The Green Gene Page 10

  Before Humayan could act in any way to release his inner tension a park-attendant came up the path pushing a barrow with gardening tools in it. This man, bearded and green-faced, halted by the enclosure and scratched his head, miming astonishment, when he saw the dead birds. He stepped over the paling and threw the pigeons’ bodies into a dump of bamboo, but when he picked up the peahen he hefted it thoughtfully by the legs, glanced round, and quickly slid the body under a piece of sacking in his barrow. At last he trundled away.

  “Golly!” said Glenda. “There must have been enough in there to poison the whole school!”

  “I will not stand for it!” hissed Humayan. “It is intolerable!”

  “Being poisoned, you mean? But you weren’t.”

  “I shall go now to the police!”

  “No! No! You can’t do that! Then it might all come out about Kate and that creep Frank. Besides Mum’s very fond of Moirag. No, Pete, you can’t! I won’t let you!”

  Shiveringly Humayan ran his fingers round the brass knobs of the collar. Furious with fear though he was, he knew he would have to obey. And after all, she had saved him; even before she came into the room and spoke the saving word, the collar had tried to protect him. So this was evidence that she was a very powerful witch indeed, though he suspected that she was still too young to have any real idea of her own powers; it would be most unsafe to thwart her over a matter like this.

  “Most unsafe,” he muttered.

  “Oh, she won’t try it again. They’re real bird-brains, you know—they never carry anything through. I tell you what—Moirag’s frightfully superstitious; we’ll go home and you can thank her for the cake and tell her how good it was and she’ll think that Indians can eat poison without being ill. I wish I knew where she got it.”

  “It does not matter. I will move. I will go to an hotel. I cannot stay in your house if people keep trying to poison me.”

  “Oh no! You can’t go! Life’s so much more interesting now I’ve got you!”

  Another order. Humayan shrugged and walked with her down the slant path under the lime-trees, past the adventure playground to the park gates. Perhaps Glenda’s plan was a good one, he thought. It would produce a strong reaction from Moirag, who was too simple a creature to control her emotions; that would betray her guilt, and then he would be able to consult Doctor Glister about the proper course of action. He would not tell Glenda that he was going to consult her father, or she would forbid it. Yes, that was the sensible, mature, course of action. Humayan thought that any man could be forgiven a certain emotionalism in such circumstances, but the responsible citizen considers his duty to himself and to society, chooses the proper path, and firmly bids the monsters of shock and horror back into their dens.

  Unfortunately Moirag was loitering at the gates into Horseman’s Yard when they returned. The two little dogs were deciding where they could most inconveniently excrete.

  “It’s a grand evening, Miss Anne,” she said. “And I have baked a cake for you, Mister.”

  Her bland, slurred voice, her unreadable pale eyes, her unpractised smile, all twisted Humayan’s guts. The monsters surged back, yelping, into the open.

  “I have seen your cake,” he hissed. “I have fed it to the birds! They fell down dead!”

  “Pete! Pete!” cried Glenda.

  “You were feeding my cake to the birds?” said Moirag.

  “Yes, for you are trying to poison me. I have witnesses. And you filled my orange juice with salt! I will not permit it!”

  “A gentleman would not be making his complaints in the open road,” said Moirag. She was still smiling and her eyes glittered. A window or two opened round the upper storey of the Yard.

  “Yes, I know you!” shouted Humayan. “You are a wicked woman! You want to kill me. You want to kill me because I know your wickedness! Yes!”

  “Do stop it, Pete,” said Glenda.

  “Ach, don’t be fashed, Miss Anne,” said Moirag. “The little blackamoor’s been drinking, surely. He does not look to me to have a gey strong head on him.”

  Humayan’s tongue forgot his English and he cursed her in shrilling Hindustani until a strong hand gripped his elbow.

  “What the hell’s up?” said Mr. Leary.

  “Moirag’s been a bit silly,” said Glenda. “She’s been teasing Pete, and it’s upset him.”

  “So I should bloody well think,” said Mr. Leary. “Go away, Moirag. You’re a stupid old bag, and you ought to know better than trying to come it over a visitor to this isle of ours; tsk tsk. Now come along, old fellow. Don’t take it too hard. What’s all this about wickedness?”

  “Nothing. Nothing,” muttered Humayan. He was weak and ashamed ,as though his rage had been like the vomit which the little dog had spewed over Horseman’s Yard’s trim paving—and that had been no more the dog’s fault than this was his.

  “Nothing,” he said again. Moirag smiled and looked sideways at Mr. Leary, who stared thoughtfully back at her, rubbing his bearded chin.

  “You’ll be late for curfew,” said Glenda, placidly.

  Moirag opened her mouth, shut it again, nodded and lurched off. Mr. Leary relaxed his grip on Humayan’s arm.

  “Come along, Pete,” he said again. “This sort of thing’s hell, I know, but you never get anywhere by reacting. The only hope is to pay no attention and then they get to realise that it won’t wash. Come and have a stiff noggin of … oh, you don’t. Sorry, old fellow, I forgot. But you can’t expect Moirag to know a thing like that.”

  This too was intolerable. The Poona voice, put on to express the false sympathy. Mr. Leary had clearly heard, and enjoyed, a lot of the quarrel before he had chosen to intervene. He was a cruel man. Humayan turned and rushed for the door of Number Six.

  “Nothing, nothing,” he muttered to the one-man committee of Glisters who stood waiting in the hallway. “I’ll explain,” said Glenda.

  He scuttered miserably upstairs to lie on his bed and contemplate a future diet taken solely from unopened tins. Compounding his misery was the knowledge that after this it would be quite impossible to do any real work tomorrow.

  Work proved impossible in any case. First there was an intrusive paper on his desk again, a proper newspaper open at a spread which started in enormous letters with the words “WILL YOU HAVE A GREEN BABY? HE KNOWS.” The photograph was the same as the one on his pass, but showing more background. A broad white arrow had been cut from it, to join the screaming type to his own head. The article had been much condensed from the version he had read yesterday. Many pleasing references to himself had been omitted, besides a number of comments on the bleaker aspects of life in a Green Zone. The scientific basis was now seriously distorted. The final impression was that this funny little brown man had been imported by the RRB to work a single rapid miracle, allay one central anxiety in the Saxon soul, and then be politely exported again. The telephone rang.

  “Dick Mann here.”

  “I have read it.”

  “What? Oh yes, that. Came out quite well in the end.”

  “It is very unbalanced in my opinion.”

  “No harm in that. Bit of a smoke-screen about what you’re really here for, Pete. It’s stirring up a lot of interest already, and I want to talk to you about that. But there’s another thing, more urgent … Can you nip down and have a word with me? Fine. Stay there and Tarquin will come and collect you. Couple of minutes.”

  Humayan took yesterday’s version from the drawer and compared it with today’s. The maddening thing was that there was no single sentence about which he could complain without seeming a self-centred prima donna. But it was no use to his career now, no use at all.

  Tarquin turned out to be the young man whom he had previously seen in Mr. Mann’s outer office placing bets on horse races.

  “It is kind of you to come,” said Humayan, “but I think I could have
found my own way.”

  “There are ways and ways,” said Tarquin with a playboy’s laugh and led him out of the laboratory to a fire-cupboard; he opened the door and twisted the reel of the fire-hose, exposing a keyhole into which he inserted an instrument like a miniature ice-pick. He turned it and pushed; the back of the cupboard swung in so that they could enter a narrow bleak chamber with a lift-shaft in one side. The lift took them down to another such chamber, whence they emerged through another fire-cupboard into Tarquin’s office.

  Nothing had changed about Mr. Mann’s room, but Mr. Mann looked larger and bleaker as he slid a sheet of purple typing across the desk.

  “What in hell’s name have you been up to?” he said.

  Humayan’s hands shook, which made the symbols difficult to read, but he made out the top line of figures which showed him that this was a report from some security district which had been processed by the central computer and because it referred to him had been channelled to Mr. Mann’s desk. His confident reading of the various codes steadied him. He was beginning to know that computer pretty well.

  The message said: “DUTY 9958/16/23G. DAY-LOG 7. 83831 SGT COWKER. EXTRACT. 1941 HRS. WITH KIDS IN HD PK. NURSE MCNABB (CHK LVL 8). KIDS FED BIRDS. TWO PERSONS (M BROWN, FW) APPROACHED TO FEED BIRDS CARRYING ONE SLICE FRESH CAKE IN PAPER BAG. APPEARED MORE EXCITABLE THAN NORMAL ADULT BIRD CRANKS. FINISHED CAKE. RETIRED TO BENCH AND TALKED IN LOW VOICES. DISCUSSED SELF AND OFFICER FROST. AT 1957 HRS LARGE BIRD SQUAWKED AND DROPPED DEAD. BODY COUNT ALSO SEVEN PIGEONS (ESTIMATE). ON MY APPROACH W F WISHED TO RUN BUT BROWN M PRODUCED RRB PASS. DETAILS AS FOLLOWS …”

  Humayan knew the details by heart so he didn’t bother to read them. “Yes,” he said in a meditative voice.

  “What the hell do you mean ‘Yes’? We didn’t ship you over here to poison pigeons—and what was that other thing—a goose?”

  “A peahen. By ‘Yes’ I mean that it must have appeared odd and I am very glad of this opportunity to discuss it with you.”

  “Sit down. Fire ahead.”

  “The Glisters employ a maid called Moirag McSomething …”

  Mr. Mann’s stubby fingers hovered a moment above the keys of his Telex, then moved with expert speed.

  “… and a stupid feud developed between us because she wished to clean my room and I prefer to do so myself. It used to be her room, you see, before the new zoning laws. We have had one argument, and she has made little attempts to persecute me, such as bringing me a drink full of salt at the Sunday morning party in Horseman’s Yard.”

  “What do you make of all that?” said Mr. Mann.

  “Oh, they seem very nice people. Very friendly.”

  “They are the necessary hypocrites,” said Mr. Mann with quiet vehemence. “You’ve got to have them in a country like ours—people who know which side their bread is buttered but who’re prepared to make a little song and dance if the machinery for keeping them comfortable starts playing a bit rough with the Greens. They make me … sorry, Pete, carry on.”

  “Well, when I got home last night she had left a cake for me, iced, with the word ‘Peace’ on it. I thought that was nice of her and I was just going to eat some when Miss Glenda came in and said, by way of a jest, that it looked poisonous. And then, you know, I thought this was funny, Moirag making up the feud like that. She is not the type. But I am a cautious man so Miss Glenda and I took a slice to the park and fed it to the birds. It was fortunate we did so.”

  “Too bloody right. You tell Doc Glister? Local police? Nothing’s come through except this.”

  He tapped the report.

  “I was very upset, and Miss Glenda wished me to pretend to Moirag that I had eaten the cake. She has a malicious sense of humour, you see. Also the Glisters are kind hosts, and Miss Glenda said she would explain to her father. I do not know what she told him, but he said nothing when I met him this morning. I was intending to tackle him tonight.”

  “You’ve got the rest of the cake?”

  “I am sorry. I was most upset. I cut it in small pieces and flushed it down the lavatory.”

  “Hell. Then …”

  The machine beside the Telex clicked, fizzed and shot a rectangle of card across the desk. Mr. Mann glanced at it and passed it over. The photograph was a good likeness, in colour, the green very vivid. Moirag McBain, alias Smith, and a few lines of coded symbols. Mr. Mann took it back and studied it for a while.

  “See what happened to the birds?” he said suddenly.

  Humayan told him. He got up and fetched a large-scale map of London from a bookshelf and made him point out the exact spot where they had fed the birds. Then he lifted one of his telephones.

  “Tarquin? Good. No, not half done yet, you’ll have to stave them off another half hour. Now, lad, here’s a few chores. Get a man out to Holland Park, dump of bamboos at Map Ref 24777971—he should find half a dozen dead pigeons somewhere in there. Second, park gardener not turned up for work—if more than one, it’s the guy who had roast peahen for supper last night. Yeah, peahen. I want an autopsy on all of them, pigeons, peahen, gardener. Hell, man, in that case I want the contents of his stomach. OK? Now the other thing is I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we could fix up some sort of doctorate for Mr. Humayan—we could do with a bit of status about the place, huh? Have a look through that research budget list, see who owes us a quid pro quo. Shouldn’t be too difficult, they’ll be glad to have him. You should have seen what he did to the big machine yesterday—tied it in knots.”

  “I am sorry about that,” said Humayan, watching him put the phone down. “I was aware that there had been an overload, but not that it emanated from me. I am sure all my programmes were coherent.”

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t understand these things, but you had our engineers hopping. Not your fault. Some sort of coincidence of coding which broke into another programme and set up an infinite loop.”

  “I see,” said Humayan vaguely. Normally he would have traced the event to its source, out of sheer mathematical curiosity, but now his mind was fully occupied with running five magic syllables through and through. Doctor Humayan. Doctor Humayan. Mr. Mann was making another call.

  “Hi, baby, who’s in A3? OK, you’ve got half an hour to shift him out. Ring the Big Boss first, say I want it, because they’re … OK, OK. Then get all his dirty pinups off the walls, and have enough of Mr. Humayan’s stuff fetched down from the Lab to make it look right for him to be working there. You may have to pad it out a bit—poster of the Taj Mahal or something, ring up the FO and get them to send round a signed photograph of Nehru. Anything you fancy, provided it looks real. Soon as you’ve got that going find some lass with a nice voice and have all calls to Mr. Humayan shunted through her—tell her she’s his secretary. Give her List Five and get her to fix interview appointments, half an hour each, beginning 11 a.m. today. Only List Five—he won’t have time for those other creeps. Great. Now, where were we?”

  The last four words were spoken to Humayan, but Mr. Mann answered them himself.

  “Yeah, I know. We’ll leave your problems with Moirag for the moment. Thing is, we’ve had all Fleet Street on the phone since breakfast, chasing you. I staved them off till I could brief you. We’re going to dress it up a bit, give you a nobby office, all that. You don’t mind?”

  “It will be a great interruption to see them one at a time. Might we not hold a press conference?”

  This had always been an ambition—to be a scientist of such calibre that when he announced a press conference the press actually came.

  “Too dicey,” said Mr. Mann. “You’ve got to face it, we’re working in a pretty delicate field, and you haven’t all that experience of some things in it. There’s nothing harder to keep the lid on than a press conference. Somebody asks a catch question, you come out with the wrong answer, and they’ve all heard it—foreign press, too, and it’s a bloody sight harder to le
an on them. But you see them one at a time and there’s less pressure on you so you won’t give so many wrong answers. And if you do, we’ve only got that one reporter to lean on.”

  “How shall I know—how will you know if I’ve given a wrong answer?”

  Mr. Mann grinned like a happy schoolboy, lifted a flap in the machine by his desk, selected and pressed a switch. A plaintive voice filled the room.

  “… I say, I say, I’m trying to speak to the Director. Oh, thank God, Jake … what? Oh, I’m ever so glad you liked it, that is kind of you … But look, Jake, this is about a simply ghastly mistake which … but there’s a lot of men … Oh, Jake, you don’t mean that, this is serious, they’ve come into my room and started moving all my stuff up to a pokey little hole on … You knew about it and you didn’t tell me!…Oh, Christ, careful with that! That’s a Riley! … Sorry, Jake, I was talking to the workmen. You know that rather nice Bridget Riley … the black and white one … Heavens, I don’t know what colour she is. Do be serious, Jake … Oh … Oh, well, I suppose … (tinkle) … oh, Christ!”

  Mr. Mann clicked the switch up. Humayan laughed, but woke no response.

  “You can’t choose the tools you have to work with,” said Mr. Mann heavily. “I’m used to that. But some of the people you’ve got to work for! OK, Pete, that’s all fixed.”

  He picked up another telephone, dialled, waited, asked for extension thirty-six, dialled, spoke.

  “R5,” he said. “Scramble? OK, Scramble.”

  He pressed a button on the instrument.

  “Right? Good. Did you know you had an ex-C in your house? Yeah, that’s her. Then why the hell …”

  He broke off and noticed that Humayan was still in the room. Frowning with his spare hand he made urgent motions of farewell, and a gesture to explain that Tarquin would cope with any problems. Humayan bowed and left.