The Peace Machine

CHAPTER 16

It was past midnight when Hutchman got off the train in Hastings.

He had brought the little car south to Swindon, which was as close to his destination as he dared bring an obvious trailmarker, and had abandoned it in an untended taxi rank during the afternoon. From there he had taken a train to Southampton and another along the coast to Hastings, but the connections had worked out badly and the rest of the day had been spanned by periods of nervous waiting and incredibly slow travel.

His knowledge that there were now less than thirty-six hours to go until the deadline weighed heavily on him as he emerged from the station onto a sloping forecourt. The gray mildness of the morning had given way to a clean, cold rain which threshed noisily in the gutters, and which soaked Hutchman almost as soon as he stepped into it. Several taxis were waiting, but he decided that they represented too big a risk. He slipped past them in the shadows and set out to walk to Channing Waye. The journey took fifteen minutes and by the time he reached the house he was as wet as if he had fallen into the sea, and was shivering uncontrollably.

He opened the front door of the dark little house but paused before going in, gripped by a strange timidity. This was the penultimate point of no return, barely less final than the pressing of the black button itself. He had no subconscious yearning to be deflected from his course by an outside agency — his life had become so twisted and deformed that turning back would have been the only act less meaningful than going on. But once he went into the house, once he was swallowed by the dankness of the cramped hall and had closed the door, he would have severed all links with humanity. Even if he was traced to the house and men tried to break in, their only achievement would be to make him press the button a little earlier. He was the ground zero man, and he was committed…

The door was swollen with moisture and he had to use his shoulder to get it closed properly. He found his way upstairs by the vague radiance which seeped in through the transom from a streetlamp. Nothing happened when he tried the light but he was able to discern that the room had not been interfered with in his absence. It still contained its single bentwood chair, painted gooseberry green, and the components of his machine. He stumbled back down to the hall in squelching shoes, located a main electrical switch under the stairs, and turned it on. Hampered by the clinging coldness of his clothes, he backed out of the cubbyhole and went through all the rooms, putting on the lights and closing the blinds. The total effect was to make his tiny domain more bleak and depressing than before. He went out to the covered backyard, where the rain fretted against a glass roof, and looked into the concrete coal bunker. It contained barely enough fragments to fill a bucket, and no shovel. He cast around the yard, found some worn oilcloth on the floor of the outside lavatory, and used it to scoop up the coal and carry it to the fireplace in the back room. Being virtually a non-smoker, Hutchman had no lighter but he was able to light a piece of newspaper at the self-igniting gas stove in the kitchen. The oilcloth burned greasily, with a whirring sound, and even when supplemented with twists of newspaper would not trigger off the coals. He hesitated then, amazed at the tenacity of his inhibitions, took the wooden drawer from the kitchen table, smashed it underfoot, and fed it to the fire. This time the coals ignited, guaranteeing him a meager ration of heat for perhaps an hour.

He stripped off all his clothes and wrapped himself in the only material available, which was the loose covering of a large sofa, and settled down to wait for thirty-five hours. I dream of a small fire-lit room, he thought. And this time the tears came easily.

When Hutchman awoke in the morning he had a pounding headache and a raw sensation in the back of his throat. Each breath he drew was a torrent of icy air ripping through his nasal passages. He sat up painfully and surveyed the room. The fireplace held nothing more than a handful of gray ash, and his clothes were still damp. Trying to suppress his shivering, he gathered up the wrinkled garments and carried them into the kitchen. He lit the oven of the cooker and all four burners, then force-dried his clothes, absorbing as much heat as possible into his body in the process. As he waited he developed a powerful craving for tea. Not the delicate Darjeeling he used to drink with Vicky — but strong, cheap, pensioner’s tea, served hot and sweet. A conviction stole over him that a pot of such tea would cure his headache, soothe his throat, and drive the pains from his joints. He searched the kitchen cupboards, but his unknown landlord had left nothing at all in them.

All right, he thought. If there’s no tea in the house, I’ll go round the corner and buy some.

The idea filled him with a childish, feverish delight. He had sworn not to open the front door until after he had fulfilled his mission in case there were watchers outside, but surely that was being too cautious. If he had been followed this far he would have known about it by now. He dressed quickly, savoring the bonus the new decision had brought him. It would be good to walk into an oldfashioned grocery, just as any other human being could, and smell the hams and the fresh bread. It would be so good to go through the commonplace human actions of buying tea and milk and sugar…

“Stands the church clock at ten to three?” he said aloud, in a stranger’s voice. “And is there honey still for tea?”

He pulled on his grayjacket and was walking to the door when he glimpsed himself in the hall mirror. His hair was matted down across a bearded face which was a death mask of Christ. He was red-eyed, dirty, rumpled, ill — and strange. Above all, he looked strange, a specter which could not fail to draw the attention of a friendly old grocer or anybody else who saw him even for a moment. There could be no question of his leaving the house.

“Is it a party in a parlor?” he demanded, bemusedly, of himself. “…Some sipping punch, some sipping tea; But, as you by their faces see, All silent and all damned!” The walls swayed toward him.

He walked upstairs toward his machine, and was surprised when he fell near the top and had to cling to the banister. I’m ill, he thought. I really am ill. The discovery brought with it a yammering fear that he might not be able to assemble the machine properly, or not be conscious to activate it at the appointed time. He squared his shoulders, went into the rear bedroom, and began to work.

Reality came and went at intervals during the course of the day.

At times his hands seemed to work quite capably by themselves, effortlessly checking the power pack and carrying out the highly precise task of setting up the laser and aligning the optical coupling. Offsetting this was the fact that other parts of the work which he had expected to complete with ease became dismayingly difficult. The aiming tube for the output ray, for example, was controlled by a clockwork motor and a gearing system which kept it pointing in the direction of the moon — the natural reflector Hutchman had chosen to disperse the radiation efficiently across the globe. His hands took care of the basic setting up of this section but when he opened the almanack he had included with the machine to get co-ordinates for the moon’s movements, the figures were near-meaningless jumbles. His concentration on them was marred by bouts of weakness, lapses when he could think of nothing but hot tea, and dreamlike spells when he visited the dappled landscape of the past. Vicky refusing to be consoled after a quarrel: “When people are angry they sometimes say things they really mean.” Walking with her in Bond Street when on the opposite pavement a woman opened an umbrella, a point of red which blossomed into a circle on one side of Hutchman’s vision, simulating the approach of a missile and causing him to duck instinctively and to understand — for the first time — why umbrellas should not be opened near horses. David falling asleep in his arms, wondering aloud: “Why does a one and a nought mean ten, and two ones mean eleven, instead of a one and a nought meaning eleven and two ones meaning ten?” Vicky scolding him: “Why don’t I believe in Oxfam? Listen, Lucas, when eleven million children die every year there’s no point in raising funds — the entire history of the planet is working against you.” Sipping whisky while the poplars darkened against the sunset…

With the machine assembled, the rest of the day passed more quickly than Hutchman had expected. He moved an armchair into the tiny kitchen and huddled close to the cooker, with his feet actually inside the oven. His feverishness and the gassy fug in the airless room encouraged him to doze, to skip in and out of real time. The dreams were clear, warm poo1s of remembrance in which he drifted at ease over the varicoloured shingles of the past, selecting and examining events as a diver picks up brilliant pebbles and lets them tumble slowly from his grasp. Sometime after midnight the dry pain in his throat dragged him upward into consciousness. He eased it with warm water heated in an old jam jar which had been lying in the corner of the yard, and tried to sleep again.

The obtruding knowledge that there were now less than twelve hours to go made it difficult. There was also the niggling realization that he should leave the vicinity of the cooker and go upstairs to the machine where there was less chance of his being overcome by a surprise attack. But if he went up there, he rationalized, he would be cold and might succumb to the illness which was racking his body. Foetus-folded into the chair, wrapped in stained linen, he tried to visualize the increasing tempo of activities to which he had driven other men.

The search would be at its height, of course, but that was no longer so important because now that he had reached the machine he was going to make it do its work, before the deadline if necessary. More vital was what must be happening at all those secret places across the globe where nuclear arms were stored. Hutchman was suddenly struck by the vastness of his own presumption. He knew absolutely nothing of the practical detail design of H-bombs — supposing that in his theoretician’s sublime ignorance he had not allowed enough time for the warheads to be broken down into sufficiently sub-critical concentrations? Even if he had given ample warning for technicians working in normal circumstances, what would happen in a Polaris submarine cruising below the Arctic icecap? And was it possible that a power which had been considering a nuclear attack against a hostile neighbour would be prompted to act while there was still time?

In the morning he got painfully to his feet, frightened by the sound of his own breathing, and drank some more warm water. He looked at his watch. Less than three hours to go. Supporting himself against the wall and then on the banister, Hutchman went upstairs and sat on the pale-green chair. He leaned sideways and threw the switches which put the machine in a state of readiness, then he made sure his hand would fall easily and naturally onto the black button.

He was ready.

He closed his eyes and waited, smiling at his vision of Vicky’s face when she finally understood.

The sound of a metallic crash in the street outside shocked him into wakefulness. He sat absolutely motionless, finger on the button, and listened. In a few seconds there came the familiar ringing of high heels on pavement — a woman’s footsteps, running — following by a pounding on the door of the house. Still Hutchman refused to move, to be tricked into taking his finger away from the button.

“Lucas,” a voice called faintly. “Lucas!”

It was Vicky.

Transported to new levels of fear, Hutchman ran drunkenly down the narrow stairs, and wrenched open the front door. Vicky was standing there. Her face flowed like molten wax when she saw him.

“Get away,” he shouted. “Get away from here!” He looked past her and saw that two cars had collided at the corner of the street. Men in dark suits and overcoats were running.

“Oh God, Lucas. What’s happened to you?” The colour had left Vicky’s face.

Hutchman snatched her into the hall and slammed the door shut. Dragging her with him, he ran up the stairs, into the back bedroom, and dropped into his chair.

“Why did you come here?” He spoke between the harsh roars of his breathing. “Why did you have to come here?”

“But you’re alone.” Vicky spoke faintly as her uncomprehending eyes took in the bare room. “And you’re ill!”

“I’m all right,” he said inanely.

“Have you seen yourself?” Vicky covered her face and began to cry. “Oh, Lucas, what have you done to us?”

Hutchman gathered up the old sofa cover and pulled it tighter around his shoulders. “All right, I’ll tell you. But you must listen carefully and you must believe — because there isn’t much time.”

Vicky nodded, her face still hidden in gloved hands.

“What I’ve done is build this machine.” He spoke sadly, with the rich compassion he could afford now that Vicky was about to come to her moment of truth. “And when I turn it on — as I’m going to do at noon today — every nuclear bomb in the world will explode. That’s what I was doing when you thought…” His voice faded as Vicky opened her hands and he saw her face.

“You’re mad,” she whispered strickenly. “You really have gone mad!”

Hutchman pushed the matted hair away from his forehead. “Don’t you understand yet? Why do you think they’re hunting me? Why do you think the whole world is hunting me?” He pointed toward the street with a dirt-streaked hand.

“You’re ill,” Vicky announced with the crisp determination he knew so well. “And you need help.”

“No, Vicky, no!”

She turned and ran for the stairs. Hutchman lunged for her, tripped on his improvised shawl, and went down on his side. He got to the top of the stairs just as Vicky was reaching the front door.

She pulled it open and ran straight into two of the dark-suited men.

One was carrying a heavy pistol. He pushed Vicky aside, and Hutchman watched the foreshortening of his arm without realizing it meant the pistol was being aimed at him. Vicky clawed the man’s face. The other dark figure spun her round and drove a karate blow into her neck. Even from the top of the stairs Hutchman heard the crushing of bone. He put his foot on the top step as the pistol unleashed its thunder, and his arm went dead. The floor of the landing ballooned up and hit him. He scuttled, whimpering, into the rear bedroom and got his finger on to the black button.

Keeping it there, he twisted himself upward until he was sitting on the chair and facing the door.

And when the two men entered the room he was smiling.