The Peace Machine

CHAPTER 15

Hutchman rarely recalled his dreams, with the result that when he did awaken with one fresh in his mind it seemed — although he was skeptical about precognition — to be laden with significance and psychological implications. His last remembered dreams were the two about the timid pseudo-creatures who allowed themselves to be destroyed by women. (Am I, he had wondered, a shaky artificial being which falls apart at the hands of female pragmatism?) Now, however, he had the unusual experience of expecting a dream, of knowing in advance that one was coming. It was something to do with the increasing sense of being trapped in the shabby old house, or the feeling of imminent disaster which had haunted him since his car had vanished, which by a kind of transference made the dinginess of his surroundings seem menacing. As he lay down on top of the bedclothes on a gray afternoon, there was danger for him in the ancient brown bakelite of the room’s electrical fittings, despair in the shattered skeletal elements of the gas fire. And the dream came…

He walks downstairs, oppressed by the gloomy unfamiliarity of the house. There is a wedding party in progress down below and the stairwell is filled with hostile northern accents. George Atwood’s voice swells and recedes with an undersea quality. There is a painful pressure in Hutchman’s bladder which must be relieved. He tries the two toilets and the doors are locked. The pressure gets worse. Afraid of disgracing himself, he asks Mrs. Atwood if there is another toilet. Not here, she says, but the house next door is empty. Hutchman hurries Out to it. The street is filled with bright pewter light, and the worn sandstone steps of the abandoned house register vividly in his mind. The front door is lying open. Dust is drifting on the bare, rotting boards of the hall as he walks along it. There is an open door to the room on his left. He looks in and sees, lying on a couch, a figure completely covered by a white sheet. Dread grips him, but the toilet is only at the head of the first flight of stairs and the pain in his abdomen is intolerable. He walks up the stairs, opens the toilet door, and finds himself staring down into an old cast-iron bath. There is a corpse in it — yellowed, frilled with fungus, bathed in the fluids of its own putrefaction. Appalled, Hutchman sways ponderously away and turns to run. But now the front door of the house is closed. And, projecting from the inner doorway he had passed, is the corner of a white sheet. The thing which had been lying on the couch is now standing in the entrance to the front room, waiting for him to come downstairs. And even if he gets past it in full flight, while he is struggling to open the outer door it will come up behind him. Hutchman tries to scream. Run! Stay! Run! Stay!

It was still daylight when he awoke but the room seemed very much colder than before. He lay flat on his back, hands gripping the bedding as if to prevent him from falling upward while he fought off the spell of the nightmare. It had been a very basic affair, he told himself. Hammer Films stuff, and utterly ridiculous to a waking adult; but the room was undeniably colder. He got to his feet, shivering, and turned up the gas fire, causing a white front of incandescence to move up through its ruined ceramic temples, followed by bands of violet and sienna.

Run! Stay!

Perhaps he should have pulled up stakes as soon as his car was stolen. It might have been best to have got going immediately, not even returning to the house for the night. But he had been drunk at the time, and rapidly becoming sick, and it had seemed that the thief had done him a good turn by removing a troublesome piece of unwanted property. Now he was uncertain, and glands which had been triggered by his dream were urging him to run. He left his room and wandered slowly down the stairs, pausing at different levels in the structure as though he could and might decide to move horizontally through the air at any one of them. A woman’s voice floated up the stairwell. It was Jane Atwood speaking to someone on the telephone, cheerful, privileged to communicate with her friends outside. Hutchman felt a pang of loneliness, and he decided to ring Vicky. It’s possible, he thought in wonder. I can pick up the phone and speak to her. Dial a line to the past. He moved on down to the hall, where Mrs. Atwood was hanging up the phone.

“That was George,” she said curiously. “A man’s been to the shop asking about you. Something about your car.”

“Really?” Hutchman gripped the smooth wood of the banister. ”Was your car stolen, Mr. Rattray? You said it broke down when you were. …

“I’m not sure — it may have been stolen afterward.” Hutchman turned and sprinted up the stairs, moaning inwardly with panic. In his room he threw on his jacket and ran back down to the hall. Mrs. Atwood had disappeared into another part of the house. He opened the front door and glanced up and down the street to make sure nobody was coming, then walked quickly away from the house, choosing to go in the opposite direction to the main road. Near the end of the street he saw a dark-blue Jaguar sweep round the corner. It was driven by a thick-set, gray-haired man who appeared not even to see Hutchman, but the car slowed down at once and rolled gently down the street, its wheels mushing through decaying leaves. The driver was examining the numbers on the houses.

Hutchman continued walking normally until he had rounded the corner into a wider and empty cross-avenue, then began to run. The act of running required no effort, his breath seeming to come easier as though constrictive bands had been torn away from his chest. He sped along a line of trees, hardly aware of his feet touching the ground, moving so silently that he twice distinguished the pulpy sound of chestnuts dropping onto the pavement. Near the end of the avenue he abruptly became self-conscious, slowed down to a walk, and looked back over his shoulder. The blue Jaguar was backing out between the lines of trees, wallowing slightly with the lateral forces of the turn. It came in his direction, alternating through light and shade as it ghosted past the trees.

Hutchman began to run again. He emerged into a long canyon of three-storey terrace houses, saw a narrow street opening on his right, and darted down it. This street was freakishly long and featureless, running slightly uphill until its perspectives faded into the gathering mist. There was no time for Hutchman to turn hack. He loped along an irregular line of parked cars, zig-zagging to avoid groups of playing children, but now running was becoming less dreamlike and more difficult. His mouth began to fill with a salty froth and his ankles to weaken, allowing his feet to slap the ground almost uncontrollably. He looked back and saw the Jaguar in its noiseless pursuit.

Suddenly Hutchman noticed a ragged break in the confining lines of houses. He slanted toward it and entered a desolate plain which had been created by a slum clearance and redevelopment program. Its surface was composed of tumbled brick and fragmented concrete, with children moving through a low-lying mist, like members of a small alien race, bands of expeditionary Hobbits. Hutchman launched himself in the direction of the opposite boundary, another row of terrace houses beyond which the blue-white lights of a main road were already beginning to shine through the dusk. Behind him he heard the Jaguar slither to a halt. Its door slammed, but there was no time for him to take even one glance to the rear because running on the new surface was dangerous. His ankles threatened to give way every time he was forced to leap over a block of concrete or one of the rusted reinforcing rods which rose Out of the ground like snares. He aimed for what appeared to be an opening in the perimeter houses, then discovered he had wasted his strength by running. The redevelopment contractor had sealed the site off with a galvanized iron fence — and Hutchman was in a box.

He turned with the absurd idea of trying to mingle with a group of urchins but, using the well-developed instincts of their race, they had faded into the surroundings. The gray-haired man was only fifty paces away, running strongly in spite of his bulk, looking strangely incongruous in an expensive tweed overcoat. He was carrying a slim-bladed knife in a way which suggested he knew how to use it.

Sobbing, Hutchman moved to one side. His pursuer altered course to intercept him. Hutchman lifted a half-brick and threw it, but had aImed too low and it struck the ground harmlessly. The gray-haired man jumped over it, landed awkwardly and pitched forward, his face driving into a thicket of steel rods which projected from a slab of concrete. One of them punched its way into the socket of his right eye. And he screamed.

Hutchman watched in horror as a surprisingly large white ball, blotched with red, sprang from the socket and rolled on the ground.

“My eye! Oh God, my eye!” The man groveled in the dirt, his hands searching blindly.

“Stay away from me,” Hutchman mumbled.

“But it’s my eye!” The man got to his feet with the obscene object cupped in his hands, holding it out toward Hutchman in a kind of supplication. Deltas of black blood spilled down his face and over his clothes.

“Stay away!” Hutchman forced his body into action. He ran parallel to the fence for a short distance and angled away toward the point where he had entered the site. Children darted out of his path like startled pheasants. He reached the blue Jaguar and got into the driving seat, but there was no ignition key. His pursuer had been taking no chances. Hutchman got out of the car as several children appeared in the gap in the houses. They were going back into the site, but moving differently, with an air of authority which suggested they had the backing of adults. Hutchman hurried toward the street and encountered two middle-aged men, one of them in slippers and rolled-up shirtsleeves.

“There’s been an accident,” he called, pointing back across the desolation to where a single figure wavered in the slatecoloured mist. “Where’s the nearest telephone?”

One of the men pointed to the left, down the hill. Hutchman ran in that direction, back the way he had come, until he was in the wider tree-lined avenue. He slowed to a walk, partly to avoid looking conspicuous and partly because he was exhausted. The easier pace also made it possible for him to think. He had a feeling the man he had encountered was not a British detective or security agent — it would all have been handled differently — but no matter how much anybody might have learned from Andrea Knight, how could they possibly have found him so quickly? There was the car, of course, but surely that would have brought the police down on him rather than an anonymous man carrying a knife. Regardless of what had happened, he decided, Bolton was no longer safe for him.

As his breathing returned to normal Hutchman reached the main road and caught a bus going into the town center. Darkness was falling by the time he got off near the imposing town hall. Store windows were brightly lit and the pavements were crowded with people hurrying home from work. The crisp, pre-Christmas atmosphere brought on another of the unmanning attacks of nostalgia and he found himself thinking about Vicky and David again. Look what you’ve done to me, Vicky.

He asked a news vendor how to reach the railway station, set out to walk to it, then realized he could not risk going to any transport terminal, and that to consider it had been a dangerous lapse. I wanted to ride home in comfort, sitting in a window seat, humming “Beyond the Blue Horizon”, he thought in astonishment. But I’m the ground zero man, and I can never go home again.

He walked aimlessly for a while, twice turning into side streets when he saw police uniforms. The problem of getting out of Bolton was doubly urgent. Not only had he to escape from a tightening net, but the deadline he had given to the authorities was drawing closer. He had to journey south and be in Hastings before Antibomb Day. Could he travel in disguise? A flash recollection of Chesterton’s invisible man caused him to halt momentarily. The uniform of a postman would make him effectively invisible, and a rural postman’s traditional transport — a bicycle — would probably get him to Hastings in time. But how did one acquire such things? Stealing them would only serve to make him more easily identifiable…

In one of the narrow side streets he saw a yellow electric sign of a taxi company, and in the window of the office beneath it was a notice which said: “DRIVERS FOR SAFETY CABS WANTED — NO PSV LICENCE REQUIRED.”

Hutchman’s heart began to thud as he read the hand-lettered card. A taxi driver was just as invisible as a postman, and a vehicle went with the job! He walked into the dimly-lit garage beside the office. A row of mustard-colored taxis brooded in the half-light and the only evidence of life was the glowing window of a boxlike office in one corner. He tapped the door and opened it. Inside was a cluttered room containing a table and a bench upon which sat two men in mechanic’s overalls. One of them was in the act of raising a cup of tea to his mouth.

“Sorry to disturb you.” Hutchman put on his best grin. “How do I go about getting a job as a driver?”

“No trouble about that, mate.” The mechanic turned to his companion, who was unwrapping sandwiches. “Who’s the super tonight?”

“Old Oliver.”

“Wait here and I’ll fetch him,” the mechanic said in a friendly tone and Went out through a door which led to the back of the building. Encouraged and gratified, Hutchman studied the little room as he waited. The walls were covered with notices held in place by drawing pins and yellowing Sellotape. “Any driver who is involved in a front-end accident will be dismissed immediately,” one stated. “The following are in bad standing and must not be accepted for credit card journeys,” said another above a list of names. To Hutchman, in his state of intense loneliness, they appeared as indications of a warm, intensely human normalcy. He entertained fantasies of working contentedly in a place like this for the rest of his life if he got away from Hastings in one piece. Getting his job, being accepted into the cheery incidentrich life of a cab driver, assumed an illogical and emotional importance which had nothing to do with escaping to the south.

“Cold day,” the remaining mechanic said through a mouthful of bread.

“Certainly is.”

“Fancy a drop of tea?”

“No thanks.” Hutchman’s eyes stung with pleasure as he refused the offer. He turned as the door opened and the first mechanic came in accompanied by a stooped, white-haired man of about sixty. The newcomer was pink-faced, had a prim womanly mouth, and was wearing an old-fashioned belted raincoat and a peaked cap.

“Hello,” Hutchman ventured. “I understand you have openings for drivers.”

“Happen I have,” Oliver said. “Come out here and I’ll talk to you.” He led the way out to the garage area and closed the office door so that the mechanics would not hear the conversation. “Are you a PSV man?”

“No, but it said on your notice that…”

“I know what it said on the notice,” Oliver interrupted pettishly, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t prefer good professional men. These nasty little so-called safety cars with seats looking out the back window have cheapened the whole trade. Cheap and nasty.”

“Oh.” It dawned on Hutchman that he was dealing with a man who regarded taxi-driving as a calling. “Well, I have a clean ordinary licence.”

Oliver scrutinized him doubtfully. “Part-timer?”

“Yes — or full-time. Whatever you want.” Hutchman wondered if he sounded too anxious. “You do need drivers, don’t you?”

“We don’t pay a wage, you know. You get a third of your take, plus tips. A good man does well out of tips, but a beginner…”

“That sounds fine. I could start right way.”

“Just a minute,” Oliver said sternly. “Do you know the town?”

“Yes.” Hutchman’s heart sank. How could he have forgotten one of the basic requirements?

“How would you get to Crompton Avenue?”

“Ah…” Hutchman tried to remember the name of the main road he had driven along with Atwood, the only one he knew. “Straight out to Breightmet.”

Oliver nodded with some reluctance. “How would you get to Bridgeworth Close?”

“That’s a tricky one.” Hutchman forced a smile. “It might take me some time to get to know all the streets.”

“How would you get to Mason Street?” Oliver’s womanly lips were pursed in disapproval.

“Is that out toward Salford? Look, I told you…”

“I’m sorry, son. You just haven’t a good enough memory for this kind of work.”

Hutchman gazed at him in helpless anger, then turned away. Outside, he stared resentfully at the unfamiliar configurations of buildings. He had been rejected. His brain held information which was going to change the entire course of history, but a prissy old fool had looked down on him because he wasn’t familiar with a haphazard pattern of streets in an undistinguished… Pattern! That’s all it was. A man did not have to grow up in a town to get to know its layout if he had the right sort of mental disciplines.

Glancing at his watch, Hutchman found it was only a little after 5:30. He hurried to the nearest main thoroughfare, located a large stationery store, and bought two street maps of Bolton and a white correcting pencil. While he was paying for them he asked the sales assistant where he could find a copying service still open. The girl directed him to a place two blocks further along the same street. He thanked her, went outside, and shouldered his way through the crowds, reaching the office-equipment supplier, who did copying, just as an unseen clock was chiming the hour. A dapper young man with wispy fair hair was locking the door. He shook his head when Hutchman tried the handle. Hutchman took two five-pound notes from his pocket and pushed them through the low-level letter slot. The young man picked them up cautiously, studied Hutchman through the glass for a second, then opened the door a little.

“We close at six, you know.” He held the notes out tentatively.

“Those are yours,” Hutchman told him.

“What for?”

“Overtime payment. I have an urgent copying job which must be done right now. I’ll pay for it separately, but that tenner’s for you — if you’ll do the work.”

“Oh! Oh, well then. You’d better come in.” The youth gave a baffled laugh and opened the door wide. “Christmas is early this year, I must say.”

Hutchman unfolded one of his street maps. “Can you handle a sheet this size?”

“With ease.” The youth activated a gray machine and watched with perplexity as Hutchman took out the typist’s correcting pencil and, working at careless speed, obliterated all the street names. When he had finished he handed the map over. “Do me… mmm… a dozen copies of that.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man stared solemnly at Hutchman as he worked.

“I’m in advertising,” Hutchman said. “This is for a marketresearch project.”

Ten minutes later he was back out on the street with a warm roll of sheets under his arm. He now had all the equipment needed to carry out the type of memory blitz he had perfected in his university days, but there was still the problem of finding a quiet and secure place in which to work. The soothing effect of constructive activity abated slightly as it came to him that he was going to a great deal of trouble to get out of Bolton without having checked that it was really necessary. He saw a small newsagent’s shop on the opposite side of the street and crossed over to it. While still in the middle of the roadway he read the billboard which was leaning against a window sill.

It said: “POLICE CORDON SEALS OFF BOLTON!”

A number of copies of the evening paper were clipped to a wire rack in the doorway. He approached the shop and saw that a large photograph of himself was featured on the front page, with splash headlines which read: “BOLTON SURROUNDED BY POLICE CORDON. Mystery mathematician traced here today.” Hutchman decided not to risk going in and buying a paper — he had learned all he needed, anyway. He was turning away from the shop when a white Porsche drew up beside him and the passenger door was pushed open. The driver was an Oriental-looking girl in a silver dress.

“It’s warmer at my place,” she said, showing no trace of embarrassment over the fact that she sounded exactly the way a prostitute was supposed to sound.

Hutchman, who had been poised to flee, shook his head instinctively then caught the edge of the door. “Perhaps I am a little cold.” He got into the car, which smelled of leather and perfume, and was accelerated smoothly and expensively into the clustered lights of the town center.

He turned sideways to face the girl. “Where are we going?”

“Not far.”

Hutchman nodded contentedly. He was satisfied as long as she did not try to take him out of town, through a roadblock. “Have you any food at your place?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Starving — but I don’t run a soup kitchen.” Her neat face was hard.

Hutchman snorted, took a ten-pound note from his pocket, and dropped it on her lap. “Stop at a take-away and get us some food.”

“I’m a working girl, mister.” She flicked the note back at him. “The rate is exactly the same for companionship.”

“That’s understood — your name isn’t Melina Mercouri. How much for the night?”

“A hundred,” Her voice was defiant.

“A hundred it is.” Hutchman peeled off ten more notes, amazed at the fact that they still held value for other people. “Here’s the hundred, plus the food money. All right?”

For an answer she put her hand on his thigh and slid it into his crotch. He endured her touch without speaking. I could kill you, Vicky. The girl stopped at a snack bar, ran into it, and emerged with an armful of packages which smelt of roast chicken. She drove him to a small apartment block about ten minutes from the town center. Hutchman carried the food while she let herself in, and they went to a first-floor flat. It was simply furnished with white walls, white carpet, and a black ceiling in the main room.

“Food first?” the girl said.

“Food first.” Hutchman spread the packages on the table, opened them, and began to eat while his hostess was making coffee in a clinically bright kitchen. He was tired and nervous — pictures of a human eye rolling in the dust flickered before him — but the heat was helping him to relax. They ate in near silence and the girl cleared the remains into the kitchen. On her way back she slipped out of the silver dress with a single lithe movement, revealing that she was wearing a crimson satin bikini suit which, along with a certain muscularity of thighs, gave her the air of a trapeze artist. Her spice-coloured body was trim and taut and desirable. Hutchman’s groin turned to ice.

“Listen,” he said, lifting his roll of ammonia-smelling sheets. “I have some very urgent business to attend to for my firm, and I won’t be able to relax until it’s out of the way. Why don’t you watch television for a while?”

“I haven’t got television.”

Hutchman realized he had made a mistake in suggesting it — he was bound to be in the news more than ever. “Play music or read a book, then. All right?”

“All right.” The girl shrugged unconcernedly and, without dressing again, lay down on a couch and watched him.

Hutchman spread out a street map, the one which still showed the names, and began memorizing it, starting with the major roads and filling in as much as possible on side streets. He worked with maximum concentration for one hour, then took a blank copy, and tried filling in the names. This gave him an accurate indication of the areas in which he was doing well and of the ones — still a great majority at this stage — where his performance was poor. He returned to the named map, spent a second hour on it, did another progress check with a blank map, and started the process all over again. Some time during the course of the evening the girl fell asleep and began snoring gently. She woke with a start around midnight, gazing at Hutchman without recognition for an instant.

He smiled at her. “This is taking longer than I expected. Why don’t you go to bed?”

“Do you want coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

The girl got to her feet, shivering, gathered her silver dress from the floor and walked into the bedroom with a curious glance at his array of maps. Hutchman went back to work. It was almost three o’clock by the time he finally managed to fill in a complete map, and by then he too was shivering. The central heating had been off for hours. He lay down on the couch and tried to sleep, but the room was becoming intensely cold and his head was bursting with hundreds of street names. Each time he closed his eyes he saw networks of black lines, and occasionally a redblotched eye rolled across them. After half an hour he went into the bedroom. The girl was asleep in the center of an outsize bed. Hutchman undressed, got in beside her, and placed one hand on her up-thrust hip, feeling the edge of the pelvic basin and the belly warmth under his fingertips. In that respect, in the darkness, she could have been Vicky.

He fell asleep instantly.

At the first light of morning he got up without disturbing the girl, dressed quickly, and went back to the table in the main room. As he had expected, when he tried to fill in a map there were several new areas of uncertainty. He spent several minutes revising them and quietly left the apartment. It was a gray, dry morning, surprisingly mild for the time of year. He decided to walk into the town center, amusing himself as he went by accurately predicting the names of the streets he reached. The crammed knowledge of the town’s layout was of the most transient kind and would be virtually gone inside a week, but he would have it long enough to get him through any quiz which might take place that morning. He reached the taxi company’s headquarters without seeing any police. This time he went into the outer office and spoke to a bespectacled girl who had several telephones and a microphone on her desk.

“Is Oliver on duty?”

“No — he’s on the late shift this week. Was it personal?”

Hutchman was encouraged. “No, not personal. I’m a good driver and I know Bolton like the back of my hand.”

Forty minutes later he had been issued with a “uniform”, which consisted of an engraved steel-lapel badge and a peaked cap, and was cruising through the town in a mustard-coloured taxi. For the best part of an hour he genuinely worked as a cabdriver, making two pickups to which he was directed by radio and locating the destinations without much difficulty. The second one left him on the south side of the town and instead of returning to his waiting station he radioed the office.

“This is Walter Russell,” he said, using the name with which he had signed on. “I’ve just picked up a gentleman who wants to spend the day touring the countryside around Bolton. What’s the procedure?”

“The daily rate is forty pounds,” the girl replied. “Payable in advance. Is that satisfactory to your customer?”

Hutchman waited a moment. “He says that’s fine.”

“All right — call in when you are free again.”

“Right.” Hutchman replaced the microphone. Having decided that the limited-speed taxicab might look out of place on the motorways, he drove due south for Warrington with the intention of traveling down England on the more homely linking roads. A short distance ahead of him he saw three teenage girls standing at the roadside thumbing a ride. They glanced at each other in consternation when he pulled up beside them and operated the lever which opened the passenger door.

“Where are you heading for?” he called, trying to sound benevolent in spite of his growing tension over the road-block he sensed must be close by.

“Birmingham,” one of the girls said, “but we’ve no money for a taxi.”

“You don’t need money for this taxi.”

“What do you need, then?” another girl demanded, and her companions giggled.

Oh, God, Hutchman thought. “Look, I’m going down to Ringway Airport to meet a customer. I offered you the free seats, but if you don’t want them that’s all right with me.” He made as if to close the door and the girls screamed and tumbled into the aft-facing seats. When the car was moving again they talked among themselves as though Hutchman did not exist, and he gathered they were on their way to a Damascus demonstration. He discovered, with a dull sense of surprise, that he had not thought about Damascus for days. That he no longer really cared about the ruined city and its indomitable seven-year-olds who would never see eight. It was a personal thing now. A triangle. Vicky and he and the antibomb machine.

There was a lengthy queue of cars at the police road-block, but the uniformed men glanced only once at the taxi and its occupants, and signaled Hutchman to drive on.