The Quality of Mercy

by D.G. Compton

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

Synopsis

The time: 1979 The place: a top-secret US Air Force base in the Cotswolds The actors: carefully selected, healthy-living personnel The missions: long-range reconnaissance flights The problem: is there any connection between these flights and the growing menace of a strange blood-cancer disease that is spreading through the world? Several of the more intelligent and intuitive realise that there is. There are those who retain their integrity, and doing so, lose their lives; and there are those who live silently in their knowledge, condemned to lives of emotional death.

Release date: November 14, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 164

Sample

THE old Squadron Leader was dozing. His glass of American PX Bourbon remained three-quarters full on the wicker table beside him, the thread of what he had been saying lost in the dappled patterns of the sunlight through the laburnum tree. He had known Donald and his wife long enough not to have to worry about his duties as a guest. Comfortably over-full of the Sunday lunch they had given him, he lay back in their wicker chair on their lawn and dozed.

Donald reached quietly for the Sunday newspaper. He separated the magazine section, handed it to his wife, made a tent out of the rest and arranged it carefully over his face. He was more modest in his arrangements than the older man, preferring not to expose his sleeping face naked for all to see. He breathed in a mixture of newspaper and honeysuckle, appreciated how pleasant life was, and slept immediately. It was sunlit sleep, digestive and idle – far from the urgent, purposive operation taught in Total Training up at the base.

Maria remained awake. She opened the paper and concentrated on the book reviews, forcing her eyes away from the thick headlines upside-down above her husband’s loosened collar. They shouted statistics at her and she just didn’t want to know. Death wasn’t relevant. It merged into the ancient countryside, acceptable and unremarkable. Death or megadeath, it was all the same to the old round hills. They’d been here before and they’d be here afterwards. They helped her keep a sense of proportion.

Bees flew between the high lupins. From the village below, hidden by a soft line of woodland, Maria heard the church clock strike three. And a few minutes later the gilt Victorian carriage clock that was always slow in the house behind. A long, framebuilt house with wide eaves, imported from America – one of a group of nineteen landscaped into the countryside a tactful half-mile from the USAF base up on the top of the hill. Nineteen white-painted traditional clapboard houses, with copper and cedarwood kitchens, and fireplace walls rough in the local Cotswold stone. Centrally heated, air-conditioned, with sunken conversation wells and complete home laundries. Carpeted, upholstered, textured, luxurious – specialised homes for specialised people. Sometimes the intensity of her physical well-being made Maria’s flesh creep.

Her husband was himself one of the specialised people. He was a Special Duty Officer, seconded from the RAF and committed to Total Training. Even so, being British, he was disquieted by so much comfort. He was suspicious of it and found it somehow slightly indecent. But he didn’t let it worry him as he knew she did. Donald had a job to do – what his American superiors portentously called a ‘mission’. He got on with it. Not letting the things that mattered worry him was probably his valuable ability. It was probably what had got him through the selection board. There were of course things that did worry him – for example, he was always bothered by Unit Relations, getting on with the officers with whom he had to work. Crass, gum-chewing up into the highest echelons, they worried him continually. They punched him, and said ‘Donnie-boy’. Their fat backsides worried him. Their High Fidelity and their Home Art Appreciation Seminars. The way for their sakes the village pub had got in real old oak and rows of pewter. Sometimes he wondered what sort of a people these were who one day were going to inherit the earth. But he’d known all this eighteen months ago, when he’d decided to volunteer. He’d thought he could deal with it. And every day he did deal with it, as he dealt with everything else that was unpleasant or difficult, with a mixture of blindness and brute obstinacy. He slept now, warm in the sun, undisturbed by anything. Not even the shouting headlines half an inch from his nose.

The Squadron Leader, who also slept, although differently, had motored over that morning from his own small RAF establishment in Middle Slaughter, a few miles this side of Oxford. He had come because there was something that worried him, something that he wanted to discuss with young Donald. He was a fairly frequent visitor, so that the Morrisons hadn’t been surprised to hear his old chain-gang Frazer-Nash’s progress up the Boulevard towards them. Maria had thrown a few more new potatoes into the peeler and Donald had gratefully put away the electric mowing machine. The Squadron Leader had known them since before they were married; he was always welcome. They had met him in the drive, Donald with a rake mockingly ready as always to comb out the Frazer-Nash’s skid marks in the red gravel. And the Squadron Leader, shaggy and full of beans, had leaped out of the car and come bounding across to greet them.

“Tally ho,” he had said. And this in 1979.

“Tally ho,” they had replied, not quite knowing what else they could say and hoping as always that the Leroys next door wouldn’t hear.

“Sickening, the news, isn’t it?”

“Sickening. You’re staying to lunch, of course?”

“Bang on. Half a kipper’ll do me fine.”

“Come on in and have a drink.” And get out of the range of vision of the Leroy’s eldest peering through a gap in the fence …

Donald shifted under his newspaper, roused for a second by the feeling that perhaps there was something crawling up inside his trouser leg. The Squadron Leader began to snore. Maria turned to the theatre criticisms, and the clock in the house struck the half-hour. She read that the theatres in London were having a difficult time, that four had already closed and that six more might go before the autumn. The writer said that the arts generally were in a very bad way. Maria’s eyelids drooped, and her eyes slipped pleasantly out of focus.

At three-forty a distant hiss became audible low over the hills to the north. Before it had become audible it was overhead. Before it was overhead it was gone again beyond the valley to the south. And Maria had barely had time to put down her newspaper even. And the sound that had begun as a hiss had swelled and burst and scattered over the unmoved face of the countryside. When it had passed, Maria found it hard to believe that she was still conscious. The images of the three black Stormbirds lingered on the screen of her mind like the last remembered picture before a road accident – the hugeness of things and the strange slow way that the glass in the windscreen shattered. The three aeroplanes, three black arrows formed in an arrow, stayed red in the sky above her where she had for an instant seen them. While the time of the afternoon and its silence stretched and stretched and stretched.

“Bloody maniacs,” said Donald.

He sat up and glared at the horizon a hundred miles behind the vanished planes.

“My God – formation work at low level on a Sunday afternoon, and then we talk about Public Relations.”

“Boys will be boys,” said the Squadron Leader, waking slowly. “They need a nice kind C.O. to tan the seats of their pants for them.”

“The Commandant’ll do that all right. A trail a mile wide straight down Britain of people cursing the U.S. Air Force. It makes you sick.”

The Squadron Leader yawned and scratched his head.

“I expect,” said Maria, “that most people at the moment have bigger things to worry them.”

She had a way of saying these things that other people would consider best left unsaid. It disconcerted the Squadron Leader and he looked away quickly down at the toecaps of his shoes. If he had been a Catholic he might have crossed himself.

“Not our mob,” said Donald, approving of Maria, glad to have people brought up short and made to think. “Nothing to do with the Special Duty group. Death or glory boys – aren’t allowed within five hundred yards of our hangars even. Recognised P.S.R.s, every one of them.” He caught Maria’s eye. She disliked initials and refused to learn what they stood for. In principle he agreed with her.

“P.S.R. – Poor Security Risk,” he said. “They come and go as they please. Sleep out in the villages around. With a load of beer on board they might say anything.”

“Or with the right girl,” said the Squadron Leader reminiscently.

“Or the wrong one, you mean – “

Donald checked himself. The Squadron Leader was a bachelor, and he made no secret of thinking Donald a thorough prig. To him the right girl was anybody soft and warm and willing. To Donald the right girl was your wife – and only then if you were sure she wasn’t a P.S.R.

In the face of Donald’s stuffiness the Squadron Leader became awkwardly flippant.

“I can just imagine it,” he said. “A covey of beautiful spies in Courtney-cum-Poges. Brain-washed milkmaids and indoctrinated farmers’ wives. The idea adds a new zest to life …”

There was a pause in which Donald wondered if this was worth answering. His disapproval showed.

“But of course, you’re quite right …” The older man corrected himself, feeling he should be more circumspect. “Brother Bear never lets up – we all know that. Just let any popsy of mine start asking questions and she’d be out on the floor in no time at all.”

The words were self-conscious. It occurred to Donald that, prig though he might be, the Squadron Leader was afraid of him, afraid for his good opinion. Although still the junior officer, Donald himself knew that his transfer to S.D. work had lent him power and authority. His responsibilities were heavier, and people respected him for them. It was right that they should.

“Anyway,” he said, “the fewer people with access to classified information the better. Even I know only what I’m told, and I’m sure that’s only half the story. I prefer it that way.”

“Of course. The shorter the chain is the less liable it is to failure.”

“We’re only human. It’s impossible to watch yourself all the time.”

“I run my own show. Obey orders and ask no questions. It’s the only way.”

Donald might have made the Squadron Leader go on like this for another ten minutes if it hadn’t been for the silent presence of his wife. She saw into him too clearly. And besides, she herself was always a bit of a problem – she didn’t belong to the group that thought it smart to be irreverent about National Security, and yet he often had the feeling that she was laughing at him about it. So she made him for the moment uncertain. He petered out and took refuge in reading the paper that had fallen on to his lap. The Squadron Leader peered across at it.

“Test Ban Treaty signed,” he said. “Hope it’s better than last time. Wonderful how quickly they can get things settled when they’re really frightened.”

“Except that it’s too late.” Donald slapped the paper straight. “Two million on the Continent. A tenth of the population of Paris in a fortnight. Judgement on them all, if you ask me.”

“I hate all these figures,” Maria said. “They’re so anonymous and comfortable. Two million dead – it’s just a row of noughts on a page. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I spoke to the bobby on my way up through the village.” The Squadron Leader was suddenly serious. “Twenty-five funerals last week, he said. That means something. Not quite a tenth of the population, but it’s coming up that way.”

“We can hear the church bell clearly from here,” said Maria. “It’s more revealing than any number of noughts on a page.”

The three of them were suddenly quiet, as if waiting and listening. All that came was the sad sound of the cuckoo. Their isolation from the dying noughts on the page was complete. Shivering in spite of the bright sun. Maria decided it was safer to be strictly practical.

“Anyway,” she said, harking back to the Test Treaty, “nobody’s yet been able to prove any connection at all between atom tests and this horrible V.P.D.”

“Least of all old Van der Plank himself,” said the Squadron Leader.

“Personally I think someone’s covering up,” said Donald. “No nation wants to admit the responsibility. It stands to reason that the whole thing’s fall-out. It’s just that nobody cares to cast the first stone.” He turned to Maria. “After all, they’ve got the test ban through quick enough. If anything proves it, that does.”

“It proves nothing at all. Except that we’re all frightened. Which we knew months ago anyway.”

The Squadron Leader hauled himself up. He walked to the edge of the lawn, taking his Bourbon with him. He stooped, and rubbed green-fly off a few rosebuds.

“This lot really needs spraying,” he said.

Donald didn’t answer. There was something private the other man wanted to talk about – the invitation was clear. He was to go and join the Squadron Leader and begin discussing roses. Then they would wander off together to the end of the garden and the bridge over the stream. They would lean on the rail where they couldn’t be overheard, and stare at the water, and the Squadron Leader would get round to what was bothering him. It would be embarrassing, and at the end of it nothing would be achieved at all. Donald returned to his newspaper.

“There’s still nothing really to beat good old Derris dust,” said the Squadron Leader pointedly.

But he soon gave up and came back to the group under the laburnum tree. Maria refilled his glass, adding a cube of ice for him. He liked to be looked after, and her fussing comforted him.

“There’s a dance at the officers’ club next Thursday night,” he said. “You and Don might care to come along and hoof it. Excuse to dress up a bit. And get an extension on the old licence.”

“A dance? On Thursday? I’m sure we’d love it.” She looked across at her husband. “Assuming that Don is free, of course.”

“He ought to get out more. You both should. This Community-within-a-Community business is all very well, but you can have too much of it. The same people, day in, day out – I’d be round the bend in no time at all.”

“We love it here.” Maria meant it. “Which is not to say that we wouldn’t like an evening out just once in a while.”

Donald looked up from his paper.

“Evening out?” he said. “Thursday? I’m afraid I’m tied up that night.”

“Got you down for orderly officer, have they? Can’t you get one of the chaps to swap with you, old man?”

Donald had to make an effort not to be superior and patronising. The Squadron Leader was showing how little he understood. Donald was a Special Duty man and exempted from the ordinary routine of service life. He hadn’t done cookhouse or orderly officer for the last eighteen months. Since he came to the base, in fact.

“No, it’s not like that,” he said. “Bit more technical. I’m sorry, but it just can’t be done.”

“Well then, what if the trouble and strife came along without you? I’d take very good care of her.”

Donald hesitated.

“It’s a proper fancy do,” the Squadron Leader said. “Everybody’ll be there. Local dignitaries and all that.”

Donald still hesitated, looking from one to the other.

“She’ll be quite safe, you know old man. Tell her to fill her handbag with ten-inch bolts if you’re worried. Susan did that to me once – laid me out cold. Didn’t know her strength, poor girl.”

Donald made up his mind. He was glad the poor little joke gave him a chance to laugh off his hesitation.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll do just that. And none of your coming over here to fetch her. She’ll drive herself – both . . .