"Success by mistake," she said. "It often happens. History is like that.
We made dozens of mistakes and got the right answer.
You
matter, Val,
not Jota. Greg . . . "
She shrugged, looking down at him. "I can handle him now."
"I wouldn't be too sure," I said.
She was completely confident. "He knows now. He'll be a disgruntled,
dazed child when he comes round. He won't give me any trouble. But now
we have two suits -- three suits. Val, take Dina and get out now. Greg
and I will be all right We'll be snapped back with the stasis."
She smiled. "And have many, many children. You and Sheila -- and Dina.
She may be involved, too. She may even be the one that matters . . . no,
it must be you. Yet Dina, too, didn't have children before, presumably,
and will now -- "
For Miranda it was over. Mission accomplished. She hadn't failed after
all, although, as she'd admitted, she had suceeedded through luck and
not much else.
But for me it wasn't over. I had still failed. I'd still get the lion's
share of the blame for the Great Fire of Shuteley. I'd still deserve a
lot of it. The word "mathe:r would still go into the language.
The kids Miranda wanted Sheila and me to have would grow up in an
atmosphere of scorn. "Your old man's a murderer . . . " They'd be chased
out of their playground at the break as Jota had once been chased. And
not just once. And some teachers would turn a blind eye.
"No" I said.
"What do you mean, no?"
"I'm not going to face a future like that. I'm not going to have kids
to be picked on by the whole world."
The happiness died out of Miranda's face, to be replaced by an anxious
look.
"Val, you must . . . My world
needs
you and what you can do for it."
"Your world," I said grimly, "is, less to me than the destruction of
Shuteley was to you. Far, far less."
Dina was looking from Miranda to me, and back again, comprehending very
little of what was happening, and yet comprehending surprisingly much.
"I mean a lot to you," I said. "You know it."
"More than you know."
"I've got a price."
"A price?"
"Trinity Hall," I said.
She didn't understand.
"You told me yourself," I said. "If it weren't for the Trinity Hall bit
of the disaster, I'd have a chance. My kids would have a chance. Without
Trinity Hall, the death toll in this terrible fire would be astonishingly
light. The fire safety arrangements, if not fire prevention, would
come out of it rather well. It's facts that count after anything like
this. Without the Trinity Hall tragedy it would be a shocking fire,
sure, nobody would get any credit, but I wouldn't be thrown to the
lions. A few score people would have died in a fire that might have
killed thousands. On the whole, I wouldn't have done too badly. I might
even keep my job."
"That's all you're thinking of--yourself?" Miranda said. "For all you've
said, the fire is no more than a setback to yourself?"
I laughed without humor. "Myself, Sheila, Dina, our kids, and far
more. The two hundred who were burned to death in Trinity Hall. If
they're not saved . . . I don't want to be saved either."
"You're bluffing. You won't stay here to die."
"I will," I said quietly. "I can't speak for Dina. She can make up her
own mind."
Dina said: "Val's all I have. I think I understand what this is
about. There are two hundred people you could save -- "
"I can't," Miranda insisted.
"Val thinks you can . . . I haven't had much of a life. My memories are
hazy -- but I know Val's always done all he should for me, and maybe
more. I'm grateful, too, for what you've done for me. I could have a
wonderful life now. But it would be spoiled if I backed down here. This
wasn't my idea . . . I'd never have thought of it and I wouldn't have
done anything if I had. Now -- if I saved myself, I'd be trading two
hundred lives for mine."
"That's nonsense," Miranda said sharply. "Val, you know you don't die. The
river of time -- "
"I'm sick to the back teeth of the river of time. I wanted explanations.
Now I've had enough. Unless you save the kids and old folk in Trinity Hall,
I'm staying here."
"In a suit," said Miranda. "There are suits here. You're bluffing. You'll
put them on, stay here and . . . "
She stopped as I picked up the three suits and walked to the wall of
the stasis. She didn't protest. She still thought I was bluffing.
But when I threw the first one through, she screamed.
The plastic was fireproof, but the breathing abparatus was not. And the
suit was not sealed.
Chapter Twelve
Miranda pulled urgently at me. "Val, wait," she begged. "You don't
understand -- if you destroy the suits, you destroy all chance of getting
what you want. Even if I did try to get something done about Trinity Hall
. . . To do that I'd have to get back to the copse and speak to . . . to
the people in charge. I couldn't leave here without a suit. So if you -- "
I threw a second suit at the invisible wall. It passed limply through
and flared only slightly, because the material wouldn't burn. But then
the heat got at the oxygen in the breathing apparatus, and there was a
minor explosion.
I moved back from the stasis wall with Miranda. "Now we're back where we
started," I said. "There's one suit. Dina and I can't both get out. You
want to save us. If what you say is true, you
have
to save us. And the
only way you can do that is save the people in Trinity Hall."
"They'll never agree," she said.
"But you
have
agreed. You're going to try."
"All right," she said quietly. "I'll try."
There was sudden frantic urgency after the long hours of inaction. In
the army, you hurry up and wait. Or, sometimes, Wait and hurry up.
I didn't know what time dawn was, but it must be very soon now.
While there had been nothing we could do, time had not mattered much. But
suddenly it was of vital importance. Miranda tugged at the remaining
fire-suit, fumbling in her haste. When she had it on, she didn't waste
time in talk. She almost ran through the stasis wall.
"I don't suppose you can explain this to me, Val?" said Dina.
"I don't suppose I can."
"But you meant all that about Trinity Hall? Two hundred people are dying
there, and she can save them?"
Dina had been sound asleep for hours. Her misconception of the situation
was understandable. She didn't know enough, understand enough, to
realize that what I was demanding of Miranda was a change of history,
an alteration in what had already happened. Dina took it for granted
that if two hundred people could be saved, they must still be alive.
"Yes," I said.
Greg had not moved. I took a cursory glance at him; he was breathing,
and the injury on his head was merely a bruise, though a large one. He
would recover all right. If he took his time about doing it, so much the
better. Miranda believed that now she could handle him easily. I wasn't
so sure.
"And all we can do is wait?" Dina saicL
"All we can do is wait."
By this time the town must be surrounded by half the firemen in England,
and no doubt some progress in fighting the dying fire was being made.
Water turned to steam would be drawing off a lot of heat from the
scorched ground.
Was there a chance, I wondered, that we'd be saved anyway? If the firemen
were able to fight their way into the ravaged town, if they got anywhere
near the stasis, we might live, independent of Miranda and the giants.
I found myself hoping desperately. I wanted to live. I wanted Dina to
live, now that she had something to live for.
My grandstanding had been sincere enough. For selfish and unselfish
reasons, the issue for me had come down to the fate of Trinity Hall
and the people in it. I at least half believed that the giants couldn't
afford to avert the fire, that they couldn't openly fight it, showing
themselves fighting it, that perhaps they really had done all they could
by secretly saving a few score of people whose bodies would not be missed.
But somebody could easily have given the alarm at Trinity Hall. A stone
through a window -- failure of lights -- smoke through the ventilation --
a tap on a door -- and all those people could be saved. I didn't think
Miranda's river of time would be too much disturbed.
I hadn't told Miranda, perhaps I didn't know then, all my own reasons
for digging in my heels on this one thing. The really fundamental one
was my own feeling of responsibility.
No, I hadn't started the fire. I hadn't been careless or inefficient or
venal. I had simply done my job the way I was told and expected to do
my job. Nothing had been falsified, nothing hidden. Even on Trinity Hall
itself my conscience wes clear. Fire officers want to make sure, whatever
the cost -- that's their job. Insurance managers don't want fires, don't
want to have to pay out, but they have to accept. a calculated risk --
that's theirs. If there's no fire risk, there can be no fire insurance.
Yet accident conceives and gives birth to blame. 'We know it happened:
why did it happen?' Millions of stable doors have been slammed after
horses have bolted. What really happened in the library, anyway? In
detail, Miranda didn't know. Were the alarms severed or switched off --
or were the wires which operated them burned or shorted by the fire
itself? Nobody knew better than me that ultimately every additional
safety device meant something more that could go wrong.
Trinity Hall represented my hope of mental peace. If
that
didn't
happen, if because of me that didn't happen, I believed I could live
with the rest. I could be blamed, and feel in my heart that blame was
unjust. A car driver who kills a child may never be able to get it out
of his mind -- but if he knows he was not at fault, he can live with it.
If I'd been able to say to Miranda "save those people," and she'd said
"why of course, Val," it would have been nothing.
But I had to put up my own life. I valued it. I wanted it. I put up my
stake, and I made sure I couldn't welch.
If the Trinity Hall youngsters and old folks were saved, I could be saved.
"That's funny," said Dina.
I paid no attention, still wrapped in my thoughts.
"It's getting light," she said.
She was right and she was wrong. It was getting light, but it wasn't
funny. Not when the stasis disappeared.
It was Hell.
Fierce heat swept across the village green. The fire outside, by
comparison with what it had been, was a mere glow of dying embers.
And yet . . .
My bare flesh withstood the heat for a moment, until it dried and
cracked. I could feel, or thought I could feel, my blood beginning to
boil. My hair crawled and I felt it singeing.
In those long seconds of burning to death we looked around, while we
could still see, in instinctive search for an avenue of escape. Men have
found themselves in front of oven doors opened by mistake . . . for them,
even if they die, the chance of flight, of saving themselves, at least
exists. The fire has a source and a direction. If the heat is lethal
at seven feet it may not be at fourteen, fifty, two hundred. Escape is
a possibility.
But there was nowhere for us to go. The heat was all round us, The
coolest place was and would continue to be where we were, practically
in the center of what had recently been a haven in the conflagration.
Dina's white blouse slowly, steadily, went brown.
Greg, without regaining consciousness, writhed and twisted like a plastic
doll thrown into an open fire.
We screamed.
We couldn't breathe. The fire was using up all the oxygen.
Long before we died, we couldn't see.
We could still feel.
I'd have been lucky, after all, to die on my way through the flames
with Greg. Jota had been lucky. Then, in the blinding heat of the fire
at its height, death came instantly.
Now it was slow, though no less sure.
Slowly, but inexorably, I died.
And came to life again. Of course. It was only to be expected. With
Miranda and the giants around, death wasn't death and you could never
be sure of life.
I still knew all that had happened. I knew and would always know what
it was like to burn to death in the mere backwash of a great fire.
Now I was unburned, as I had once before been unkilled. The stasis was
still in position. Dina's blouse was still white. And Greg was quietly
snoring.
Standing over me was Miranda, once more taking off her fire-suit. She
had dropped another at her feet.
"Loops," I said drunkenly, "are enough to make a man loop the loop."
"I was ten minutes too late," Miranda said. "But this time I could
do something about it." She had a small machine in her hand, like a
transistor radio.
"Thank you very much," I said. "Now we can go through the whole thing
again. Became I'm still as determined -- "
"It's done," said Miranda.
It took me several seconds to realize what she meant.
"Trinity Hail?" I said at last.
She nodded. "They agreed . . . Your life is necessary, Val. Perhaps Dina's
too, we don't know. You had to be saved, far more than Jota had to be
saved. In his case we guessed, in yours we know . . . "
"The people in the hall?" I said.
She shrugged. "We cut the electric current. There was panic. One girl
and one old man have broken arms. But they all got out. Now -- you have
fifteen minutes."
She could be lying, of course. She could be bluffing to get Dina and
me away safely, quite powerless, once the giants removed themselves,
to take the kind of action which could change the world. Once we saved
ourselves, the chance of bargaining was gone.
I didn't think Miranda herself would lie. But she might easily have been
told to return and do what she was doing, say what she was saying.
I started putting on one of the suits. Dina, with a slight shrug, did
the same. Miranda sighed in relief.
"We're going past Trinity Hail," I said. "If the bodies are still there,
I'm coming right back."
This didn't worry Miranda. "As you like."
"You've got what you want?" I said. "You're satisfied?"
"Yes."
"You're sure?" I looked down at Greg, who had not moved.
"Yes. In my world there's already a big change. The Gift has disappeared.
We don't know about the neutrals -- maybe they're not needed any more.
Now hurry up and -- "
The suits were on and sealed. "We'll hurry," I said. "Because I need
time to get back here and take off my suit if necessary."