in the experiment. It's very possible the attempt may fail. If it fails, we lose nothing--his life is forfeit anyway. If we succeed..." He broke off, catching his breath as though swept by a sudden deep emotion. "If we succeed, you see what it will mean?" he said. "We shall have the answer at last to the intolerable futility of death."

  When I awoke next morning to a brilliant day and looked from my bedroom window along the asphalt road to the disused radar tower, brooding like a sentinel over empty sheds and rusted metal towards the marsh beyond, I made my decision then and there to go.

  I shaved, bathed, and went along to breakfast determined to be courteous to all, and to ask for five minutes alone with MacLean immediately afterwards. I would catch the first available train, and with luck be in London by one o'clock. If there was any unpleasantness with A.E.L. my chief would take the rap for it, not I.

  The dining room was empty except for Robbie, who was attacking an enormous plateful of soused herrings. I bade him a brief good day and helped myself to bacon. I looked round for a morning paper but there was none. Conversation would be forced upon me.

  "Fine morning," I observed.

  He did not answer me immediately. He was engaged in dissecting his herring with the finesse of an expert. Then his falsetto voice came at me across the table.

  "Are you proposing to back out?" he asked.

  His question took me by surprise, and I disliked the note of derision.

  "I'm an electronics engineer," I answered, "I'm not interested in psychical research."

  "No more were Lister's colleagues concerned with discovering antisepsis," he rejoined. "What fools they were made to look later."

  He forked a half herring into his mouth and proceeded to chew it, watching me from behind his bifocal specs.

  "So you believe all this stuff about Force Six?" I said.

  "Don't you?" he parried.

  I pushed aside my plate in protest.

  "Look here," I said. "I can accept this work MacLean has done on sound. He has found the answer to voice production, which we failed to do at A.E.L. He has developed a system by which high-frequency waves can be picked up by animals, and also, it seems, by one idiot child. I give him full marks for the first, am doubtful about the potential value of the second, and as to his third project--capturing the life force, or whatever he calls it, as it leaves the body--if anyone talked to the Ministry about that one, your boss would find himself inside."

  I resumed my bacon feeling I had put Robbie in his place. He finished his herrings, then started on the toast and marmalade.

  "Ever watched anyone die?" he asked suddenly.

  "As a matter of fact, no," I answered.

  "I'm a doctor, and it's part of my job," he said, "in hospitals, in homes, in refugee camps after the war. I suppose I've witnessed scores of deaths during my professional life. It's not a pleasant experience. Here at Saxmere it's become my business to stand by a very plucky, likeable lad, not only during his last hours, but during the few weeks that remain to him. I could do with some help."

  I got up and took my plate to the sideboard. Then I returned and helped myself to coffee.

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  He pushed the toast rack towards me but I shook my head. Breakfast is not my favorite meal, and this morning I lacked appetite. There was a sound of footsteps outside on the asphalt, and a head looked in at the window. It was Ken.

  "Hullo," he said, with a grin, "what a wonderful morning. If Mac doesn't need you in the control room I'll show you round. We could take a walk up to the coastguard cottages and over Saxmere cliff. Are you game?" He took my hesitation for assent. "Splendid! It's no use asking Robbie. He'll spend the morning in the lab gloating over specimens of my blood."

  The head vanished, and I heard him call to Janus through the kitchen window alongside. Neither Robbie nor I spoke. The sound of munching toast became unbearable. I stood up.

  "Where will I find MacLean?" I asked.

  "In the control room," he answered, and went on eating.

  It was best done at once. I went the way I had been shown the night before, through the swing door to the lab. Somehow the operating table under the center light held more significance this morning, and I avoided looking at it. I went through the door at the far end, and saw MacLean standing by Charon 1. He beckoned me over.

  "There's a slight fault in the processing unit," he said. "I noticed it last night. I'm sure you'll be able to fix it."

  This was the moment to express my regrets and tell him I had decided against joining his team and intended to return to London immediately. I did no such thing. Instead I crossed the floor to the computer and stood by while he explained the circuits. Professional pride, professional jealousy, if you will, coupled with intense curiosity to know why this particular apparatus was superior to the one we had built at A.E.L., proved too much for me.

  "There are some overalls on the wall," said MacLean. "Put 'em on, and we'll fix the fault between us."

  From then onward I was lost, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that I was won. Not to his lunatic theories, not to any future experiment with life and death; I was conquered by the supreme beauty and efficiency of Charon 1 itself. Beauty may be an odd word to use where electronics are concerned. I did not find it so. Herein lay all my passion, all my feelings; from my boyhood I had been involved with the creation of these things. This was my life's work. I was not interested in the uses to which the machines I had helped to develop and perfect were ultimately put. My part was to see that they fulfilled the function for which they were designed. Until arriving at Saxmere I had had no other object, no other aim in life, but to do what I was fitted to do, and do it well.

  Charon 1 awakened something else in me, an awareness of power. I had only to handle those controls to know that what I wanted now was to have detailed knowledge of all the working parts, and then be given charge of the whole layout. Nothing else mattered. By the end of that first morning I had not only located the fault, a minor one, but had set it right. MacLean had become Mac, the shortening of my name to Steve was something that no longer jarred, and the whole fantastic setup had ceased to irritate or to dismay; I had become one of the team.

  Robbie showed no surprise when I turned up at lunchtime, nor did he allude to our conversation at breakfast. In the late afternoon, with Mac's permission, I took my suggested walk with Ken. It was impossible to connect approaching death with this irrepressible youngster, and I put it from my mind. It could be that both Mac and Robbie were wrong about it. Anyway, it was not, thank God, my problem.

  He showed no sign of fatigue and led the way, laughing and chatting, across the sand dunes to the sea. The sun was shining, the air felt cold and clean, even the long stretch of shore that had seemed dreary the night before had now a latent charm. The heavy shingle gave place to sand, crisp under our feet; Cerberus, who accompanied us, bounded ahead. We threw sticks for him to retrieve from the pallid, almost effortless sea, which gently, without menace, broke beside us as we walked. We did not discuss Saxmere, or anything connected with it; instead Ken regaled me with amusing gossip about the U.S. base at Thirlwall, where he had apparently worked as one of the ground staff before Mac arranged his transfer ten months before.

  Suddenly Cerberus, barking puppy fashion for another stick, turned and stood motionless, ears pricked, head to wind. Then he started loping back the way we had come, his lithe black-and-tan form soon lost to sight against the darker shingle and the dunes beyond.

  "He's had a signal from Charon," said Ken.

  The night before, watching Mac at the contr
ols, the dog's scratching at the door seemed natural. Here, some three miles distant on the lonely shore, his swift departure was uncanny.

  "Effective, isn't it?" said Ken.

  I nodded; but somehow, because of what I'd seen, my spirits left me. Enthusiasm for the walk had waned. It would have been different had I been alone. Now, with the boy beside me, I was, as it were, confronted with the future, the project Mac had in mind, the months ahead.

  "Want to turn back?" he asked me.

  His words reminded me of Robbie's at breakfast, though he meant them otherwise. "Just as you like," I said indifferently.

  He swung left and we clambered, slipping and sliding with every step, up the steep slope to the cliffs above the beach. I was breathless when I reached the top. Not Ken. Smiling, he lent a hand to pull me up. Heather and scrub lay all about us, and the wind was in our faces, stronger than it had been below. About a quarter of a mile distant, stark and white against the skyline, stood a row of coastguard cottages, bleak windows all aflame with the setting sun.

  "Come and pay your respects to Mrs. J.," suggested Ken.

  Reluctantly I followed, detesting unpremeditated visits, no matter where. The unprepossessing Janus household did not attract me. As we drew near I saw that only the far cottage was inhabited. The others had the forlorn, lost look of buildings untenanted for years. Two had their windows broken. Gardens, untended, sprawled. Posts, sagging drunkenly from the damp earth, trailed pieces of barbed wire from their rotting stumps. A small girl was leaning over the gate of the occupied cottage. Dark, straight hair framed her pinched face, her eyes were lusterless, and she was wanting a front tooth.

  "Hullo, Niki," called Ken.

  The child stared, then slowly removed herself from the gate. Morosely, she pointed at me. "Who's that?" she asked.

  "His name is Steve," Ken answered her.

  "I don't like his shoes," said the child.

  Ken laughed and opened the gate, and as he did so the child attempted to climb upon him. Gently he put her aside, and walking up the path to the open door called, "Are you there, Mrs. J.?"

  A woman appeared, pallid and dark like her child. Her anxious face broke into a smile at the sight of Ken. She bade us enter, apologizing for the disarray. I was introduced as Steve, and we hovered uncomfortably in the front room, where the child's toys were strewn about the floor.

  "We've had tea," Ken said, in reply to Mrs. J.'s question, but, insisting that the kettle had just boiled, the woman vanished to the adjoining kitchen, to reappear at once with a large brown teapot and two cups and saucers. There was nothing for it but to swallow the stuff under her watchful eyes, while the child, edging against Ken all the while, stared balefully at my inoffensive canvas shoes.

  I gave full marks to my young companion. He exchanged pleasantries with Mrs. Janus, and patted the unendearing Niki. I remained silent throughout, and wondered why the child's likeness, framed in place of honor over the fireplace, should be so much more pleasing than the child herself.

  "It's very cold here in the winter, but a bracing cold," said Mrs. Janus, fixing me with her own mournful eyes. "I always say I prefer the frost to the damp."

  I agreed and shook my head at the offer of more tea. At this moment the child stiffened. She stood rigid a moment, her eyes closed. I wondered if she were going to throw a fit. Then very calmly she announced, "Mac wants me."

  Mrs. Janus, with a murmur of apology, went into the hall and I heard her dial. Ken was watching the child, himself unmoved. I felt slightly sick. In a moment I heard Mrs. Janus speaking over the telephone and she called, "Niki, come here and speak to Mac."

  The child ran from the room, and for the first time since our arrival showed animation. She even laughed. Mrs. Janus returned and smiled at Ken.

  "I think Mac really wants a word with you," she said.

  Ken got up and went into the hall. Alone with the child's mother, I did not know what to say. At last, in desperation, nodding at the photograph above the fireplace, I said, "What a good likeness of Niki. Taken a few years ago, I suppose?"

  To my dismay, the woman's eyes filled with tears.

  "That's not Niki, that's her twin," she answered. "That's our Penny. We lost her soon after they had both turned five."

  My awkward apology was cut short by the entrance of the child herself. Ignoring my shoes she came straight to me, put her hand on my knee and announced, "Mac says Cerberus is back. And you and Ken can go home."

  "Thank you," I said.

  As we walked away from the cottages, over scrub and heather, and took a short cut back to Saxmere through the marsh, I asked Ken whether the call signal from Charon invariably had the effect I had seen, that of awakening latent intelligence in the child.

  "Yes," he said. "We don't know why. Robbie thinks the ultrashort wave may have therapeutic value in itself. Mac doesn't agree. He believes that when he puts out the call it connects Niki with what he calls Force Six, which in her case is doubled because of the dead twin."

  Ken spoke as if this fantastic theory was perfectly natural.

  "Do you mean," I asked, "that when the call goes through the dead twin somehow takes over?"

  Ken laughed. He walked so fast it was hard to keep up with him.

  "Ghoulies and ghosties?" he queried. "Good Lord, no! There's nothing left of poor Penny but electric energy, still attached to her living twin. That's why Niki makes such a useful guinea pig."

  He glanced across at me, smiling.

  "When I go," he said, "Mac plans to tap my energy too. Don't ask me how. I just don't know. But he's welcome to have a crack at it."

  We went on walking. The sour smell of stagnant water rose from the marsh on either side of us. The wind strengthened, flattening the reeds. The tower of Saxmere loomed ahead, hard and black against a russet sky.

  I had the voice production unit functioning to my satisfaction within the next few days. We fed it with tape, programmed in advance as we had done at A.E.L., but the vocabulary was more extensive, consisting of a call signal "This is Charon speaking... This is Charon speaking..." followed by a series of numbers, spoken with great clarity. Then came questions, most of them quite simple, such as, "Are you O.K.?" "Does anything bother you?," proceeding to statements of fact like, "You are not with us. You are at Thirlwall. It is two years back. Tell us what you see," and so on. My job was to control the precision of the voice, the program was Mac's responsibility, and, if the questions and statements appeared inane to me, doubtless they made sound sense to him.

  On Friday he told me that he considered Charon was ready for use the next day, and Robbie and Ken were warned for eleven a.m. Mac himself would be at the controls, and I was to watch. In the light of what I had already witnessed, I should have been fully prepared for what happened. Oddly enough, I was not. I took up my station in the adjoining lab, while Ken stretched himself out on the operating table.

  "It's all right," he said to me with a wink. "Robbie isn't going to carve me up."

  There was a microphone in position above his head, with a lead going through to Charon 1. A yellow light for "Stand by" flashed on the wall. It changed to red. I saw Ken close his eyes. Then a voice came from Charon. "This is Charon speaking... This is Charon speaking." The series of numbers followed, and, after a pause, the question, "Are you O.K.?"

  When Ken replied, "Yes, I'm O.K." I noticed that his voice lacked its usual buoyancy; it was flatter, pitched in a lower key. I glanced at Robbie; he handed me a slip of paper on which were written the words, "He's under hypnosis."

  The penny dropped, and I realized for the first time the full importance of the sound unit and the reason for perfecting it. Ken had been conditioned to hypnosis by the electronic voice. The questions on the program were not haphazard, they were taped for him. The implications of this were even more shocking to me than when I had seen the dog and the child obey the call signal from a distance. When Ken, jokingly, had spoken of "going to work," this was what he had meant.

  "D
oes anything bother you?" asked the voice.

  There was a long pause before the answer, and when it came the tone was impatient, almost fretful.

  "It's the hanging about. I want it to happen quickly. If it could be over and done with, then I wouldn't give a damn."

  I might have been standing by a confessional, and I understood now why my predecessor had turned in his job. I saw Robbie's eyes upon me; the demonstration had been staged not only to show Ken's cooperation under hypnosis, proved no doubt dozens of times already, but to test my nerve. The ordeal continued. Much of what Ken said made painful hearing. I don't want to repeat it here. It revealed the unconscious strain under which he lived, never outwardly apparent either to us or to himself.

  The program Mac used was not one I had heard before, and it ended with the words, "You'll be all right, Ken. You aren't alone. We're with you every step of the way. O.K.?"

  A faint smile passed over the quiet face.

  "O.K."

  Then the numbers were repeated, in swifter sequence, ending with the words "Wake up, Ken!"

  The boy stretched himself, opened his eyes and sat up. He looked first at Robbie, then at me, and grinned.

  "Did old Charon do his stuff?" he asked.

  "One hundred percent," I answered, my voice falsely hearty.

  Ken slid off the operating table, his work for the morning done. I went through to Mac, standing by the controls.

  "Thanks, Steve," he said. "You can appreciate the necessity for Charon 1 now. An electronic voice, plus a planned program, eliminates emotion on our part, which will be essential when the time comes. That's the reason Ken has been conditioned to the machine. He responds very well. But better, of course, if the child is with him."

  "The child?" I repeated.

  "Yes," he answered. "Niki is an essential part of the experiment. She is conditioned to the voice too, and the pair of them chat away together as gay as crickets. They know nothing about it afterwards, naturally." He paused, watching me closely as Robbie had done. "Ken will almost certainly go into coma at the end. The child will be our only link with him then. Now, I suggest you borrow a car, drive into Thirlwall and buy yourself a drink."