The Kraken Wakes

'Doesn't it sometimes strike you as odd that all our governments who loudly claim to rule by the will of the people are willing to run almost any risk rather than let their people have arms? Isn't it almost a principle that a people should not be allowed to defend itself, but should be forced to defend its Government? The only people I know who are trusted by their Government are the Swiss, and being landlocked they don't come into this.'

I was puzzled. The response was off her usual key. She was looking tired, too.

'What's wrong, Phyl?'

She shrugged. 'Nothing, except that at times I get sick of putting up with all the shams and the humbug, and pretending that the lies aren't lies, and the propaganda isn't propaganda, and the dirt isn't dirt. I'll get over it again… Don't you sometimes wish that you had been born into the Age of Reason, instead of into the Age of the Ostensible Reason? I think that they are going to let thousands of people be killed by these horrible things rather than risk giving them powerful enough weapons to defend themselves. And they'll have rows of arguments why it is best so. What do a few thousands, or a few millions of people matter? Women will just go on making the loss good. But Governments are important — one mustn't risk them.'

'Darling —'

'There'll be token arrangements, of course. Small garrisons in important places, perhaps. Aircraft standing-by on call — and they will come along after the worst of it has happened — when men and women have been tied into bundles and rolled away by those horrible things, and girls have been dragged over the ground by their hair, like poor Muriel, and people have been pulled apart, like that man who was caught by two of them at once — then the aeroplanes will come, and the authorities will say they were sorry to be a bit late, but there are technical difficulties in making adequate arrangements. That's the regular kind of get-out, isn't it?'

'But, Phyl, darling —'

'I know what you are going to say, Mike, but I am scared. Nobody's really doing anything. There's no realization, no genuine attempt to change the pattern to meet it. The ships are driven off the deep seas; goodness knows how many of these sea-tank things are ready to come and snatch people away. They say: "Dear, dear! Such a loss of trade," and they talk and talk and talk as if it'll all come right in the end if only they can keep on talking long enough. When anybody like Bocker suggests doing something he's just howled down and called a sensationalist, or an alarmist. How many people do they regard as the proper wastage before they must do anything?'

'But they are trying, you know, Phyl —'

'Are they? I think they're balancing things all the time. What is the minimum cost at which the political set-up can be preserved in present conditions? How much loss of life will the people put up with before they become dangerous about it? Would it be wise or unwise to declare martial law, and at what stage? On and on, instead of admitting the danger and getting to work. Oh, I could —' She stopped suddenly. Her expression changed. 'Sorry, Mike. I shouldn't have gone off the handle like that. I must be tired, or something.' And she took herself off with a decisive air of not wanting to be followed.

The outburst disturbed me badly. I hadn't seen her in a state anything like that for years. Not since the baby died.

The next morning didn't do anything to reassure me. I came round the corner of the cottage and found her sitting in that ridiculous arbour. Her arms lay on the table in front of her, her head rested on them, with her hair straying over the littered pages of the novel. She was weeping forlornly, steadily.

I raised her chin, and kissed her.

'Darling — darling, what is it —?'

She looked back at me with the tears still running down her cheeks. She said, miserably:

'I can't do it, Mike. It won't work.'

She looked mournfully at the written pages. I sat down beside her, and put an arm round her.

'Never mind, Sweet, it'll come…'

'It won't, Mike. Every time I try, other thoughts come instead. I'm frightened.' She gave me a curiously intense look. I tightened my arm.

'There's nothing to be frightened about, darling.'

She kept on looking at me closely. 'You're not frightened?' she said, oddly.

'We're stale,' I said. 'We stewed too much over those scripts. Let's go over to the north coast, it ought to be good for surfboards to-day.'

She dabbed at her eyes. 'All right,' she said, with unusual meekness.

It was a good day. The wind and the waves and the exercise brought more colour into her cheeks, and neither of us pecked at our lunch. We reached the stage where I felt that I could hopefully suggest that she should see a doctor. Her refusal came pat. She was feeling a whole lot better. Everything would be all right in a day or two.

We idled the rest of the day away on a leisurely course which brought us back to Rose Cottage about nine-thirty in the evening. While Phyllis went to warm up some coffee, I turned on the radio. With a touch of disloyalty I tried the BBC first and got in on the early lines of a play in which it seemed likely that Gladys Young was going to be a possessive mother, so I turned to the EBC. I found it engaged in putting forth one of those highly monotonous programmes that it unblushingly calls variety. However, I let it run.

A plugged number finished. Somebody I had never heard of was introduced as my ever-popular old friend, So-and-So. There were a few preliminary runs on a guitar, then a voice began to sing:

Oh, I'm burning my brains in the backroom,

Almost setting my cortex alight —

It was a moment before my surprise registered, then I turned and stared incredulously at the set:

To find a new thing to go crack-boom!

And blow up a xenobathite!

There was a crash behind me. I turned to see Phyllis in the doorway, the coffee things on the floor at her feet. Her face was puckering, and she sagged. I caught her, and helped her to a chair. The radio was still going:

… technical journals,

And now I'm just starting to pray.

I leaned over and switched it off. They must have got the song somehow from Ted. Phyllis wasn't crying. She just sat there shaking all over.

'I've given her a sedative, so she'll sleep now. What she must have is a complete rest and a change,' said the doctor.

'That's what we're having,' I pointed out.

He regarded me thoughtfully.

'You, too, I think,' he said.

'I'm all right,' I told him. 'I don't understand this. She had a shock, and she was hurt, but that was right at the beginning of it. After that, she was unconscious. She seemed to get over it quite soon, and she really knows no more of the rest than anyone else who has seen the films. Though, of course, we have been rather steeping in it.'

He continued to look at me seriously.

'You saw it all,' he remarked. 'You dream about it, don't you?'

'It has given me a few bad nights,' I admitted.

He nodded. 'More than that. You've been going over it again and again in your sleep?' he suggested. 'Particularly you have been concerned with somebody called Muriel, and with a man who was torn to pieces?'

'Well, yes,' I agreed. 'But I haven't talked to her about it. I'd rather forget it.'

'Some people don't easily forget things like that. They are apt to break through when one is asleep.'

'You mean I've been talking in my sleep?'

'A lot, I gather.'

'I see. You mean that's why she —?'

'Yes. Now I'm going to give you the address of a friend of mine in Harley Street. I want you both to go up to London to-morrow, and see him the next day. I'll fix it up for you.'