Voices in the Dark

by Edmund Cooper

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi; Space Opera

Synopsis

At ten-thirty in the morning the skies over London were clear. Then an arrow formation of five bright points became visible. They appeared to be moving at an amazing speed in tight circles. They were spiralling down to about five thousand feet, and at that altitude their nature was easily discernable. They were the tings most of us had discussed and dismissed at one time o another. Flying Saucers. Giant saucers, smooth and lustrous and blinding, more than a hundred yards in diameter. They hung over the city in a neat formation.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 154

Sample

THE world was a village—a village, a fen, a lake, a rivera and a few square miles of countryside; tenanted by two or three hundred people; lost in the heart of a green, surprising land.

News was news of the soil, news of the weather, news of an enclosed world. … You looked at the faces of the children; you watched their movements against the background they had always known; children of an enclosed world. …

Ginny was nine—Reginald Redgrave, son of Reginald Redgrave, son of a man. His father was a saddler. They lived in a house that had been built the year Cromwell’s head gazed sightless over London. It didn’t mean much. The house was what it always was. The sparrows still squabbled in the thatch, and woodsmoke still curled its simple message to the ageless sky.

In the winter there were the frosty mornings, the pictures in the evening fire, the lamplight in a world of shadows. In summer there was the earth and the sky, and all the unclaimed continents of childhood. …

He was nine; and already they were planning his life. They wanted him to become a vet. So they loaded him down with books about animals. He didn’t like animals: he didn’t dislike them. Soon, with the exception of dragons, brontosauri, pterodactyls and similar fantastic creatures, he began to develop a thinly covered hatred for all that had feathers or four feet.

The dead starlings gave evidence of his prowess with a catapult: the rabbits were thoroughly familiar with his ability to smoke out.

Ginny was a boy, healthy and happy amid the quiet roll of seasons.

In the holidays he would, with considerable industry, taste the keen delight of doing nothing. The horizon was pleasant. Over it were things unknown, unimaginable. The horizon moved with you, carrying its secrets until the time when you would find a way to stride over its edge. The river was green, green with the bigness of an always moving, always waiting monster, coiling among valleys, hurrying its message of death and treasure to the hungry ear of the sea. The sky was a tent, like the tent in a story, large enough for all the armies of the world, small enough to carry in your pocket.

Ginny enjoyed it. He could watch the world through the right or wrong end of a telescope at will.

His favourite retreat was Long House, a broad heap of rubble and broken masonry, of charred and weathered woodwork that lay on a small hill hugging the far side of the lake. Its present condition was the result of a political difference which had been settled, after a fashion, in the time of Charles the Second. The centuries lay heavily upon it. He liked that. There, by incantation, he would conjure the shapes of battles that could never have been.

He did not like to be there with other children. It was always easier to wait until they had gone.

One morning he went there, knowing quite well that something would happen. Something did happen; sufficiently frightening to be beautiful, sufficiently beautiful to be frightening.

It was a morning when the world, was still, when the polished mirror of the lake held the trees in statuesque reflection, and the burning light of the sun was a still fire upon its surface. It was a morning when a swallow’s wing could be heard, and when the thunder of distant machines rolled across the still music of the shires.

Ginny was sitting among the remains of a fallen colonnade—a late and rather extravagant addition to what had been the original Long House. He was busy stirring up a small ant-hill with a piece of dead birch. Revenge for a couple of ant-bites when he had been rolling lazily on the sandy earth.

Suddenly, against the background of spinney and tall firs, he saw a flash of white—there and gone! A flash of white that should have been merely some unaccountable reflection of sunlight, or the noisy drift of yesterday’s picnic wrappings restless in the bushes. A flash of white that should have been something other than what it was, than what Ginny had seen—the noiseless retreat of a tall, stately animal carrying a white flame in the centre of its forehead.

He sat still and listened. No sound. Nothing beyond the leisurely drone of flies and bees, the distant grumbling of a farm tractor, the sound of his own heart.

Hope of battles was forgotten. He had seen what none had seen. Cautiously, he gazed about him. At the ground; through the trees; up at the sky. He strained to listen until, by the high pitched sound in his ears, he heard his own straining. There was nothing! Only the sky, the trees and the birch stick—and a small, fierce globe of disappointment.

Perhaps the creature had been frightened; perhaps his sudden movement. … He went back to the ant-hill and stared irresolutely at the stupendous activity by the side of his feet. He sat down and waited, not daring to look towards the spinney but ostensibly watching the ants; though every now and again he gave a swift and guilty glance out of the corner of his eyes.

Time passed. Ginny became conscious of the sun’s climb. He watched the shortening movement of shadows across the vast pinpoint of his world. He felt hungry. It I must be time to go for the meal that would be waiting. He stayed.

Soon he would have to go. Soon they would come to look for him. Then everything would be over. But he staved. He stayed and was rewarded for his faith.

Noiselessly, so that, waiting for it as he was, he was quite unaware of its presence until it was within a few yards of him, the unicorn trotted across the ruins and stood still. With all his force, Ginny restrained the jerk of fear and joy that trembled in him. Slowly he turned his face towards the creature. It did not move. It did riot disappear. Boy and beast regarded each other.

After a time he stood up. The unicorn started, tossed its head so that the sunlight flashed brilliantly upon its polished horn, but it did not turn away. Arching its beautiful neck, it waited. Ginny walked slowly towards it.

The unicorn breathed heavily through its nostrils and pawed the ground, tossing its head so that the sharp horn waved and pointed through the air in a bright, menacing way. Ginny did not stop. It will kill me, he thought, feeling a sharp pain in his chest where the horn would pin him to the earth. It will kill me. But he went on, stretching out a shaking hand to touch its glossy flank.

Anxiously, he stroked. He could feel the quivering muscles slacken. The white head drooped lazily. To his surprise, Ginny noticed that he had started to breathe again.

He bent down and pulled up a handful of unappetizing grass. The unicorn looked at him indulgently and began to nibble the grass. Ginny started to cry quietly.

After a while, by mutual consent, the meeting ended. The unicorn turned to amble off through the fir trees. Ginny prepared to go home and face a scolding mother.

‘Tomorrow, I’ll come tomorrow,’ he said.

Clearly, the unicorn understood. No doubt crossed Ginny’s mind.

He had been right. It had happened. An extremely personal thing. And he had been chosen!

He walked home obliviously. Automatically climbed the stile, automatically jumped from stone to stone across the river. When he was within a few yards of the door, he realized that he would have to say something. He could think of nothing that seemed right.

‘I forgot the time,’ he said. It did not convince anyone, but it was all he could bring himself to say.

The sarcasm was not felt; the cold meal was not untasted. He knew now what he had always suspected—that family, home and village were all only part of some conspiratorial dream. A dream designed to keep him away from reality, from the unicorn. And it had almost succeeded. Almost!

For the rest of the day he was strangely quiet, strangely inactive. He sat by the window, dreamily gazing past the garden fence. Even his father, who had little or no time for the ways of a child, decided that he was sickening for something.

Twilight came: evening. Ginny realized that he would only waken up when he went to sleep. And at last, in that strange undimensional state of mind, he went up to his room. His eyes closed and he saw before him the compelling eyes of the unicorn, brighter than stars, deeper and swifter than the river. They swelled until they were greater than the lake. They became twin, burning suns. They became cold, falling moons.

When morning came he felt very tired. He got up and shook himself. He laid his face in a bowl of cold water until he could hold his breath no longer. Then he went down to breakfast. He was very hungry.

Today, I shall go there again, he thought. A wave of happiness surged through him. He dropped his knife and fork with a clatter, and made for the door. His mother, seeing the look on his face, was unaccountably afraid.

‘Ginny!’ she called. ‘Come back and finish your breakfast. You’ve eaten hardly anything.’

‘I don’t want any more. … I’ve—I’ve had enough.’

She sighed. A sigh of exasperation: adult incomprehension. ‘Why all the hurry? Where are you going?’

He tried to sound casual. ‘Out, up by the old house.’

‘Well, mind the river, then—and don’t stay out so long today!’

He made his escape quickly.

Free! He ran along the lane and across the fields. Crossing the river, he slipped from a stone. The water came a little higher than his knees. When he got to the other side he sat down and took his shoes and stockings off. He went on, carrying them in his hand.

It was the same as yesterday: the same kind of day; the same kind of sky; the lake still and burning. He knew it would happen again. It was bound to!

He sat down amid the wreckage of the colonnade. There was a ritual to be followed. He looked for the birch stick and began to stir up the ants.

Nothing happened. He must be patient. He put down the stick and tried to resign himself to waiting. Again he found himself following the sun’s movement by the contracting shadows. He became absorbed by the prospect of leaves and twigs slowly coming into the sunlight. He recognized the individual contours of pebbles and fragments of stone that he had watched with similar care the day before.

Time passed and nothing happened. He began to be afraid. Perhaps he had done something wrong. Perhaps, in some way, he had offended the unicorn and it had rejected him. He watched the sunlight creeping between the stones and began to be afraid.

In the distance, he heard footsteps—the feet of men. He looked across the lake and saw them tramping over the field, two men carrying guns. His heart started to beat faster.

They might be out shooting rabbits; they might be hoping to get the fox that had finished off half a dozen turkeys; they might be wanting to start a partridge or a pheasant. They might be wanting to do any one of a number of reasonable things. But suppose. … Suppose they knew about the unicorn! Suppose they wanted the unicorn. …

Hastily, he looked round. The unicorn was nowhere to be seen.

But what if he had been watched yesterday? What if they knew that the unicorn would come to meet him? What if they were using him to trap the unicorn?

He wanted to run. He wanted to stay, to watch, to make sure.

He gazed across the ruins of Long House towards the little hillock that had once been part of an ornamental garden. It was big enough to hide behind. He could stay behind there, and if he could not watch what was going on, at least he could hear.

Perhaps, if the unicorn did come, he would have time to frighten it away. Or perhaps he would be able to attract their attention and give the unicorn a chance.

He scrambled across to the hillock, ran round the other side and flattened himself against the slope. His ears were strained to catch every sound. Now and again he turned his head anxiously glancing towards the fir trees. There was nothing to be seen. Perhaps, after all, this was why the unicorn had not come. Perhaps it had known there would be a trap.

He heard the voices of the men. They were coming nearer. He buried his hands in the loose soil of the hillock, as if it were about to move suddenly and he must hold on. He clenched the earth tightly in his hands, twisting with his knuckles as if to work deeper. His forehead was warm and sticky. Beads of moisture fell into his eyes.

Soon he could hear what they were saying.

‘That white devil! I’ve just about had enough. It’s the worst there’s been in these parts for a long time.’

‘Far and away,’ agreed the other voice. ‘A real rogue, and sly as they come. It took five from George’s place last week—two in broad daylight! If we don’t get it soon. …’

Behind the hillock, the terrible anguish of a small boy exploded silently. Blood trickled from the palm of a hand in which finger nails had buried themselves. The blood welled slowly, mingling with, dry earth.

‘I’ve seen it round here two or three times, but I didn’t have a gun. … It’s a fly creature, that one—fast as light.’

They sat down and smoked, resting their guns across their knees, oblivious of so much, yet alert for what they sought.

The minutes passed. Behind the hillock, the boy felt himself unable to move. Anxiously, painfully he strained his eyes towards the tree.

Suddenly, he saw it; saw a small, indistinct blur of white! He tried to cry out, but could only make a harsh, gurgling, hissing sound in the back of his throat, He stared, fascinated, it seemed for hours. Then he heard.

In the same instant the men had seen it.

‘There he goes!’

In quick succession, so that they were hardly separated, two sharp cracks echoed flatly; and shot rattled against the trunks of trees.

‘Got him! We got him!’

‘Stone dead, by God!’

They scrambled noisily across the ruins towards the body.. . .