She did not reply, but abruptly moved toward him. Her face swam forward out of the gray, tilted up, not provocative but fearful. He kissed her, and felt her body shiver through the thick coat she was wearing. She said quietly, “I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be.” He kissed her again, gently. “Only a cloud. Look, it’s thinning.”
It thinned very rapidly, ugly gray turning back to pearl. One could see as far as before, possibly farther. He released her, except for a hand on her shoulder pressing her around to look out. At the snow, and the boy who stood there, motionless, gazing up at them.
“Andy!”
It was an exclamation of shock, and horror. But there was nothing horrible about him, Selby thought. He looked cold, and his face and bare hands had a bluish look. Like Kay, in the Snow Queen’s palace. And was there something there, too, that one could touch—a fragment of ice in the heart to be melted, a happy ending as in all the best fairy stories?
He was thirty or forty feet from the veranda. Selby leaned over, and called softly, “Andy, come on up, old chap.”
Hesitantly, almost reluctantly, the boy took a step forward. His eyes remained fixed on Selby. Diana, her voice hushed, said, “Do you think … ?”
“Quiet,” he told her. “Don’t frighten him.” He spoke to the boy again: “Come and talk, Andy. You’ll be all right with us.”
The boy did not move. Selby went on talking quietly, telling him to come to the house, and he stayed there, watching, seemingly listening. Selby felt a growing confidence. Perhaps they were not as united as they had appeared—an observational error. Or perhaps, incredibly, it was some kind of sickness, that had run its course in the boy and now was wearing off. Whether that was true or not, if he could only get the boy, examine him … He had said he wanted a specimen. One stood there, alone, almost within reach.
He whispered to Diana, “Don’t make any disturbance. I’m going to try to get him.”
“Is it safe?”
He did not answer her, but moved away toward the steps, which, at the far end of the veranda, led down to the ground. He walked slowly, his hand guided by the balustrade, his attention on the boy. From time to time, he called softly to him. He was afraid that at any moment the boy would take fright and run away, but he still stood there. Selby came to the steps, and carefully walked down.
He advanced across the churned-up snow with growing confidence. The boy showed no sign of coming to him, but no sign of retreating either. Twenty feet. He said, “You look as though you could do with a good hot dinner, Andy boy.” Fifteen. “And a bit of a warm by the fire.” Ten. “I don’t think …”
The boy’s head moved slightly; he was looking not at Selby but at something behind him. Selby turned slowly, concerned, even in this momentary apprehension, about not scaring the boy. He saw Diana first. She had followed him down the steps and stood at their foot— with some thought of helping him, presumably, but he cursed her under his breath for her stupidity. Then he saw the figures, moving around the side of the house toward her, and cried out to her, careless of anything else but the need to warn her, “Diana! Get back! Right away.”
He saw her turn, as he began to run toward her. She screamed, and then they were on her. Deeping and Peter picked her up, ineffectively struggling, and carried her back through the gap between the chalet and the outhouses. He ran after them, his feet slipping on the frozen snow. He thought he was closing the distance between them, but their figures were becoming less distinct. Cloud was coming in again, the sky darkening. They went around the corner of the house, and he tried to run faster. He turned the corner and a figure smashed into him out of the mist, throwing him sideways into the snow.
There was only one figure, disappearing, as he scrambled to his feet. He ran after it, but the fall had winded him and there was a stitch of pain in his side. It was a long time since he had tried sprinting. He came to the next corner, and had to lean against the wall. There was nothing and no one to be seen—only the fog. After a moment, he straightened up and limped on. He heard voices, and recognized George’s. With that he realized his own danger, the danger of any one of them isolated and outside the protection of the house.
He called, “Wait—I’m coming,” and the effort made pain stab through him. But he broke into a feeble trot all the same, rounded the last corner, and was directly under the balcony. There were voices up there, the creak of boards as people moved about. He said again, “I’m coming. Stay there.”
They were all on the veranda, watching him as he climbed the steps. All that were left. He felt sick, and exhausted, and ashamed of himself.
George said, “What was all the noise about? And Diana? Where’s Diana?”
“They’ve got her.” He looked at Jane. “It was my fault.”
12
Jane could not believe it, could not accept his words and what they meant. The Deepings, yes, and the two servants, but not Diana. The idea was monstrous and impossible. She remembered her at Christmas, at their parents’ home, a little drunk with champagne, urging her, “You’re turning into a terrible stick-in-the-mud, Jane. You want to get away, have a change. Go to Switzerland, or something. If you want company, you can take me. I can scrounge the time off, and I’m not proud.” It just could not have happened. But she saw Selby, powdered with snow down one side, clutching his chest with his hand, and saw him wretchedly looking at her.
George said, “What happened?” His voice was peremptory. “Why did you leave the house?”
He told them, fleshing the fact out with words. When he had finished, George said, “You bloody fool.”
Selby nodded wearily. “I know. But there’s no point in going into that now. You’ve got the gun? We’d better go and see if we can find her.”
The mist pressed close to the house; the other end of the veranda was only just visible. She saw George look around. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly, but he said, “Yes, we’ll do that. Are you fit yourself? Come on, Douglas.” He turned to the women. “Get inside and bolt the door. If there’s any trouble, break one of the windows and yell for us.”
Jane said, “I’ll come with you.”
“No.” He looked at her grimly. “You’d be a hindrance, not a help.”
“I want to.”
His voice turned harsh. “Wanting’s got nothing to do with it. Get inside. All of you.”
Elizabeth had stayed close to the door with Stephen. She moved inside, and Mandy and Jane followed her. Mandy bolted the door, and Stephen said, “Is it all right now? Can we go on playing Monopoly?”
“Not just yet,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps later.” She looked over his head at Mandy. She was as calm as ever in appearance, but her voice had not been quite steady. “I think it might be a good idea if we made some tea, don’t you?”
Mandy said, “Yes. I’ll put the kettle on.”
“We’ll come with you.”
They all went into the kitchen. It was very quiet; the clock ticking, the dull roar of the stove, nothing else. There should have been reassurance, Jane thought, in the sight and sound of ordinary things, of Mandy going about the everyday business of filling a kettle and putting it on to boil. But it was the world pressing in from outside of which she was most conscious, the grayness and coldness into which Diana had been snatched. And into which the men had gone. If anything happened to them …
The sound, distant, but unmistakable, shocked her.
Stephen said, “Is Uncle George shooting at somebody? At them?”
At them, she thought with horror. His mother, his father, Andy … His child’s mind had taken a leap of adaptation where she could not follow, from which she recoiled. Diana—was she to fear her, too, and hate her? But perhaps it was not adaptation, but evasion, an ability to dissociate name from person, new fear from old affection. There were refuges for a child where the adult could not go. She looked at the boy, not knowing whether to shudder or be glad.
Elizabeth said, “To frighten them away, I should think
.”
They were waiting for another shot; there was tenseness, even behind Elizabeth’s serenity. A silence of expectancy had fallen on them; Jane found hands and teeth involuntarily clenching and, when she had willed their relaxation, clenching again. She started when Mandy dragged the steps noisily across the floor, climbed them, and brought a bottle out from behind a jar of sugar. Mandy looked at the other two women; she wore an odd withdrawn expression.
“I thought I would have a little drink,” she said, “while the kettle boils. Would you like one?” She smiled slightly at their negatives, and poured into a small glass. It was transparent liquid: presumably gin. In a flat voice, she went on, “The nights are all right, but one has to get through the days.”
The remark had a lunatic irrelevance which under other circumstances might have seemed funny, but was not funny now. Elizabeth said, “The kettle’s boiling. I’ll make it, shall I?”
One needed something to do, Jane realized—take a drink, even if it meant revealing a vice and a hiding place —make the tea—anything.
She heard her own voice asking, “Are there any biscuits left?”
“No,” Mandy said regretfully. “Some scones in the larder that I made this morning, though.”
“I’ll get them.”
The larder was only a step from the kitchen, but she found herself hurrying back. They drank their tea and ate scones in a silence which Jane hated but could not bring herself to break. She was close to the screaming point when the doorbell rang. Elizabeth said quietly, “Thank God.” In weird unison they got up and went out together to the hall.
The relief of the men being back was so great that there was only a minor pang in realizing that Diana was not with them. George said to her, “I’m sorry, Jane. No trace of her.”
Elizabeth said, “The shot?”
Douglas said, “George caught a glimpse of”—he glanced at Stephen, who was listening—“someone. I don’t think he hit him.”
Elizabeth said, “We’ve just made some tea. Go and sit down, and I’ll bring it through.”
Jane helped her in taking tea and scones to the salon; Mandy seemed content to let them do this. When they came in, George was making up the fire with logs. Selby stood near the window, looking out. He seemed stunned still. Jane took a cup of tea over to him.
He said, “I’m sorry.”
“You couldn’t have known she would follow you. If she had stayed where you left her, near the door, she would have been all right.”
He shook his head. “What I did was stupid.”
She had spoken to comfort him, but she needed comfort herself. She said, “She was struggling with them. She might have got away, mightn’t she?”
“We called for her. There was no reply.”
“She might have run away from the house. In the mist, and frightened, she might not have known where she was heading.” He stirred his tea in silence. “She might be hiding out somewhere, waiting for the mist to clear.”
“Yes.” He did not look at her. “It could have happened that way.”
George said, “There are one or two things we’ve got to get straight.” His voice commanded their attention. “As, for instance, that we take no chances at all now. We don’t go anywhere, even in the house, by ourselves. I’ll make an exception about going to the lavatory, but even there we’ll have a couple of us opening the door to make sure it’s empty and the window is properly closed and barred.” Elizabeth said, “But we’re all right inside the house, surely.”
“The one thing we can’t afford to do is underestimate what we’re up against.” His glance flicked across the room. “That’s what Selby did. He saw the boy, and thought he could grab him—that they were being careless. But what they were doing was what he had talked about doing earlier: setting a trap. They probably expected to get him—rush him when he was far enough from the house for them to be able to cut him off. Then Diana decided to follow him, and she was an easier target. So they took her instead.”
“One at a time,” Elizabeth said. “It’s been like that all along, hasn’t it?”
“There were four of them,” George said, “leaving out Andy. The two men grabbed her and got her away. I suppose one of the others knocked Selby over as he came round the corner. One at a time is all they can manage.” Jane said, “What happens?” She steadied her voice. “What do you think happens?”
“We don’t know,” George said. He stared at her, almost brutally. “Does it matter? They take them over.”
“They?”
In a dull voice, Selby said, “I’ve been thinking about that.”
He paused, and George said, “Well?”
“It’s not a disease, not in any sense of the term we can envisage. The same goes for hysteria. There’s too much purposive action, cold intelligence. As for Marie’s mountain devils, even if I believed in them, I couldn’t believe in them acting this way. They work together, co-operate, in a way that neither sick human beings, nor hysterical human beings, nor even devils could manage.”
“They plan things,” George said. “We can do that, too. Don’t forget you were trying to think up a scheme for getting hold of one of them. It might have worked.”
“There’s a difference,” Selby said. “Remember what bait they put out. Andy. Could we have put Stephen out in that way? And his parents are amongst them. If there were anything of Ruth left in the figure that resembles Ruth, do you think she would have allowed them to do it?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “You’re right about that. What are you saying, Selby—that they’re zombies, something like that?”
“Zombies were supposed to be automata, weren’t they? And automata couldn’t have carried out that last exercise.”
Douglas said, “Going back a bit—you said devils couldn’t work together as they have been doing. Why?” He added hastily, “I’m not suggesting they are possessed by devils.”
Selby said wearily, “The diabolical is divisive, not cooperative, or so religion tells us. Every man for himself, and the weakest goes to the wall.”
“Religion may not be right.”
“It’s maintained its views for a very long time.” He turned away, and stared out of the window, where the mist seemed to be thinning again. When he turned back, he said, “The point is that we have different ways to account for abnormalities in function and behavior, but every one is based, to some extent, on experience. One discovers new diseases, new forms of hysteria, but always, to some extent, they obey the old laws. You can’t use familiar terms to describe the unprecedented. Say they’re possessed by devils, if you like, but it doesn’t mean anything—not in any helpful way. I wouldn’t recommend relying on a crucifix nailed against the door, or a sprig of garlic.”
Elizabeth said, “I think garlic was for werewolves. Or was it vampires?”
“Familiar terms tell us nothing,” Selby said. “Nothing.”
“So all you’re saying,” George said, “is that we don’t understand what’s going on. Fair enough, but it doesn’t advance us much, does it?”
Selby shook his head. “No, that’s not all I’m saying.”
“Then what?”
“Men have been recording the abnormalities of themselves and their fellows since they learned how to scratch signs on papyrus. I don’t know of anything that’s anything like what’s been happening here. That’s why I called it unprecedented. We’re faced with something that seems to use human intelligences, but is not human. If it had existed before on the earth, men would have encountered it.”
Elizabeth said, “Intelligence doesn’t arise out of nothing. Are you saying that snow and ice have somehow acquired consciousness? Or what? The devils would be easier to accept than that.”
“No,” Selby said, “intelligence doesn’t arise out of nothing. It has antecedents.” He nodded toward the window. “That has antecedents. But not on this planet.”
There was a silence, before George said derisively, “Men from Mars?”
&nb
sp; “From God knows where. And not men. An intelligence that can use men.”
Douglas said, “Do you think, as an explanation, that’s any more probable than the others you’ve rejected?”
Selby said, “Yes, I do. If modern astronomers are to be believed, stars possessing planetary systems run into hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. It’s an overwhelming probability that some of those planets—perhaps most of them—have produced life not necessarily anything like the life we know. We might not even recognize it as life when we saw it.”
Douglas said, “Then how—”
“I don’t know. Steve.” He went to the boy, and spoke to him quietly, earnestly. “Tell me again what happened at the beginning—when the sledge ran into the snowbank and tipped over.”
He creased his forehead, trying to remember. “We fell out. At least, Andy fell out. I managed to hang on. And then I began pulling the sledge back up the hill for another run. I called to him to help, but he didn’t.”
“Why?”
“He said he’d found something.”
“Did he say what?”
“No, but I saw it. At least, I guessed it was it. A blue ball.”
“How big?”
“Not very big.”
“As big as a football?”
“No. A lot smaller.”
‘“A tennis ball?”
“Perhaps. And it gleamed.”
“The sun was shining on it?”
“No. I don’t know. The gleam—it looked as though it came from inside.”
“And Andy touched it?”
“I suppose so. He was bending over it. That’s when he fell down.”
“But when you came and picked him up, it had gone— vanished?”
“Yes. I looked, but it wasn’t there.”
George broke in. “What’s all this supposed to mean, anyway? A blue tennis ball that disappears—are you telling us that’s what’s responsible for everything?”
Selby said, “Parasitic forms of life are common enough. We know of thousands of them, both plant and animal. What about parasitic intelligence? It hasn’t happened here, but it might have done elsewhere. A spore of intelligence. Waiting to be absorbed, and then homing on the brain like the liver fluke homes on the sheep’s liver.”