The Peace Machine

CHAPTER 2

Avoiding his son’s perplexed gaze, Hutchman walked slowly into the kitchen. Vicky was standing with her back to him as she prepared the meal. She was singing and, as usual, looking slightly out of place in a role of such utter domesticity. He hated having to destroy the evening they had wrested from the day’s misery.

“Vicky,” he said, almost guiltily. “Something has happened. I just heard a news flash on the television. They say Damascus has been wiped out by a hydrogen bomb.”

“How awful.” Vicky turned, her hands full of diced cheese, and nodded toward a glass-fronted cupboard. “How ghastly. Be a darling and reach me down the small casserole. Does it mean there’s a war?”

He found the Pyrex dish mechanically and set it on the counter. “They don’t know who’s responsible yet, but there could be half a million dead. Half a million!”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later. Shall I make a salad?”

“Salad? I… Do we still want to eat?”

“What do you expect us to do?” Vicky examined him curiously. “Lucas, I do hope you’re not going to go all egotistical over this.”

“Egotistical?”

“Yes — your famous seeing-every-sparrow-fall bit. There isn’t one person in the world who would benefit from your having a nervous breakdown, but that doesn’t stop you assuming responsibility for things happening ten thousand miles away.”

“Damascus is more like two thousand miles.”

“It wouldn’t matter if it was two hundred miles.” Vicky slammed the casserole down, sending a flat, ghostly billow of flour along the counter. “Lucas, you aren’t even concerned with what happens next door, so kindly do us all a favour and…”

“I’m hungry,” David announced from the doorway. “And what time are we going out?”

Hutchman shook his head. “I’m sorry, son — we’ll have to call it off for tonight.”

“Huh?” David’s jaw sagged theatrically. “But you said…”

“I know, but we can’t go tonight.”

“Why not?” Vicky asked. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to sit in front of that television set all evening, listening to Robin Day and a band of experts who have no idea what’s going to happen next telling us what’s going to happen next. We promised David we were going to the stock-car racing so we’re going.”

A mural of shattered, tortured bodies pulsed momentarily in Hutchman’s vision. He followed David back into the lounge, where the television set still exhibited its slow-rolling flickers, and sat down. David punched the channel selector, got a vintagecomedy film and squatted contentedly to watch it. Amazed and slightly reassured at finding a normal program on the air, Hutchman picked up his drink and allowed his consciousness to sink into the screen. A frantic motor chase was taking place along the sparse, sunny avenues of Hollywood in the Twenties. Hutchman ignored the central characters and studied the inhospitable frame buildings blistering in the lost sunshine. To his eyes they resembled sheds more than houses, yet they had been real, and by watching them closely he sometimes observed fragments of real lives recorded in the ancient celluloid. Anonymous lives, of dripping iceboxes and giant radios with fretted wooden cases, but filled with the security of a past in which the worst that could happen to one was a few years on the breadline or, in wartime, a comprehensible death from machine-gun fire.

I’ve got to do it, Hutchman thought. I’ve got to make the neutrons dance.

Following the vintage movie was a string of commercials, more normality chopped up small. He was beginning to relax when the television screen went blank and abruptly came to life again. A mushroom cloud, roiling but motionless, sculptured, the white cubical buildings of Damascus hidden under its billowing fronds. The picture juddered and swung, obviously taken from a helicopter not equipped with camera mounts. Music filled the room, strident and urgent. That damned apocalyptic jangling, he thought. Couldn’t they have left it out for once? This isn’t a dock strike or one of those eternal gray trade-union conferences. A news reporter appeared and began to speak, quickly and soberly. He repeated the basic known facts, adding that the death roll was estimated at 400,000, and went on to sketch the feverish diplomatic activity in various capitals. Further down the story came an item which, in Hutchman’s estimation, should have been one of the major headlines: “It is now believed that the nuclear bomb was not delivered by a missile or by a military aircraft. Reports indicate that it was on board a civil airliner which was passing over the city, making its approach to Mezze airport seven kilometers to the southwest, when the detonation occurred.

“The seat of Syrian government has been transferred to Aleppo, where offers of immediate aid and messages expressing shock and sympathy have already been received from all Middle Eastern countries, including Israel and the members of the League of Arab States, from which Syria withdrew in April last year.

“All branches of the Syrian armed forces have been fully mobilized, but in the absence of any obvious aggressor no military action has yet been undertaken. The entire country is in a state of stunned grief and resentment. …

Vicky passed between Hutchman and the screen. “What’s the latest? Is there going to be a war?”

“I don’t know. It looks as though the bomb was on a civil airliner, so some guerrilla organization could be behind it — and there’s a dozen or more for the Syrians to pick from.”

“So there isn’t going to be a war.”

“Who knows? What do you call it when guerrillas can do a thing like that? They’ve graduated from rocket attacks on nursery schools to… to…”

“I mean a war that involves us.” Vicky’s voice was sharp, reminding him he was not permitted to indulge in vicarious guilt.

“No, darling,” he said heavily. “The human race may be involved — but not us.”

“Oh, God,” Vicky whispered. “ Pour me a drink, Lucas. This looks like being a long hard evening.”

As soon as they had finished eating, Hutchman went into the hall and looked up the number of the stadium where stock-car racing was held. He dialed it and listened to the blurry ringing tone long enough to convince himself there was going to be no reply. Just as he was putting the handset down it clicked.

“Hello,” a man’s voice said hoarsely. “Bennett here.”

“Hello, Crymchurch Stadium?” Hutchman had been so certain there would be no reply, he was temporarily lost for words.

“That’s right.” The voice sounded suspicious. “Is that you, Bert?”

“No.” Hutchman took a deep breath. “I’m calling to see if the stock-car racing will still be taking place tonight.”

“Course it will, old son.” The man’s chuckle was like nails being shaken in a bucket. “Why shouldn’t it be? The weather’s just right, isn’t it?”

“I guess so. I just wanted to make sure — the way things are…” Hutchman set the phone down and stood staring at his reflection in a gold-tinted mirror. The weather’s just right — no sign of fallout.

“Who were you calling?” Vicky had opened the kitchen door and was looking out at him.

“The stadium,” he said.

“Why?”

Hutchman longed to ask her if it really made no difference to anybody, one major city more or less. “Checking the time of the first race.”

She eyed him soberly then moved away into the kitchen, her own insular universe, and a moment later he heard her singing as she tidied up after the meal. David emerged from the kitchen, his jaws working furiously, and he went into his bedroom trailing a faint aroma of spearmint. Hutchman tried hard to play the game.

“David,” he shouted. “What did I tell you about eating chewing gum?”

“You told me not to eat it.”

“Well then?”

For a reply David gave the gum some extra loud chomps which were plainly audible through the closed door. Hutchman shook his head in reluctant admiration. His son was as indomitable as only a healthy seven-year-old can be. But how many indomitable seven-year-olds had died in Damascus? Six thousand or so? And how about the equally indomitable six-year-olds, and the five-year-olds, and the…?

“Leave David alone,” Vicky said, passing him on her way into their bedroom. “What harm will a little chewing gum do him?”

The walls, which had been falling toward Hutchman, shrank back into place. “You know he always swallows the stuff.” He forced his lips to form the words, his mind to accommodate the domestic triviality. “It’s totally indigestible.”

“What of it? Come and help me dress.” He followed her into the bedroom, shamming response to the coquetry, setting his course on the oceans of time which would have to be crossed before he could lie down and lose himself in sleep.

The attendance at the stadium was about average for the time of year. Hutchman sat aloof in the airy darkness of the stand, unable to derive any warmth from the presence of his wife and son, unable to comprehend the spectacle of slithering, jouncing, colliding vehicles. When finally he got to bed sleep came almost immediately.

Dream universes spun like roulette wheels, unreality and reality flowed and sifted through each other, producing transient amalgams, solarized colours darting and spreading among crystal lattices of probability. Hutchman is a soldier — strangely, because he had never been in the army — and he is walking through the narrow, congested streets of an Eastern city. He has a companion, another soldier, and the city is… Damascus. Naturally Damascus. Hadn’t something awful happened there? Something unthinkable? But the city is not quite real. All perspectives are choked, claustrophobic — this is the Middle East of a low-budget movie. The heat and dust are real enough, though. A kind of market square — and there’s a woman. A Rita Moreno type of woman. Hutchman and the other soldier speak to her, boldly, making their desires clear without actually stating them. The woman laughs delightedly, then invites them to come home and have stew with her family. You’re on, Hutch — if only the other soldier would remove his insensitive, intruding presence. But he won’t. There is rivalry there, much overplayed gallantry, displays of coarse wit mingled with, supposedly, unconcealable flashes of genuine warm attraction. Very much the mixture as before, but the woman enjoys it…

Her house is a dark place. Small rooms and walls that seem to be made of nothing else but carpets — oh, this is vintage Abbott-and-Costello stuff. Although the woman is real. Real enough, anyway. As she sits down on the floor her navel is lost among small, satisfying rolls of fat. Her mother is predictably huge and motherly, moving about, putting a black-iron pot of water on an open fire in the center of the room. She adds vegetables to the water in the pot, smiles, begins stirring it, and it smells good. Hutchman and the other soldier are still jockeying for the woman, but suddenly he notices there is a big, pale green lizard swimming around in the pot. He has not seen the mother dropping it in, but he announces that he could not eat any of the stew. Immediately the woman is concerned. It’s all right, she assures him — that isn’t a real lizard.

It looks real to me.

No. We’ve been making this kind of stew around here for thousands of years, always with the same ingredients. And every time the mixture reaches the boil one of these things appears in it. They simply happen. Spontaneously.

I still say it’s a real lizard.

It isn’t — it has no soul, and it feels no pain. The woman jumps to her feet and snatches the lizard out of the pot. See! She drops it right into the middle of the fire. It lies there, hissing and crackling, making no attempt to escape from the searing heat, and its shiny black eyes are fixed on Hutchman’s.

I told you so, the woman says. The other soldier goes back to his amorous snuggling, but now Hutchman finds her repulsive. The lizard swells up horribly and bursts — all without struggling to get off the glowing cinders — and the whole time its eyes are staring straight into Hutchman’s eyes, reproachfully, intently. It seems to be trying to tell him something. He gets to his feet and runs out of the house, and his horror is mingled with guilt — as though he had betrayed the creature in some way.

But it just lay on the fire, he protests. It sat there and let itself be burned.

He lay between the sheets, appalled, for a long time. Fluffy little particles of light drifted down from the sky, floated in through the bedroom window and sought out their assigned positions, gradually recreating the walls and furniture exactly as they had been yesterday. Vicky was sleeping peacefully close by, but he derived little reassurance from her presence. The ghastly mood of the dream was still upon him, its symbolism baffling and impenetrable, yet creating in his mind a counter-reality in which all the ancient verities no longer stood firm.

All he knew for certain was that he was now committed to building the antibomb machine.