Ascendancies

by D.G. Compton

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

Into a future where a depleted fuel supply had the world spiralling down into grinding poverty and constant war came . . . Moondrift. Mysterious white flakes of alien matter that was the perfect fuel - clean powerful, dependable. But the aliens - or whatever they were - who sent Moondrift seemed to demand a heavy ransom in return. After each Moondrift comes an eerie sound, as pure as a children's choir, heard all over the world. It mesmerises all who hear it with it's beauty - and when it is ended, certain people have simply disappeared without warning, never to be seen again. This is the story of one who disappeared . . .

Release date: November 14, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 224

Sample

That Tuesday afternoon, as the yellow city electric came silently up the hill, the street was immaculate. Behind their railings the gracious terraces of old, tall-windowed houses were vividly white in the sparkling summer air. Cats basked on area steps. Doors stood open to the sun, showing glimpses of carpeted hallways, antique gilt lamp brackets, fine paintings, ship models in glass cases. Window sashes, too, were open: affluent, unashamed. And the parked cars that lined the vacuum-cleaned pavements flashed spotless green and crimson, purple and metallic blue. For this was 1986, my children, and the falls of Moondrift only two years begun. Governments were provident then, having not yet learned to trust the unfailing profligacy of their monthly benediction.

They gathered the Moondrift, therefore, every single grain. Dirt and Moondrift, plastic bottles and dog turds, for later separation, every single grain.

In this cleanliness, furthermore, at that time even the humbler areas of the city benefited handsomely … For there were humbler areas, you must remember, then as now. Rich though we are, and richer though we may become, the shiftless are with us always. And the Disappearances, when all is said and done, can cause embarrassment to even the most needlessly industrious. A mansion without its mistress may slip a notch or two, a business without its boss may crumble altogether.

But in those far off, twenty-years-ago days, even the meanest of streets were clean, and their shoddy backyards also. For the Central Generating Authority, in its sweet inexperience, was actually paying for the Moondrift that fell on nonmunicipal property, and issuing plastic sacks gratis for its collection.

An age of golden innocence, therefore. A time of husbanding, of virtue. Of thanksgiving for fissionable manna. They called it Moondrift, romantically, knowing it was nothing of the sort, and were grateful.

We call it Moondrift still. But the romance is gone. And the gratitude. The Moondrift lies in our city streets and festers. While we grow richer, and more contentious.

The yellow city electric came silently up past the shining house, from the direction of the city center, moving slowly, looking for a parking space. It found a small one, ahead of a red Rolls-Peugeot, and reversed neatly in. The driver reached down for the briefcase on the floor beside him, then slid the door open and got out onto the pavement. He plugged his car in at the nearest charging point, stooped briefly to insert his embossed account card, then straightened his back and looked around. He was a man in his early thirties, his tie was decorated with the signature of its French designer, and his suit was chain-store chic, with detectably shiny elbows. His hair had been waved, but not odiously, and his shoes had the handmade look. But only, it has to be admitted, the look. And his fingernails were none too clean.

He was, in short, an insurance agent.

He produced a thick black notebook, held together with an elastic band, flipped it open, and referred to it, holding it at arm’s length, farsightedly. Then he examined the numbers on the doors of the houses immediately beside him. He frowned, pushed his left sleeve up extravagantly, and glanced at his very digital watch. Then he set off up the street at a brisk pace, anxiously checking the house numbers as he went.

Number thirty-seven was almost at the top, just before the street led into a small square with plane trees and grass, and a modest stone mermaid supporting a dolphin fountain. Mothers were sitting on benches while their children scuffed the grass and didn’t look at one another. Then, as now, the rich had their problems.

The door to number thirty-seven was closed, and all the windows, too. The man went youthfully, two at a time, up the six steps to the door. He rang the doorbell. Waiting, he adjusted his tie and looked again at his watch. The time was 03:12.

The door opened, revealing a woman against a background of Schönberg, almost certainly quadraphonic.

A man therefore, and now a woman … but hardly, as yet, anything in the least unsuitable.

The woman, however, was also in her early thirties. Promisingly. But she was neat and superior, with neat, superior hair done back in a bun at the nape of her neck, and a neat, superior dress of soft brown wool. Ceramic necklaces dangled upon her chest. Not upon her breasts, you understand, nor even upon her bust: she was too neat and superior for that. The man’s hand went up to his tie again, was mentally slapped down, hovered uncertainly.

The woman took it.

‘You’re Mr Wallingford, from the Accident and General,’ she said.

Thus placed so unerringly, Mr Wallingford could only apologize. ‘I’m afraid I’m late,’ he said. ‘The traffic was the very devil.’

He must have liked the phrase, for he repeated it, gaining confidence. ‘The very devil,’ he said. ‘And then I couldn’t find a space and had to leave the car down at the wrong end of the street. You’re Mrs Trenchard.’

Mrs Trenchard inclined her head. A Vanderbilt at least. She looked past him. There was a large empty parking space immediately outside her house.

‘Won’t you come in?’ she said.

Mr Wallingford wiped his feet elaborately on the door mat. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said, as he stepped past her into the house.

Mrs Trenchard shut the door, then led him forward. The house, with all its closed windows, was stuffy, and totally quiet. There was a grandfather clock in the hallway, but it seemed to have stopped. Mr Wallingford noticed these things.

Mrs Trenchard touched his arm. ‘In here,’ she said, indicating a room on their right, where the quadraphonics were coming from.

Mr Wallingford looked, saw white hide settees, glass tables, vintage weighing machines, pictures of pinkish private parts in bright chromium frames. It was all the same to him, however – in his line of work one might assume he met all manner of person – and it will have been from purely professional reasons that he stepped back from the doorway.

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Upstairs, if you don’t mind, Mrs Trenchard. It’s quicker in the long run. Gets things over with. Know what I mean?’

Mrs Trenchard appeared not to have heard him. ‘A drink, Mr Wallingford? Gin? Whiskey? Vodka? White wine? … Beer?’

‘Business before pleasure, I always say.’ He guffawed unsuitably, checked himself. ‘Upstairs first, if you don’t mind. Get things over with. The remains are in the bedroom, I presume?’

Mrs Trenchard raised her eyebrows. ‘Naturally Haverstock is in his room. You wish to see him?’

‘It’s … necessary.’ He flicked defensively at his sleeve. ‘Regulations, you know.’

‘Of course. How silly of me.’ She glided into the white settee room, turned off the music, then led him up the staircase, past matching studies of Arabia in Victorian aquatint. ‘It happened last night … The police doctor signed the certificate. I must say you’ve been very prompt. I only telephoned the Accident and General this morning.’

‘We don’t waste time, Mrs Trenchard.’ He held his briefcase high, against his coat lapels, lest it bang the immaculate banisters. ‘All part of the service.’

‘He broke his neck, poor man. On these stairs. I was in the kitchen at the time. The police were perfectly satisfied.’

They reached the landing. A further staircase went on up to the second floor. Mrs Trenchard paused, turned, fixed him with unwavering amber eyes. ‘That his death was accidental, I mean.’

Mr Wallingford looked away. ‘Is … is that the room?’

‘Mine, Mr Wallingford. Haverstock preferred the back of the house, overlooking the garden. He liked to hear the birds in the morning. And he preferred the piquancy of separate rooms. He felt it lent excitement, impropriety even, to our fucking.’

She moved gracefully away. There was a faint smile on her lips that Mr Wallingford could not see. Possibly – if it were not too vulgar a thought – she believed she was winning.

Mr Wallingford followed her into the back bedroom. It was dim, the curtains drawn across the window. The body was on the bed, uncovered, wearing pajamas and a dressing gown. Mrs Trenchard crossed the room, opened the curtains. She stood there for a moment, her forehead against the glass, looking out. There were trees, and beyond them the backs of other tall white houses.

Mr Wallingford looked around for something on which to open his briefcase. The bed was a low, gray velvet oval. The rugs on the floor were shaggy yak. But he was confident now, the situation controllable, familiar. Rooms might differ, and also the bereaved. But a body was a body.

‘Do you have a photograph of your husband, Mrs Trenchard?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ She stayed with her back to him, looking out of the window. ‘He had this thing against photographs. Memorials to the dead moment, he called them.’

‘Mr Trenchard wrote books, I believe?’

She turned then. ‘But the jackets never had a picture. Never … Mr Trenchard forbade it. The word is eternal, you see – the human face, sadly, rather less so.’ She clasped her hands lightly in front of her flat, flat stomach. ‘I quote, of course. My husband’s books were atrocious. God knows what anybody saw in them.’

Briefly Mr Wallingford was without bearings again. He saw a table for his briefcase by the fireplace. It cheered him. ‘May I –?’ he exclaimed, hastening to it and opening his briefcase without waiting for an answer. He began to sort documents out in piles.

Mrs Trenchard watched him.

‘Please,’ she said at last. ‘Make yourself at home.’

‘I already have,’ he said, not noticing.

His documents prepared, he sat down at the table.

‘Don’t mind me.’

He produced a pair of spectacles from his inside pocket and put them on. He started filling in forms, fussing with the carbons, cross-referencing as he went.

For the time now that she was unobserved Mrs Trenchard’s face, her entire body, underwent a subtle change. It sagged. Suddenly it was neither neat nor superior. Hairpins appeared at awkward angles in the bun at the nape of her neck. Her amber eyes blurred to uncertain brown. And her stomach, no longer flat, might almost – considered in isolation – have been friendly and snug to make sport upon. Except that the rest of her made such a notion utterly crass. For Mrs Trenchard, in toto, was unhappy. Anxious. Scared out of her wits.

‘Death certificate?’

Mr Wallingford scarcely looked up, but his words braced her nevertheless. Hairpins disappeared, and that friendly stomach also. Head held high, she walked to the fireplace, removed the certificate from the frame of the Chippendale mirror above it, and handed the document to him.

‘Thanks.’ Immersed in forms. Forgetful of where he was. ‘Let’s see now … Cause of death, fracture of the … um … the …’

‘Broken neck.’ Too sharp. Clearly her nerves still jangled. She made an effort. ‘I do so dislike doctors’ double-talk, don’t you?’

He glanced up, peering earnestly over the tops of his glasses. The thought had never occurred to him. ‘My word, yes. How right you are. Yes indeed.’ He returned to his papers.

Mrs Trenchard’s gaze wandered composedly around the room, settled on the body in its striped pajamas and blanketish dressing gown. She frowned very slightly, struck perhaps by their homey incongruity on the oval, gray velvet bed. She glanced down at Mr Wallingford, seated beside her, her thought process unmistakable – would he notice? Then, she relaxed, clearly deciding that the point was too subtle, and he wouldn’t.

Mr Wallingford sat back, took off his spectacles, laid them and his pen down on the table. ‘Shoes now,’ he told her.

‘Shoes?’ she echoed, smoothing one eyebrow with a calm, slim finger.

‘’Fraid so. Not that I don’t trust you – personally, I mean. But the Accident and General has to be certain.’

‘As you wish.’ Resignedly, almost pityingly, she moved a few paces, reached up and pulled down a section of the blue flock-sprayed ceiling. It came easily, on counterweights, revealing a row of suits, and shoes on racks below them.

Mr Wallingford didn’t quite hide his impressed surprise. He chose a pair of shoes. ‘Better have a shirt as well, while we’re at it,’ he said. ‘Just to be sure.’

Another section of ceiling supplied shirts, each in a plastic laundry bag.

‘Underwear too?’ Mrs Trenchard queried.

This time he caught the sarcasm. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said quite snappily. ‘Look, you don’t have to watch if you’d rather not.’

‘It really doesn’t matter. My husband is dead. And you have a job to do. Of course you must do it.’

‘Somebody has to, Mrs Trenchard.’

Never one to labor a point, she didn’t answer.

He took one of the shoes, eased the laces, then stooped again over the body and slipped the shoe onto one cold, dead foot. It went on easily. He tightened the laces, tied them, tested for free play, joggling the leg, the whole body. One arm slipped off the bed, dangled to the floor.

Satisfied that the shoe was a convincing fit, Mr Wallingford moved to the other end of the bed, tactfully replacing the arm as he went. He slipped a tape measure expertly from his jacket pocket and threaded it around the dead man’s neck. The corpse’s eyes were closed, the corners of its mouth drawn back by muscular contraction into a faint smile.

Mr Wallingford removed the tape, noted the measurement where he had kept his thumb, compared it farsightedly with the collar size of the shirt. ‘Good … very good,’ he murmured.

He straightened his back. ‘You wouldn’t credit, Mrs Trenchard, what some people get up to. In the line of substitutions, I mean.’ He fingered the shirt. ‘No name tab, I see.’

‘No.’ Baldly. Daring him.

‘Well, well … it really doesn’t matter. Quite out of fashion, name tabs are.’ He was conciliatory now. ‘We’ll just get your signature, and that’ll be that. I can fill in the rest back at the office.’

He gave the shirt back to her, found he was holding only one shoe. ‘Sorree … sorree …’ With a sprightly gesture he turned to reclaim the second shoe. It stuck, then came off with an unpleasant plopping sound. ‘Sorree … sorree …’

He was falling over himself, anxious to be away, ashamed that his job should have forced him to doubt this immaculate, unimpeachable lady. While she, giving nothing, waited patiently, unemotionally. No – guardedly. Her smile, too, was guarded as she accepted the pair of shoes, replaced it in its ceiling unit, and slid both units up and away.

Mr Wallingford sat down again at the table, put on his spectacles, tapped them up his nose. Then he selected a form, stood it on edge to square its carbons, and pushed it across the table, together with his pen. ‘Your usual signature, please.’ He made faint pencil crosses. ‘Here. And here … and here.’

Mrs Trenchard wrote her name twice, in a clear, unostentatious hand: Caroline Trenchard. Then she paused. ‘What exactly am I signing?’

‘That the particulars on the claim form are correct. Policy number. The figure insured. The … um … your late husband’s particulars. The date of his decease. The –’

‘What exactly is the figure insured?’

‘One hundred thousand, Mrs Trenchard.’

She nodded. ‘And there’ll be no further … difficulties?’

‘None at all. Premiums are up to date. The Accident and General honors its commitments promptly and efficiently. You can expect our check within the week. I bring it myself, you know – just to be sure there’s no mistake.’

‘I am impressed, Mr Wallingford.’ She signed again, at the bottom of the page, for the third and last time. ‘I would not have you think me calculating, you understand. Haverstock’s death has been a great shock to me. But one must –’

‘Say no more, Mrs Trenchard. Not another word. Your late husband’s wishes have been complied with – no more than that. Clearly, it was his wish to leave you well provided for.’ Mr Wallingford began to gather together his papers. ‘I’d just like to mention, Mrs Trenchard, that the Accident and General handles all sorts of business. House insurance. Personal effects. Comprehensive automobile … And our terms are highly competitive. So if you should ever think of –’

It was then that the Singing began. The familiar, sliding, tuneless voices. And the smell, like synthetic roses, that was suddenly everywhere, faint and cloying in the contained spaces of the room.

Mrs Trenchard backed away. ‘Have you any particular theories, Mr Wallingford? Any protective measures you wish to take?’ Her calmness was an agony. ‘Some people, I know, believe in darkness. There is a cupboard on the landing, if you’d prefer to …’

But Mr Wallingford wasn’t listening. He had leaned forward across the table, his head covered with his arms, his body shaking visibly. ‘Oh God, not again,’ he whispered. ‘Not again. Not so soon …’

Mrs Trenchard watched him. His weakness seemed to give her strength. ‘Nothing does any good, you know. Nothing at all. One simply has to accept.’

Abruptly he lurched to his feet. He ran from the room, slamming the door behind him. His headlong flight took him across the landing, right up against the wall by one of the windows at the front of the house. Out of her presence now, the terrible weight of her exemplary behavior, he slowly grew calmer. The smell was still with him, of course, and the Singing. But he pulled himself together.

Looking out of the window, he could see along the row of houses to the sunlit square at the top of the hill. Mothers were clutching their children. Some were carrying them, seven- and eight-year-olds, as they staggered pointlessly around the gray stone fountain and in under the trees. A city electric coming up the hill braked to a halt in the middle of the roadway, and the driver got out. He was thin, with gray hair, and he stood on the clean hot asphalt, eyes closed, quite still, waiting.

Mr Wallingford took a deep breath. He removed the folded handkerchief from his breast pocket, spread it out, and mopped his face. It was a false sensation, he knew, but being in the house gave him confidence. He looked around, found himself in a woman’s bedroom, presumably Mrs Trenchard’s. Whole walls of mirror returned his image. He pulled at the hem of his jacket – it had a tendency to ride up at the back – and gingerly crimped his hair between straight fingers. Then he refolded his handkerchief and stuffed it back into his breast pocket. He sauntered to the door, observing the effect. He had a good saunter. And the Singing continued. She was quite right, of course. Nothing did any good.

He returned across the landing, softly opened the door to the dead man’s room. At first it seemed that Mrs Trenchard was no longer there. Then he saw her, crouched in a corner, pressed tightly into the angle of the walls. So she was human after all. But the transformation touched him. He hesitated, moved toward her, one hand outstretched, then hesitated again at the impossibility of contact.

‘Actuarially,’ he said, ‘the chances of a Disappearance are one in three point seven million against.’

Mrs Trenchard didn’t move. Her voice came to him somewhat muffled. ‘Statistically. You mean statistically. And that was last month. They haven’t put out the figures for June yet.’

She got to her feet, turned to face him. Not a hair was out of place. But two wet trails of tears ran down her cheeks. She appeared to be unaware of them.

‘Longish odds, either way,’ said Mr Wallingford encouragingly.

‘Are you a betting man?’

‘Not me. Fool’s game, I say.’

Mrs Trenchard smiled thinly, came forward out of her corner. ‘We used to go to the races a lot. Collecting types, you know. Not really for the horses at all. Collecting types.’

Mr Wallingford frowned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t –’

‘Types, Mr Wallingford. For Haverstock’s books.’ She left him to work it out for himself.

‘Oh, people. You mean people.’

‘Except that they weren’t. Not to Haverstock. Not people – just types. Which is probably why his books w. . .