Authors: Gerard Whelan
‘You’re joking,’ I said to my friend.
‘The girl is right,’ he said doggedly. ‘This would never have happened but for our interference.’
I glared across to where the Sug sat glowering at us.
‘
Their
interference, you mean,’ I said.
‘That makes no difference to her. And she has a point. Besides, he helped us. We have certain obligations.’
It would have been too much to expect that the Sug would stay out of it.
‘You’re insane,’ he growled. ‘It is not permitted to interfere with human affairs. Let them all shoot each other if it come to it, the more the merrier.’
My friend raised a contemptuous eyebrow.
‘You can always rely on a Sug for a reasonable contribution to a debate,’ he sneered. ‘My friend here is right – it was
your
people who got us into this mess. If the human dies it will be as a direct result of
your
interference in our legitimate business. Who are you to talk about rights and wrongs?’
The Sug flushed. While my friend was gone I’d tried to coax some conversation out of him, but he’d only grunted responses to my remarks. Still, I was starting to feel some little bit of sympathy for him. His truculence wasn’t merely because
his mission had failed. It wasn’t even simply the presence of humans. These things would have been bad enough, but the nature of this place itself was making him uncomfortable. Even the sleepy, formless sort of power it was giving out now would be unpleasant to him. What I felt as a lightness in the air he’d experience as something very close to pain.
Now he cracked. His reserve broke, and he spluttered almost incoherently.
‘How were we supposed to know what it was like here now?’ he demanded. ‘It’s completely poisoned with their human foulness! My creatures were mad from the moment we arrived. They tried to kill me as soon as I materialised. I was so sick I thought I was dying – not just the body, but
me
! Nobody warned me to expect anything like that!’
I felt some real pity for him. A very small bit of pity, admittedly, but pity nonetheless. After all, he too was only an agent, and he must have genuinely suffered. It was a measure of the Sugs’ toughness that he’d managed to stick it out at all.
But my friend just snorted.
‘Listen to yourself!’ he jeered. He imitated the Sug in a high, whining voice, ‘Nobody told me! How was I supposed to know!’
Then he resumed his own flat tone.
‘Your people could have known in the same way that we know,’ he said, his voice frigid with anger. ‘By learning. But oh no, the Sug are too proud, too squeamish. They’d prefer to sit sulking in a corner of Nowhere for ten thousand years and think up ways to interfere with us! If you’d asked, maybe we’d have shared our information with you – but again, no, the Sug
ask no favours of anyone. So, as usual, you learn the hard way, too late, and you make it hard for everyone else too. And when it goes wrong you find someone else to pin the blame on – also as usual. Send an agent here for the first time in two thousand years, and then have the gall to be surprised that it’s changed! Well, excuse me, but I never heard anything so preposterous!’
The Sug hung his head and said nothing. I stood up.
‘Enough squabbling!’ I said. ‘We have to decide what to do, and soon. The human is dying.’
I looked to the Sug again.
‘When we’ve done here,’ I said, ‘we can erase every sign of our presence. We can erase memory of us from the humans’ minds. Those outside the barrier haven’t a clue what’s happening in here. We can leave them with a mystery, regrettable though that is. What we
can’t
leave is a dead human, not if we can possibly help it. That’s not for their sake, it’s for our own.’
The Sug winced at the mention of the barrier. It was too tangible a proof of the power we now had in the world.
‘You can wipe out their memories?’ he asked. ‘You can really do that, selectively?’
I understood his doubt. Erasing memories is no great trick. The tricky bit is to do it without turning your subject into a vegetable. Such delicate work wasn’t really a Sug type of thing, though among my people the Sug were famous for their selective memories.
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘We can.’
‘And you really think you can help the human?’
‘I’ve no idea. There’s no technical reason why not. It’s only
a body after all.’
‘I must admit I’d like to help the human anyway,’ my friend said. ‘I’ve had a look inside him. He’s a good man.’
The Sug made an automatic sound of disgust at the very idea. To him the concept of a ‘good man’ was a contradiction in terms. I was a bit shocked myself to hear the note of grudging respect in my friend’s voice. He doesn’t hate humans, anymore than I do. In many ways they’ve progressed a lot since the old days, and anyway hatred is a wasteful thing. But there’s a distinct difference between not hating humans and feeling something positive towards them. They’re a dangerous species, without manners or even much self-respect, even harder to like than the Sug.
‘This arguing is just wasting time,’ I said. ‘Do I take it we’re going to help if we can?’
‘Yes,’ my friend said.
I looked to the Sug again.
‘You can lodge a formal objection,’ I said.
The Sug looked shocked. Any objection he raised would of course have no weight. But I was treating him with the kind of formal courtesy the Sug delight in. And I was offering him a way to save face – nobody could blame him for anything that might come of our actions if he lodged a formal protest beforehand.
The Sug mightn’t have expected the courtesy, but in the end it was me who was surprised. He didn’t take the easy way out.
‘No,’ he said bitterly. ‘I find the action you intend most distasteful, but you’re right. The Sug made a big mistake here. We were foolish to do it. Only you can do anything now to
rectify the error. If you think assisting the human will improve the situation then you must try to help him. In fact, as a representative of the Sug race I’d like to formally request your assistance in the matter.’
It was a remarkable statement coming from a Sug. A historic statement, in fact. His people and mine had agreed on very little in the last ten thousand years. If you got right down to it, we weren’t exactly chummy before that either. In all of our histories there was only one big thing – apart from the obvious – that we’d successfully collaborated on, one thing we’d managed to persuade them to do. And though they’d kept the agreement made then after their fashion, they’d never really forgiven us for it. Which was, of course, just like them.
I loosened the bandages on my neck until I could slide the crystal pebbles out. The quartz veins were burning brightly now in the dull stone, nearly purring with their full power. The Sug eyed them nervously. They had nothing like this, and they coveted this power even as they feared it.
‘They’re very bright now,’ the Sug said.
‘Of course,’ said my friend, his voice gentle. ‘They’ve come home.’
Home
. The word had a unique aching beauty. When any of us, even a Sug, says the word in any language, you can hear the loss and yearning in their voice. We who had no place in the world to call our home had strayed here where once we had walked. And these crystals, which had been born in this very place, were going to be used – with the consent and encouragement of a Sug – to help a human.
My friend read my mind.
‘It’s a funny old world,’ he said.
‘It is,’ said the Sug.
I looked at them. We were all aware of the importance of the moment. You appreciate that type of thing when you live outside time. I licked my lips.
‘Well, folks,’ I said. ‘Let’s go make some history.’
We went.
The refectory was a large room with a long wooden table at its centre. In front of the table the abbot lay on his back, his arms outstretched. His thin face was chalk white. The front of his dark habit was darker with a wet spreading stain.
Simon was kneeling silently by the dying abbot, his eyes fixed on the still white face. Stephen stood by, feeling useless. He kept glancing towards the doorway, expecting Philip to burst in at any moment. It wasn’t just that he feared the big monk – he did – but he was more angry than anything else. There was a lot of strain on all of them. Thomas hadn’t managed to cope, but it was only Philip who’d cracked and resorted to physical violence.
After a while, when there was no sign of either Philip or the strangers, claustrophobia got the better of Stephen. He wanted to be doing
something
. He was almost tempted to go looking for Philip, to force the confrontation that it seemed must come. In a way he felt guilty. It was his image after all that had provoked the shooting – his image, though not, consciously at least, his doing. He should take his pistol and face Philip down, for better or for worse. Thinking of the big man’s expertise, and of his willingness to shoot, Stephen guessed that it would be for worse. But it seemed somehow
his responsibility. He said as much to Simon.
‘Don’t be foolish,’ Simon said, without taking his eyes off the abbot. ‘That’s pride talking.’
‘
Pride
?’ Simon couldn’t have picked a word that surprised him more.
‘Yes. Pride. None of us is responsible for any of this. Even Philip – though it galls me to admit it – isn’t responsible. He’s mad with fear. We’re
not
mad with fear, but that doesn’t mean we’re not afraid. None of this is our doing. Blaming yourself for it is just another way of making yourself out to be more important than you are.’
Stephen had to admit that he hadn’t thought of it like that, but maybe Simon had a point. It didn’t exactly make him feel better, but it let him forget about confronting Philip. He’d felt he ought to do it, but that didn’t mean he’d been looking forward to it – he was in no hurry to die.
Instead he went looking for Kirsten, who hadn’t been able to face the sight of the dying abbot. He walked along with his eyes and ears alert for any sounds. Steeling your nerve to face up to Philip was one thing, running into him rounding a corner was another thing entirely.
He found Kirsten in the courtyard. She was standing by the gates, looking out, and she didn’t look happy. Stephen went over.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘There’s someone out there,’ she said without looking at him.
‘Another sick person, maybe.’
‘No. There’s more than one. I’ve seen two now, and they move far too carefully for my liking.’
He followed her gaze. Even as he looked he saw a figure scurry across the path that led down the hill from the gates. It happened too fast to make out any detail. The figure emerged from the long grass on one side of the path and disappeared into a stand of trees on the other side.
He saw what Kirsten meant. The figure hadn’t wandered across, but moved furtively and deliberately like an animal crossing exposed space.
‘This is trouble,’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ said a cheery voice behind them. ‘This is good news.’
The strangers from the car had come up silently and stood watching them. The man who’d spoken was the man Stephen had last seen as a headless monstrosity. He wasn’t headless now. His coat and shirt were gone, and he stood there, barechested, with a bandaged neck. A shivery feeling ran through Stephen when he looked at the bandages, but apart from that there was nothing disturbing about the man. He was younger and slighter than the other two, and his smiling face looked friendly. His eyes were grey and clear, and they looked at Stephen and Kirsten with open curiosity. The driver stood calmly beside him with his hands in his pockets, while the third stranger hung back behind. He was the only one who didn’t look friendly, but even he no longer looked quite so sour.
‘Should we close the gates?’ Stephen asked.
The re-headed man shook his head.
‘They won’t come in,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to go and get them later.’
‘
Get
them?’ Kirsten said. ‘Do you know what those things
are
?’
‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘I do. We’ve gathered them here precisely because we know what they are.’
‘And what do you intend doing with them?’ Kirsten demanded. She seemed to have no fear any more of the strangers. Stephen envied her. He felt that no amount of reassurance could make him feel at ease with them. They were just too strange.
‘I asked you a question,’ Kirsten snapped. ‘If those things out there are like the ones who attacked us yesterday, then they’re very dangerous. You say you’ve gathered them here – to do what exactly?’
The man smiled at her with what looked like real affection.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘to exterminate them, of course.’
Kirsten hadn’t been expecting that.
‘Oh!’ she said.
The driver had heard enough banter.
‘Come now,’ he said. ‘We can’t waste time in idle chatter. There’s work to be done. This isn’t over yet.’
But looking at these most peculiar but very confident men, Stephen thought that maybe, somehow, it was. For all their strangeness they were the only people he’d seen lately who seemed to know exactly what they were doing. He still didn’t trust them – but it might be a case of having to.
In the refectory the abbot was lying as Stephen had last seen him, although there was no sign of Simon. The driver and the bandaged man knelt on either side of Paul, each putting one hand on his chest. The third man stood beside them, looking on. On his face was a very odd look, a mixture of fascination and disgust. Stephen and Kirsten stood by.
There were footsteps in the corridor. Stephen turned, ready, he hoped, for anything. But it was only Simon who came in. He was scowling, though his face lightened when he saw the two strangers kneeling beside the abbot. The two men were as still as the dying man himself. They might have been carved out of stone. There was an identical expression on their faces, a distant trance-like look.
‘I found Philip,’ Simon said in a low voice.
‘Where?’ Kirsten asked.
‘We keep a chapel here for those who are inclined to use it. He’s there now, praying and crying for forgiveness. I still haven’t found Thomas though. He’s probably hiding under a bed somewhere.’
‘Philip still has his gun?’ Stephen asked.
Simon sneered.
‘His gun is in his hand. A most obscene combination if you
ask me – beating your breast and asking for forgiveness with a pistol in your hand. He’s grabbed a big crucifix and he’s praying at that. I never liked having a crucifix there at all, it seemed like an insult to our non-Christian Brothers, myself included. But Paul felt it helped some of them concentrate. Well, Philip is certainly concentrating on it now.’
He grimaced in disgust.
‘I never trusted that man,’ he said. ‘He had too much hate bottled up inside him. Hatred for himself. It was bound to explode one day. If it hadn’t been this that caused it, then it would have been something else. I said it more than once to Paul, but accepting people at face value is Paul’s way.’
‘It’s not himself that Philip hates now,’ Stephen said glumly. ‘It’s us – it’s me.’
‘Bah!’ Simon said. ‘That’s how self-hate works, you push it out onto someone else.’
The strangers hadn’t moved a muscle in minutes. Simon looked at the silent tableau on the floor as though to distract himself from his own anger. He nodded towards the bare-chested stranger.
‘I must say,’ he said, ‘that man seems to have made a remarkable recovery. Maybe there’s hope for the abbot yet. But it’s not good. I’ve seen a lot of gunshot wounds in my time.’
He turned to Stephen with a sudden sharp look.
‘Do you still have that pistol?’ he asked.
‘I do.’
‘Do you think you’ll be able to use it?’
‘I don’t know.’
Simon pursed his lips.
‘I killed my first man in 1944,’ Simon said. ‘August twelfth. Twenty past ten on a beautiful summer evening. I was older than you, but not a whole lot. The man was a German soldier – only a boy himself, come to that.’
‘Was it hard to do?’
‘It was very hard to
make
myself do it. I kept telling myself that he deserved it, that he was an invader. They were cruel invaders, the Germans. They’d killed many of my friends – tortured them and killed them. But that fellow was just a fellow like myself when all was said and done. At another time we might have been friends. I always rather liked the Germans, really.’
‘How did you manage to make yourself kill him then?’
‘He saw me. He saw my gun. I knew that he’d kill me – he’d been trained not to have qualms, and he’d fought before. So it was him or me. And when it came down to it, I didn’t want it to be me.’
He nodded, remembering.
‘He was eating bread and cheese when we crept up on him,’ he said. ‘After he was dead, I saw the bread lying on the ground. The marks of his teeth were still in it. It’s funny what you notice at times like that. They were hungry times. I picked up the bread, tore off the bloody bits and threw them away. But when I went to eat it I saw the marks of his teeth and I thought that I’d killed him and that those teeth would never bite bread again, and I couldn’t eat it.’
‘But you killed again afterwards?’
Simon shrugged.
‘Sometimes what
you
feel like doing isn’t so important,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you simply have a job to do. You have the right to have fear, the right – the duty, I’d say – to feel qualms, but not the right to endanger others whose lives and well-being depend on your actions. So you do whatever it takes.’
‘And you did it?’
Again Simon shrugged. His face had the look of a man who’d seen much that he didn’t want to see.
‘I couldn’t eat the bread,’ he said. ‘But I did eat the cheese. Like I say, they were hungry times.’
Stephen turned to Kirsten, to see what she might have made of Simon’s story.
But Kirsten wasn’t there.
Stephen looked around desperately. She wasn’t in the room. He turned to the third stranger.
‘The girl!’ he said frantically. ‘Where did she go?’
The man gestured at the open door, puzzled by Stephen’s intensity.
Simon realised what was wrong. He said something in a foreign language that sounded like a most un-monkish curse.
‘The little fool!’ he hissed. ‘She’s gone to the chapel to try and talk sense to that madman! He’ll kill her for sure!’
The big stranger obviously understood now. He was out the door, running, before either Stephen or Simon had time to take a step.