Walking Dead Read online

“Yes. Pretty certainly.”

  “Then I suggest that you carry on with the experiment strictly according to your briefing. You had better start using the wooden tops on the runs again, and let me have that one-way glass back.”

  “But …”

  “We must be quick, David,” said Dreiser, glancing warningly at the radio. “You were sent here to do a job which you felt was not worth your while. You then discover that it is worse than that—it is not worth doing at all. You also tell me that the people who sent you must have known that. We must therefore assume that the Company thinks the job worth doing, but not for scientific reasons. And yes, they have thought it worth sending you out. Your considerable reputation in your field is part of this charade. Therefore …”

  The music quietened to a nervy buzz, over which the DJ told his listeners, as though that were the most exciting thing in the world, that the time was 11:15. Dreiser rose and turned the radio off.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Now, to continue with this telex. I’m instructed to take steps to see that your report is kept under the best security conditions we can achieve here. Your office safe isn’t much better than a tin box, so we’ll keep it in here. Help me down with this, will you?”

  Foxe felt stupid. The Dreiser hypothesis … if it had been anybody but Dreiser he would have felt worse than stupid—sick, used, cheated—because the hypothesis fitted the facts better than anything Foxe could think of at the moment. But Dreiser was one of those facts. The hypothesis was exactly his sort of fantasy … Foxe saw that Dreiser had gone to the far end of the awful picture and was waiting for help in lifting it from the wall. He rose and took the near end. It was far lighter than he’d expected.

  “I thought this only happened in comic strips,” he said as they lifted the staring canvas down to reveal not one but three large safes set into the wall. Their combination locks looked as complex as any that Foxe had seen.

  “In my last job I had just one safe in my office,” said Dreiser, “with a charming Dutch sea-scape to hide it. Here I must endure this bestial invention. I believe it was painted to hang in a New York fashion house, which then went bankrupt; some idiot in the Company decided it would make a long-term hedge, but I’m glad to say it’s still a tax-loss.”

  “I must go in a couple of minutes.”

  “Right. All I’ve got to show you is that there are two locks, with eight-figure combinations. We can set them afresh whenever we want. So if you set one combination and I set the other, the safe can’t be opened without both of us being there. It’s very straightforward. Look …”

  Dreiser’s manner had changed while he was talking about the safes, become sharper and more eager, even a touch fanatical. His fingers reached for the dial of the combination as though he were going to caress it, but at the first click he sprang back snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to the front of the safe. Slowly the fierce hiss that had followed the click dwindled. A smell of surgical spirit prickled through the room. Foxe saw that Dreiser’s handkerchief had turned bright purple, and there was a splash of the same colour on the breast of his linen jacket.

  Foxe tore the top sheet of blotting paper from the pad on the desk and took it to Dreiser, who was muttering angrily to himself in German.

  “Does that happen every time we get my report in and out?” asked Foxe.

  Dreiser shook his head.

  “Forgot it was loaded,” he whispered. “Still thinking about what you’d told me. There’s a hidden catch to disarm it before we use the combinations. I had it put in so I’d know if any of the staff fancied themselves as cracksmen. I think that’s the lot. Right, David, I can get this picture back by myself. Don’t wait.”

  “Sure you can manage?”

  “I’ve done it before. But listen, I mean what I said about that fishing trip. You get this experiment of yours wrapped up quickly as you can, and we’ll go out in my boat for a day.”

  “That sounds fun,” said Foxe. “I’ve never done any serious fishing.”

  “Ah, you have a world of pleasure to explore. A new world.”

  4

  Foxe arrived for work next day thinking that the only cheerful aspect of the whole charade was that he now had Ladyblossom taped. Apart from that he didn’t know what to do. Suppose the Dreiser hypothesis was wrong, and the omission of error-counting from his briefing was a mistake, then the natural thing would be to query it by telex. But suppose Dreiser was right; then the mistake was deliberate. Would Head Office want him to draw attention to it? It was even conceivable that it wasn’t a mistake after all, and that what Foxe was re-running was somebody’s work on tolerance—did the rats under test show a diminishing improvement in performance as their bodies became accustomed to the drug? In that case errors might possibly be irrelevant—or at least be thought irrelevant by whoever had prepared the briefing.

  Foxe had re-read the briefing several times since he’d talked to Dreiser, and had come to the conclusion that it had been deliberately framed to exclude error-counting, without actually saying so. In any case, to install counters at this stage of the experiment would mean taking the runs out of commission for at least three days, which would play havoc with the rest of the figures; and to start again from scratch with fresh rats would mean over-running his lab time by at least two months. On the other hand, continuing with this obvious hole in the logic, spending weeks on work which he knew to be meaningless, was an appalling prospect. But at least he had Ladyblossom taped.

  And even that turned out to be a delusion, or if true Foxe had somehow managed to tape himself into the bundle. As he opened the door he knew at once that no cleaning had been done; the rooms lacked the vaguely pleasing smell of whatever it was Ladyblossom smeared her mop with. The waste-paper baskets were unemptied. Perhaps, Foxe thought, he’d scared her away with his show of mumbo-jumbo, and he was going to have to clean the rooms himself, after all.

  Just then there was a rattle and a thump and Ladyblossom came barging in, backwards, dragging her cleaning trolley behind her. She beamed at Foxe.

  “Changing all the rooms round so I come to you last,” she said. “Just so you see I try nothing on your rats, uh?”

  “If you like,” said Foxe uneasily. “I didn’t mean … Oh, I suppose it’s all right. I may have to ask you to keep quiet while I’m actually working with the rats—I don’t want them distracted.”

  “Be just as quiet as a dead man,” she said.

  And she was. Almost for the first time Foxe found himself noticing her, as a person rather than a phenomenon. She manoeuvred her implements and her own bulk without a sound. Previously if you’d asked him to describe her walk he’d have said it was a waddle, but he now saw that it was in its own way so efficient as to be almost graceful—stumpy, cushioned legs taking tiny quick steps which made no sound at all. Having seen this he then noticed how the motions of dusting and sweeping were done with a thoughtful, slow rhythm, as though she were responding to the rubrics of a ritual. Out of the oblivion-shrouded plains of childhood a memory flickered—a musty, near empty church, a few embarrassed voices straining to follow the wheedling organ A servant with this cause (one two) Makes drudgery divine (one two) Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws () Makes that an action fine. Only whatever music underlay Ladyblossom’s movements was something different from those prissy rhythms.

  When he’d finished injecting the first group of rats he came back to his office and found her on hands and knees, brushing under the desk.

  “Be good an’ quiet?” she whispered.

  “Fine,” he said. “But you don’t have to keep it up all the time. It’s only when I’m doing anything with the rats, and these partitions are supposed to be sound-proof.”

  “I be going to the dances last night,” she said. “The singing be all still in my mind. This quiet help me remembering the singing.”

  “I was just thinking you mo
ved like a dancer.”

  “Oh, I don’ dancing no more now. I be sitting in the circle to sing and to clap. Long time pas’, when I be young and strong to take the spirits, then I be doing the dances. But nowdays I be jus’ an old sack, all full of patching, and the spirits tearing me apart if so I try to bring them in me. So …”

  She paused, cocking her million-wrinkled smiling face to one side while she considered whether to go on.

  “I tell you,” she said, almost in a whisper. “This last night Queen Bridget com’ first, then we know it going be friendly time, happy and singing. And Good Saint Paul, he show up and bless us poor people. So nobody ain’t scared when the Sunday Dwarf appear, he be full of jokes, just happy and friendly. Bit of time the three of them go dancing together, but then Queen Bridget want dance all alone. So Good Saint Paul go up into the roof, but the Sunday Dwarf come and sit in the circle, with us poor people, close next me. And cause of for Queen Bridget there and Good Saint Paul I ain’t scared and I give the Sunday Dwarf my rum bottle and he pull a long drink. Then if I ask him what I want to know, he got to answer, cause of for taking my rum. I ain’t scared. I tell him I clean these rooms for this white feller, who got the knowledge, who got the power. Mister Sunday, I say, is this feller my friend, or is he my enemy? And the Sunday Dwarf pull more of my rum, and then he sing out, all loud, how you be his very good friend, and he know all about you, and how you gonna be my saviour when I be needing it. That’s nice, just nice, huh?”

  “Lovely,” said Foxe, overwhelmed by the smiling charm of the old lady but wishing he’d never begun this. Saviour? In what unpredictable ways was Ladyblossom going to exploit this obligation? Perhaps he’d better get her to ask this Sunday Dwarf figure what Head Office really wanted him to do about the error-counting. Now that’d make a good telex …

  “Since my Sonny go an’ join the army,” she sighed, “nobody don’ take care for me.”

  “Yes, um, well,” said Foxe, “I’ve got to be in the animal room and the test room for a bit. You can do the logic room if you want, and finish in here …”

  “Fine,” she said, gracefully accepting this rather clumsy close to the conversation. “I be coming back for those others.”

  She bent back to her cleaning.

  The only decision Foxe made that morning was to put off any decision, and to keep the strips of two-way mirror until he had a whole week’s errors logged. Counting these was the only part of the experiment that now had any interest for him. He began to refine the process—perhaps the figures needn’t be as hairy as he’d feared …

  When the mid-morning “window” came Ladyblossom reappeared.

  “I be doing the animals’ room now?” she said.

  “Fine. I don’t think it needs much. If you can do it in twenty minutes.”

  “That Quentin am my very good friend too?”

  “Oh yes, he’s a friendly little devil all round. He’ll keep an eye on you.”

  Foxe spoke carelessly, almost impatiently, but regretted it as he saw the cheerfulness wiped from Ladyblossom’s face. She turned away, then looked pleadingly up at him.

  “I won’ be telling the boy no more,” she said. “Truly sure I won’.”

  “That’s all right,” said Foxe, smiling. He had no idea what she was talking about. There were no more interruptions till lunch-time.

  As Foxe was easing his bike through the automatic doors of the lobby (something of a knack, if you didn’t want them crunching back onto your rear wheel before the machine was clear) Dreiser appeared on the tarmac outside. He seemed to see what was up and strode gawkily forward to stand on the outer mat and thus keep the doors open.

  “Thanks,” said Foxe, wheeling clear.

  “You’re welcome,” said Dreiser, turning and striding beside him up the steep stretch to the gateway. “OK if I send Charley up for those bits of mirror soon as you’re back?”

  “I’d rather keep them for a couple of days, if that’s all right.”

  Dreiser shook his head, a strange, stiff movement which looked as though there should have been audible clicks to accompany it.

  “Better not, David.”

  “Now, listen …”

  “No. You listen to me,” said Dreiser in a low voice. “I don’t imagine this area is bugged, but I don’t want this to look like more than a bit of casual conversation …”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

  “I called Head Office this morning. We’ve a code—I don’t think it’s been cracked yet—it sounds like we were talking about financial details. I asked whether they wanted you to add any frills to your experiment. Guy I talked to didn’t know, but he called back almost at once and said you were to lay off.”

  “You’re not making this up?”

  “See here, David, I’m aware you and Galdi and the others think I’ve got a case of neurosis, but I’ve been living on Hog’s Cay four years now, and I know how things are run here. Why do you think Head Office think it worth while to set up a special code for my use?”

  “I don’t know … but even supposing the place is crawling with spies, I bet you none of the mikes work, or anything. I mean the people here can’t even run a one-route bus service.”

  “Their heart is not in running bus services efficiently. It is in other things. So I’ll send Charley up for the mirrors.”

  “Oh, I suppose so. At least it’ll simplify things.”

  “Good. How many more days will you need to run the rats, in that case?”

  Foxe shrugged. There was no point in running them at all, really.

  “If I stick exactly to the briefing, ten.”

  “Fine. And on the eleventh day we’ll celebrate by going fishing, uh?”

  “If you like.”

  “You are here for a rest, remember.”

  “So it appears. See you.”

  Lisa-Anna used to complain that Foxe never got angry about anything except his own work. He would shrug or laugh and put up with all the horrors of the outside world, from the treatment of Soviet dissidents to cafés which charged for instant coffee as though it were the real Viennese brew, whereas interference with his work brought on a slow, churning anger that made him an unspeakable companion. Now, as he pushed his bike to the top of the slope and let it freewheel into the green and shadowy tunnel under the tree, he felt this state coming on, like the onset of flu. He fought against it. I’m here for a rest, he thought. I’m a tourist. What does a tourist do? Forget the bloody rats. Go and photograph something. Go and have a tourist lunch.

  At the bottom of the hill he didn’t turn off along the back way between the shanties but pedalled into the hot and gritty wind, along the sea-front, past the unfinished hotel, past another one which consisted of an eruption of concrete bubbles, to the one where he’d met Mr Trotter the herbalist. As he propped his bike against the trellis he noticed that the sign directing drinkers to the Igloo Bar was unlit, but this didn’t surprise him. There were very few neon signs on Hog’s Cay which spelt out their whole message; the night sky was full of gibberish, floating between the palm-tops and the stars, announcing things like EAFOO and OPLESS BARM and AL-NITE RAGE. In his first week Foxe had made a special trip half way along the beach to see what was blazing HA HO HO into the tropic dark, and had found a half-built wilderness of bungalows on the edge of a marsh, owned by something called The Happy Holiday Home Company.

  But when he reached the bar itself he found it closed; the vestibule outside was half-blocked with a litter of polar-bear skins and seal heads and harpoons. From beyond the door came the thuds and dust-smell of demolition. Foxe threaded his way through the hotel to the main entrance, where he found that the two black girls at the reception desk were wearing the national costumes of Japan and Wales, the latter modified for extra sexiness. A sign directed visitors to the Safari Lounge, and another to the Bierkeller, proving that the Igloo Bar had be
en an aberration only in absolute terms; in the context of the hotel it was another nation accommodated.

  “Can I help you?” said the Welsh-costumed girl, not attempting the accent.

  “Is Mr Trotter about? He’s the manager, isn’t he? My name is David Foxe.”

  She nodded and worked the switchboard.

  “Be a minute,” she said.

  Foxe wandered across the lobby and found an illuminated scroll, lush with reverberant adjectives, extolling this hotel in which the tourist could effectively visit the whole world without setting foot outside the building. A voice at his elbow said, “Mr Foxe, sir?”

  He turned and saw a chubby little brown man, very sharply dressed in a dark pin-stripe suit with a yellow shirt and orange tie. The man was smiling anxiously up, as though Foxe’s slightest frown or sneer would cause him to break into sobs.

  “That’s right. I wanted to see Mr Trotter.”

  “You do see him, sir. At your very good service. Gibson Trotter, managing the finest hotel in the West Indies.”

  He held up tiny pink-palmed hands in a priestly gesture, as though he were offering up the inner fineness of the hotel for Foxe’s own especial use. His soft, brown gaze was happy and candid, but the blink was a mistake; it was somehow willed, a deliberate addition to the general impression of softness and innocence, but it was one detail too much.

  “I’m looking for the Mr Trotter I met here last week,” said Foxe. “Tall and thin. He didn’t tell me his first name …”

  Foxe felt the watching intelligence behind the eyes relax a little.

  “There are many, many Trotters,” said Mr Gibson Trotter. “And many others use that name because they hope it is good for business.”

  “This one told me that the Minister of Tourism was his uncle.”

  “Could be. My uncle has so many nephews—a hundred perhaps. But I think this man is lying to you, sir. He tells you that he is managing this fine hotel, but I am managing it. So perhaps when he tells you his name is Trotter …”