“I’d like to get the story into tomorrow’s paper, but Mr Redpath didn’t give me a number for…umm…Professor Nevison,” Knight continued. “Do you happen to…?”
“Professor Nevison is out of town,” Leila said quickly, almost as a reflex. “I should warn you that he’s very sceptical about the whole thing. To be perfectly honest, he’ll be pretty annoyed when he learns that John spoke to you without his authorization. He takes the view that every bit of that information could have been obtained from directories or letters or from conversation.”
“I thought so, too—except for the bit about the bathroom.”
“The bathroom?” Leila was suddenly aware of the darkness which pressed inwards at all the windows. “What about the bathroom?”
“Well, it turns out they had quite a bit of excitement in that neighbourhood yesterday morning. The house has been empty for a while, but one of the local kids noticed the front door lying open and he decided to have a walk inside. Probably hoping to pick up some small change—you know how it is with kids. Anyway, he came out of there an awful lot faster than he went in, and his mother found him hiding under his bed. It took her about an hour to get him to talk about it, but the kid swore he went up to the bathroom—just to use the facilities, you understand—and he saw two corpses lying in the tub.”
“How ghastly,” Leila said in a distant voice.
“That’s not all of it. The kid said the bodies had no skin on them, and apparently he got so worked up that his mother sent for the police. When they got there the house was all closed up, but a woman who lives across the street said she’d seen a redheaded guy in a brown jacket running into it earlier on. So the cops got a locksmith to let them in and they checked the bathroom.”
“Well?”
“It was as clean as a whistle. Nothing there. The whole place was empty.”
Leila made her voice cool, unimpressed. “In other words, the whole episode amounts to precisely nothing.”
“You don’t understand,” Knight whinnied. “Mr Redpath told me there was something …”
“Mr Redpath has a vivid imagination—and I really don’t think there’s any point in continuing this conversation. Goodbye, Mr Knight.” Leila hung up the phone on the reporter’s startled protests and slumped back against the wall, breathing deeply, bracing herself as though the world was tilting away from under her feet.
She remained in that attitude for more than a minute, then straightened up and walked to her coat, which was hanging on the opposite wall. The gilded black booklet of her passport was partially visible in one of the pockets. She stared at it with sombre eyes, coming to a decision, then went into the bedroom and began to pack an overnight bag.
PART THREE
GRAND MAL
CHAPTER NINE
The night hard passed like an episode from one of his dreams.
Having rushed Leila off in the direction of London, he had thought about spending the night in her flat, but had decided against it on the grounds that a chance call or visit from almost anybody could lead to awkwardness. He had then set out to walk to his own place on Disley High Street, then had come the realisation that the wound in his midriff was still bleeding copiously and looked like continuing to do so. As far as he, the essential John Redpath, had been concerned it was nothing more than a minor irritation—he could have endured the pain and the sopping coldness of his clothing almost indefinitely—but another voice had warned him that he needed to preserve his strength and resources for a contest that lay ahead.
He had detoured to the casualty department of Calbridge General Hospital, where his arrival—soon after the closing tune of the town’s bars—had created the impression that he had been injured in a brawl. Only his patent sobriety and a display of jocular respectability had persuaded the young doctor to forget about the police and accept his story about an accident with a woodworking chisel. He had been cleaned, stitched, dusted with powders, bandaged, injected against tetanus, lectured, issued with a treatment card and sent home in an ambulance. In the blessed neutral tranquillity of his own apartment he had crawled into a cool bed and, against all the odds, had slept soundly until dawn.
Wakening to a world of grey light, with the ghosts of sensory impressions beginning to crowd in on him from all over the building, he knew at once that the E.S.P.-enhancing effects of Compound 183 had not yet diminished.
He also knew that on the previous night he had unwittingly, through exhaustion and cerebral overloading, hit on the best tactic for coping with his present situation. The trick was to avoid thinking graphically about his plans, to move like an automaton, to exist like a zombie. The thing in the cellar in Raby Street, the Once-born, was still linked to him in some way—as had been proved by the awesome moment of triple existence, with all its revelations—but the contact would never be as complete as the alien would wish because the necessary interfaces could not exist between minds that were so dissimilar.
Rapport was the word for the missing element, he decided. There was a kind of communication on some levels, but no rapport, and as long as that was the case he could continue to be himself, to think with one part of his brain and let his actions be guided by another. Always presuming that he retained control over his actions …
The family wants me back. They might be out looking for me! What the hell could I do if Albert appeared right here in the room?
How much time is left, anyway? How much time before the megadeaths come?
Galvanised by the urgency which had haunted him the night before, Redpath rolled sideways from under the sheets. He froze as he felt the pain from the knife wound returning with something like its original intensity. Moving more cautiously, he stood up nursing his side and got dressed in a lightweight polo-neck sweater and a fresh pair of slacks. It was rapidly growing brighter outside and the clatter of a milk float in the distance told him the town was coming to life. He took his simulated-leather hold-all from a cupboard, dropped five handkerchiefs—all he had—into it and closed the zip. Without taking time to eat or shave, he picked up the hold-all and Leila’s television set—it wouldn’t be too heavy to carry, he felt—and let himself out of the apartment.
The small section of the district he could see from the corridor windows looked indomitably normal, as always. The plane trees, the cindery car park, the builder’s yard with its stacks of concrete lamp standards, the semi-detached houses and assorted garages—all seemed to project the same message, that this was the real universe, secure and unchanging, and that to think otherwise was insanity. Redpath averted his eyes, hurried to the central stairway and went down to the street. Traffic was sparse at that hour—consisting of little more than a few steelworks employees heading in the direction of the plant by cycle and car—and he felt unusually conspicuous carrying a television set.
He turned into a sidestreet as quickly as possible, and that was the beginning of a day of drifting, loitering and trying to merge into his surroundings.
At mid-morning he bought a gallon of two-star petrol at a garage which charged him a twenty-pence deposit on the loan of a dented can which had once held engine oil. A little later he bought a disposable cigarette lighter and four large bottles of lemonade. Short of money and now too heavily loaded to keep on the move, he opted for spending the rest of the day in a public park. Churchill Gardens was the nearest, but if Betty York and the others were looking for him that was one of the places they were likely to try, and he had no wish to meet any of them until he was ready.