Are there aliens among us? Are the chariots of the gods returning? If so - are they for us or against us? John Brunner, award-winning author and science fiction writer extraordinary, takes the questions now on everyone's mind, and gives one possible answer in this startling novel. Here is an edge-of-the-seat story of the man who discovers that the vanguard of the aliens are indeed amongst us - and that the human species has but a few hours left before our time runs out. It's a science fiction thriller you won't be able to put down.
Release date:
June 24, 2013
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
154
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Traffic drone punctuated by the sound of occasional impatient car horns. Sunlight, slanting between ill-drawn curtains. Hunched in a fetal posture under the one sheet which was all she could bear over her in this hot weather, Sally Ercott woke from terror to terror.
Her throat was sore, as though she had been screaming in her sleep. But if she had, the screams must have been silent. No one had come to see what was the matter with her. …
Like the dying chime of a bell, her mind rang with the echo of such nightmare that on realizing she was still here, still in this squalid horrible house, she could not prevent herself from bursting into tears.
The pillowcase, like the bedsheets, was ever so slightly greasy, as though the cloth were so old it could never again be washed wholly clean, as though that same smear of barely perceptible grime which made the floral wallpaper of this gloomy room repulsive to the touch had permeated the material and made it forever clammy, like damp leather.
Nonetheless she buried her face in it, racked with sobs.
It was always like this on waking. Instead, of escaping from the terrible trap of her dreams into a wholesome normal ordinary world, she moved into another and infinitely more fearful prison. Something abominable, something unspeakably foul, loomed in her awareness. It was as though pure cruelty could be distilled into a dark hideous cloud. It haunted her at the corner of vision, never quite being there when she tried to confront it directly, yet never going away.
Eventually she was able to master her misery. Her next—automatic—reaction was to look at her left wrist. Her watch wasn’t there, of course. It was at the pawnbroker’s in Praed Street, and had been since the last time she managed to leave the house. How long ago? More than a week.
But judging by the traffic noise, and the angle of the sunlight on the wall which never reached this room’s window until the morning was far advanced because there was a high-rise apartment block diagonally opposite, it must be nearly noon. She shuddered, her whole slim body convulsed by a spasm of nausea.
Oh, Christ. What did I do to deserve this living hell?
For a while longer she lay incapable of moving. Then, overhead, a clattering noise announced the departure of Mrs. Ramsay on her Saturday trip all the way from the attic to the street with her overflowing bucketful of garbage. She was elderly and arthritic and it always took her ages to complete the journey even when she didn’t spill half her load and have to break off and pick it up.
It would be intolerable to wait out that inexorable thud, thud, thud until it climaxed in a triumphant clash, of dustbin lids. Angrily, hating herself without knowing why, Sally Ercott swung her feet to the floor.
The phone beside Nick Jenkins’ bed rang shrilly. Rolling over, reaching by reflex for his glasses and thrusting them into place, he clutched the receiver with his other hand.
“Yes?”
“You old slugabed,” rumbled a familiar voice. “Never tell me I woke you up!”
Nick stretched to his full length, which was considerable. He was a tall lean young man with tousled brown hair, a thin sharp-chinned face, his lifelong myopia lending him a somewhat absentminded air except when he donned his glasses, whereupon he looked what he was: scholarly and talented.
“Oh, it’s you, Tom,” he muttered. “I haven’t forgotten our lunch date, if that’s what you rang up about.” Rising on one elbow, he glanced at his alarm clock. “And what’s more I’m not late. We said one o’clock, and here it is only a quarter to twelve.”
“Knowing what you’re like on a Saturday,” Tom Gospell said caustically, “I though I’d better make sure you were in plenty of time. Particularly since that old banger of yours is liable to break down if someone gives it a dirty look.”
“It is not an old banger! It’s a classic XK120 and it’s one of the best sports cars ever built!”
“Hmm! I did wake you, didn’t I? No need to be snappy, you know. All right, see you at one sharp. And since it’s such a fine day, if you have nothing fixed for afterward, I’ll give you the chance to convince me you’re right about the Jag. Give me a ride to some place where we can enjoy the sunshine. It’s a lovely day, and I don’t have to meet Gemma until six.”
“It’s a deal,” Nick said around a yawn.
Chief Inspector Bill Dougherty turned the key he had drawn this morning at Scotland Yard and entered one of the eleventh-floor apartments in the tall block overlooking Mamble Row. On the way along the corridor from the elevators, two or three of the residents had favored him with suspicious scowls. Maybe the cover story wasn’t going to stand up much longer.
Which will please the Borough Council, of course. Lord, the rigmarole we had to go through to persuade them to leave this place empty with four hundred families on their waiting list for new accommodation! And we did expect to be out in three weeks, not over six. … I thought this flat was a godsend. Lately it’s been feeling more like a millstone.
The rooms were bare, echoing, stark, devoid of furniture or carpets, although naturally the windows were curtained. In the main living room they stayed drawn virtually all day. That was going to attract attention, sooner or later.
Just so long as it’s not so soon the operation goes bust.
At the window of the living room a young constable in plain clothes was on watch. Seated in a stackable plastic chair, he was gazing through a pair of high-power binoculars on a tripod stand. At his left a phone and a tape recorder reposed on a small folding table. Also on a tripod, a camera with a telephoto lens stood at his right, permanently focused on Number 5 Mamble Row. There was nothing else in the room bar the remains of a snack breakfast, an empty paper cup, and a disposable plate with the crust of a sandwich lying on it.
And a lot of dust.
“Morning, Hedger,” Dougherty said, closing the door.
The constable started. “Morning, sir!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t hear you come in. If I may say so, you have a hell of a light tread for—uh …”
“For such a fat man?”
Hedger looked injured. “I was going to say heavy, sir.”
“That too.” Dougherty sighed. “Runs in the family, I’m afraid I often marvel at the fact that I don’t make whole buildings shake. … Anything interesting I haven’t heard?”
“No, this watch has been pretty uneventful. You heard that Dr. Argyle called again last night—yes? I got a picture of his car, though I’m not sure there was enough light to show the figures on the license plate. And of course I logged Mrs. Rowall out and back as usual.”
“Did she bring anybody with her?”
“No, she came back alone.”
“Mm-hm.” Dougherty rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “Mind if I take a quick squinch?”
“Uh …” Hedger, for some reason, was perceptibly embarrassed. But he relinquished his chair and stood aside dutifully.
Eyes to the binoculars, Dougherty uttered a sound halfway between a chuckle and a snort.
“Any special reason, apart from the fact that she’s pretty and sleeps with nothing on, for you to have these glasses focused on the window of the girl’s room?”
Hedger, who was very young, blushed vivid pink.
“Yes, sir!”
“What?” Dougherty murmured, adjusting the binoculars to show the front entrance of the house instead of the next-to-top windows.
“Well—ah—it’s only since that time she fell down the front steps that Argyle’s been calling, right?”
“Go on.”
“And one knows about Argyle, how close he came to jail for over-prescribing hard drugs, and one knows that Bella Rowall is one of the most notorious tarts in Soho. … I was talking things over with Bob Prior last night when he came to relieve me, and it seems he’s come to the same conclusion I have.”
“I’m still listening,” Daugherty said, adjusting the glasses a second time so that they swept the whole of the narrow decaying street called Mamble Row.
“Well, sir,” Hedger said, swallowing, “any time we like we could knock off this character Alfred Rowall for living on immoral earnings. It hasn’t been done. That implies that the real essence of the case must be a lot bigger. Now Dr. Argyle keeps dropping around at unlikely hours, so … well, it hangs together logically, doesn’t it?”
Dougherty rose from the chair with some effort; he was, as Hedger had remarked, a very heavyset man, going bald and with large dark bags under his eyes, testimony to years of insufficient sleep.
“I’m not going to give you a straight answer,” he haid. “Sorry, but I don’t make Squad policy, you know. That’s done at the very top, up at Commander level. But I will say this: I think you did the right thing when you opted for CID. Keep up the brainwork and do a bit more background research. Take my advice and you’ll make sergeant one of these days.”
Grinning, he clapped Hedger on the shoulder and headed for the door.
“Morning, Mrs. Ramsay,” Clyde West said as he ascended the stairs carrying his Saturday bag of groceries. He stood back on the landing to let her pass with her garbage, and received as reward an answering grunt. She had no breath to spare for friendly chat.
Today his bag was even lighter than usual. It was going to be tough spinning out the supplies until next weekend. But there were, after all, people worse off than him.
In fact there was one right in this house.
Maybe I should ask if she’d like something? She never seems to get a square meal. …
Passing Sally Ercott’s door on the way to his, he made to knock at it, checked, looked for a long moment at the dark brown back of his hand, and concluded for the tenth time that if Sally wanted help she could come out and ask for it. They’d been living in the same house for weeks and she’d hardly exchanged a civil word with him. Let the Rowalls do the worrying.
Shrugging, he went into his own room and shut the door.
Staggering a little as she rose from bed, Sally had to rest one hand on the back of the room’s solitary armchair. Its seat cushion was torn and oozed sour flock; moreover the back of it was almost slimy with hair oil left by lodgers long ago when it was fashionable for men to slick down their hair.
She caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the door of the wardrobe, which lacked a leg and was kept level by half a brick. Wanting very much to ignore the image of the state she was in, she compelled herself to look by a supreme effort of will.
Except for panties she was naked … and those were stained. Her shoulder-long blonde hair was tangled and kept falling over her blue eyes. When she brushed it aside she noticed the back of her hand was dark with grime.
Still she went on staring, as though she imagined that loathing could do what other of her emotions could not.
Can that hair be mine—rat-tailed, knotted, overdue for a shampoo since God knows when? Can those be my eyes, red with weeping between swollen puffy lids? Can that be my mouth, chapped and sore? Can that dirty body be mine, with all those marks across it from creases in the bedsheet?
She looked from the reflection to the actuality, raising her arms, gray detached separate things not belonging to the real Sally. On the unwashed skin, a brown mark associated with an underlying tenderness. She rubbed the spot. There was a tiny prick there and it had bled a little. What in the—?
Oh, yes. Last night that doctor, sent for by the Rowalls, had called again. A nasty man who wouldn’t listen even if she wept. Very suitable for a person like Bella. Sally was in no doubt concerning what her landlady did for a living. This house where she and her husband Alfred rented out rooms must be no more than a colorable excuse for them having an income. Who’d believe, though, that such a near-slum would bring in enough for two people to live on? She glanced around, seeing the filthy-backed chair, the canted wardrobe, the bed with its sagging spring where last night she had slept so badly—until she fell into stupor—that she ached now from head to foot, as though she had passed hours fleeing in panic from some unspeakable horror. …
All of a sudden she wanted to get out of here. Automatically she reached for her clothes, tossed anyhow on the seat of the armchair: a bra, a dress, a summer-weight coat. Her shoes, scuffed and filthy, were lying on the floor nearby. That was all. At first there had been something more … hadn’t there? Oh, yes: tights which had shredded into holes long ago, and a purse which—
No good. She couldn’t remember what had become of her purse. Though she did know that what money had been in i. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
