The Black Corridor

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ryan is lying on the floor of the control room. His sleeve is rolled up and an ampoule of ICC Proditol lies near him. The ampoule is empty.

He blinks. At some point he must have realised what he had to do to stop the hallucinations. He is impressed by his own strength of will.

'How are you now?'

He knows the voice. He feels fear, then relief. It is his brother John's voice. He looks up. His jacket has been folded under his head.

John, stalwart and stolid, looks down at him.

'You were in a bad way, old son!'

'John. How did you wake up?'

'Something to do with the computer, I think. There's probably an emergency waking system if anything happens to the man on duty.'

'I'm glad of that. I was a real idiot to carry on on my own. I realised everything else about my condition except the extent of the strain. I was insisting to myself that I didn't need anyone else to help me.'

'Well, you're okay now. I'll help you. You can go into hibernation if you like...?'

'No, that won't be necessary,' Ryan says hastily. 'I'll be able to manage now I've got someone to share my troubles with.' He laughs feebly. 'It's just plain old-fashioned loneliness.' He shudders. He still thinks he can see things in the corners of his eyes.

'I hope.'

'Of course,' says John. He is convinced, he isn't just trying to humour Ryan. John was always a hard man to convince, therefore Ryan is satisfied.

'Thank God for the emergency system, eh?' says John a trifle awkwardly.

'Amen to that,' says Ryan.

He wishes the emergency system had awakened that other member of John's family his young wife Janet. If someone had to be awake... He dismisses the thought and gets up. Being with John is almost like being alone, he thinks, for John is not the most voluble of men. Still...

Ryan gets up. John is efficiently checking the instruments.

'You'd better get off to your bed, old chap,' says John. 'I'll look after things here.'

Gratefully Ryan goes to his cabin.

*

He lies in the dark, grateful for the drug which has driven away his visions, slightly nervous of the fact that John has joined him.

John probably knows about the affair he had with Janet, John's younger wife. Perhaps he doesn't care.

Then again, perhaps he does. John isn't a particularly vengeful man, but it would be just as well to be on guard.

Ryan remembers the other affair he had. The affair with Sarah Carson—old Carson's daughter...

*

Carson's toy business had been Ryan's closest competitor.

Carson was Chairman of Moonbeam Toys and had known Ryan for years. They had both started off with Saunders Toys in the old days and had been running pretty much neck and neck ever since.

Their rivalry had been a friendly one and they often met for lunch or dinner before the habit of communal eating became unfashionable. When that happened they would still converse over the video..

Carson became a fanatical Patriot one day and, as far as Ryan was concerned, no longer worth speaking to. But by this time it was evident that the Patriots were by far the most powerful political group in the country and Ryan decided it would do him no harm to be Carson's friend. He even attended some meetings with Carson and other Patriots, registering himself as a member.

It was at one of these meetings that he met Sarah, a tall beautiful girl of twenty-two, who did not seem particularly convinced by her father's views.

Josephine was going through a particularly bad time, as were the two boys. All three of them spent two-thirds of the day under sedation and Ryan himself, though he sympathised with their problems, needed some form of relaxation.

The form of relaxation he chose was Sarah Carson. Or, rather, she chose him. The moment she saw him, she made a heavy play for him.

They took to meeting at an all but finished hotel. For a few shillings they could hire a whole suite. The bottom had dropped out of the hotel business by that time. Very few people trusted hotels or liked to leave home.

Sarah pulled Ryan out of his depression and gave him something to look forward to at night. She was passionate and she had stamina. Ryan took to sleeping during the day.

Ryan used the Patriot meetings as an excuse and continued, with Sarah and her father, to turn up at several.

Then Carson had an argument with the rest of his group.

Carson had lately formed the opinion that the Earth, far from being a planet circling through space, was in fact a hollowed out 'bubble' in an infinity of rock. Instead of walking about on the outside of a sphere, we were walking about on the inside of one.

Carson went off to form his own group and soon had a healthy following who shared the Hollow Earth belief with him. Sarah continued to go with her father to his meetings (she knew he had a weak heart and also acted, sometimes, as his chauffeur).

Then Carson formed the impression that Ryan was an enemy.

Sarah told Ryan this.

'It's the old story—if you're not with me, you're against me.

He's getting a bit funny lately ' she said. 'I'm worried about his heart.' She stroked Ryan's chest as they lay together in the hotel bed. 'He's told me to stop seeing you, darling.'

'Are you going to?'

'I think so.'

'Just to humour him? He's eligible for a nut-house now, you know. Even the bloody Patriot fanatics think he's barmy.'

'He's my old dad,' she said. 'I love him.'

'You're hung up on him, if you ask me.'

'Darling, I wouldn't have gone for you if I didn't have a hefty father complex, would I?'

Ryan felt anger. Stupid old fool, Carson! And now his daughter trying to put him down.

'That was clever,' he said bitterly. 'I didn't know you had such sharp knives in your arsenal.'

'Come off it, darling. You brought it up. Anyway, I was only joking. You're not at all bad for your age.'

'Thanks.'

He got up, scowling.

He put a glass under the tap in the wash-basin and filled it with water. He sipped the water gingerly and then threw it down the sink. 'Christ. I'm sure they're putting something in the water, these days.'

'Haven't you heard?' She stretched out in the bed. Her body was near-perfect. She seemed to be taunting him with it. "There's everything in the water—LSD, cyanide, stuff to rot your brain— you name it!'

He grunted. 'Sure. I think it's probably just dead rats...' He got his shirt and began to put it on. 'It's time we were going. It's nine o'clock. The curfew starts at ten.'

'You don't want one last fuck. For old time's sake?'

'You mean it then. About not seeing each other again.'

'I mean it, darling. Make no mistake. The condition he's in, it would kill him...'

'He'd be better off dead;'

'That's as may be.' She swung her long legs off the bed and began to dress. 'Will you give me a lift home?'

'For old time's sake...'

The mixture of rage and depression was getting on top of him.

He tried to shrug it off, but it got worse. With all his business worries—production falling, custom declining, debts unpaid— he didn't need this. He knew there was no chance of her changing her mind. She was a direct girl. Her pass at him had been direct.

Now the brush-off was direct. He hadn't realised how much she had been bolstering his ego. It was ridiculous to rely on something like that. But he had been. His feelings now told him so.

They left the hotel. The sun was red in the sky. His car was in the street outside. The curfew seemed pretty pointless, for there was hardly anyone in Oxford Street at all.

Ryan stood by the car looking at the ruins of the burnt-out department stores, the gutted office blocks, mementos of the Winter Riots.

Sarah Carson looked out of the window. 'Admiring the view,' she said. 'You're a bit of a romantic on the quiet, aren't you?'

'I suppose I am,' he said as he climbed into the car and started the engine. 'Though I've always considered myself a realist.'

'Just a selfish romantic.'

'You're making it harder than you need to,' he said as he took the car down the street.

'Sorry. I'm not much of a sentimentalist. You can't afford to be, these days.'

'You want me to take you all the way back to Croydon?'

'You don't expect me to walk through the Antifem zone, do you?'

'Zone? Have they got control of a whole area now?'

'All but. They're trying to set up their own little state in Balham —allowing no women in at all. Any woman they catch, they kill.

Lovely.'

Ryan sniffed. They might have the right bloody attitude.'

'Don't get morbid, sweetie. Can we go round Balham?'

'It's the quickest route since the Brighton Road got blown to bits in Brixton.'

'Try going round the other side, then.'

'I'll see.'

They drove for a while in silence.

London was bleak, blackened and broken.

'Ever thought of getting out?' Sarah said as he drove down Vauxhall Bridge Road, trying to avoid the potholes. He had begun to feel slightly sick. Partly her, he thought, and partly the damned agoraphobia.

'Where is there to go?' he said. 'The rest of the world seems to be worse off than England.'

'Sure.'

'And you need money to live abroad,' he said. 'Since nobody recognises anyone else's currency any more, what would I live on?'

'You think people are going to buy a lot of toys this Christmas?'

She was looking at the completely flattened houses on the right.

His depression and his anger grew. He shrugged. He knew she was right.

'You and my old dad are in the wrong business,' she said cheerfully. 'At least he had the sense to go into politics. That's a bit more secure—for a while, at any rate.'

'Maybe.' He drove over the bridge. It shook as he crossed.

'A strong wind'll finish that,' she said.

'Shut up, Sarah.' He gripped the wheel hard.

'Oh God. Try to finish this thing off gracefully, darling. I thought you were such a good business man. Such a cunning bastard. Such a cool bird, working out all the odds. That's what you told me.'

'No need to throw it in my face. I've got plans, my love, that you haven't an inkling of.'

'Not the spaceship idea!' She laughed.

'How—?'

'You didn't tell me darling. I went through your briefcase a couple of weeks ago. Are you really serious? You're not going to take thirteen people to Siberia and steal that U. N. spaceship that's been standing idle for the last year.'

'It's ready to go.'

'They're still bickering over who owns what bit of it and whose nationals have got a right to go in it. It'll never take off.'

Ryan smiled secretly.

'You're nuttier than my old man, sweetie!'

Ryan scowled.

'Wait till I tell my friends,' she said. 'I'll be dining out on it for weeks.'

'You'd better not tell anyone, my love,' He spoke through his teeth. 'I mean it.'

'Come on, darling. We all have our illusions, but this is ridiculous. How would you fly one of those things?'

'It's fully automatic,' he said. 'It's the most sophisticated piece of machinery ever invented.'

'And you think they're going to let you pinch it?'

'We're already in touch with the people at the station,' he said.

They seem to agree we can do it.'

'How are you in touch with them?'

'It's not hard, Sarah. Old-fashioned radio. For some time a few scientifically minded pragmatists like myself have been working towards a way of getting out of this mess, since it seems impossible to save the human race from sinking back to the Dark Ages...'

'You could have saved it once,' Sarah said, turning to look directly at him. 'If you hadn't been so bloody careful. So bloody selfish!'

'It wasn't as simple as that.'

'Your generation and the generation before that could have done something. The seeds of all this ridiculous paranoia and xenophobia were there then. God—such a waste! This century could have been a century of Utopia. You and your mothers and fathers turned it into Hell.'

'It might look like that...'

'Darling, it was like that.'

He shrugged.

'And now you're getting out,' she said. 'Leaving the mess behind.

Your talk of "pragmatism" is so much bloody balls! You're as much an escaper as my poor daft old dad! Maybe more of one— and less pleasant, for that—because you might fucking succeed!'

They were driving through Stockwell. The sun was setting but no street lighting came on.

'You feel guilty because you're letting me down, don't you?' he said. 'That's what all this display is about, isn't it?'

'No. You're a good fuck. But I never cared much for your character, darling.'

'You'll have to go a long way to find a better one in these dark days.' He tried to say it as a joke, but it was evident he believed it.

'Selfish and opinionated,' she said. 'Pragmatism. Ugh!'

'I'll drop you off here then, shall I?'

He stopped the car. It sank on its cushion of air.

She peered out into the darkness.'Where's "here"?'

'Balham,' he said.

'Don't play games, darling. Let's get this over with. You were taking me all the way to Croydon, remember.'

'I'm a bit tired of your small-talk—darling.'

'All right.' She leaned back. 'I'll button my lip, I promise. I'll say nothing until we get to Croydon and then I'll give you a sweet "thank you".'

But he had made his decision. It wasn't malice. It was selfpreservation. It was for Josephine and the boys, and for the group.

He wasn't enjoying what he was doing.

'Get out of the car, Sarah.'

'You take me bloody home the way you said you would!'

'Out.'

She looked into his eyes. 'My God, Ryan...'

'Go on.' He pushed her shoulder, leaned over her and opened the door. 'Go on.'

'Jesus Christ. All right.' She picked up her handbag from the seat and got out of the car. 'It's something of a classic situation. But a bit too classic really. The sex war's hotted up in this part of the world.'

'That's your problem,' he said.

'I'm not likely to get out of this alive, Ryan.'

That's your problem.'

She took a deep breath. 'I won't tell anyone about your stupid spaceship idea, if that's what's worrying you. Who'd believe me, anyway?'

'I've got a family and friends to worry about, Sarah. They believe me.'

'You dirty shit.' She walked off into the darkness.

They must have been waiting for her all the time because she screamed—a high-pitched, ugly scream—she cried out for him to help her. Her second scream was cut short.

Ryan closed the door of the car and locked it. He started the engine and switched on the headlights.

He saw her face in the lights. It stuck out above the black mass of Antifems in their monklike robes.

It was only her face.

Her body lay on the ground, still clasping her handbag.

Her head was on the end of the pole.