“Now we are really taking off into the realms of fancy,” commented Ernest dryly.
“We never left them,” retorted Michael. “What I am getting at is this: So long as we fragiles are unconscious or compliant victims, the experiment—or whatever it is—can proceed. But what happens if all the guinea pigs know they are being used? What happens if they all begin to investigate the aims of the scientist?”
“The experiment is terminated,” said Ernest. “The guinea pigs are destroyed…. Or set free…. But we know nothing, Michael. We have only acquired a collection of mysteries. For all we know, we may not even be on Earth.”
Michael was silent for a time. Then he said: “I am convinced of one thing. Behind the apparent unreason there is reason.” He held out his arms in a gesture that seemed to encompass the whole of London. “It is just too much to believe that all this—ourselves included—was created for some idiotic caprice. There must be a purpose…. Do you remember that day, long ago—it’s hard to imagine how long ago—when we were in play school and Miss Shelley told us about the Overman legend?”
“I do.” Ernest was excited. “The odd thing is, nobody has mentioned it since.”
“Once,” said Michael. “Once Father mentioned it. After we had been to see Gone with the Wind. There was a quarrel because I had been asking too many questions. In the end, he told me to ask myself if any of the Overman legend could be true…. I remember something else, too. Suddenly, I remember something else. That night, after Miss Shelley had told us the story, Father asked me what I thought of it. But I hadn’t mentioned anything about it. So how could he have known?”
“Therefore he knew beforehand.”
“Therefore,” said Michael, “it is probably significant. How about someone or something called Overman for the mad scientist? For some reason I can’t understand, the end of the story comes into my mind. Overman says: ‘The problem is this. Shall men control machines or shall machines control men?’ Then there is something about going to sleep for ten thousand years.”
“Fantasies,” sighed Ernest. “Fantasies. Eventually we shall go mad.”
“No, Ernest. We may be destroyed—but destruction is better than madness. Tomorrow is the last time we shall ever attend that idiotic school. Tomorrow is the last time we shall ever do anything the drybones want us to do.”
Ernest gave a bitter laugh. “The revolt of the guinea pigs. I like it. But is it to be just two guinea pigs—or three?”
“As many as are tired of living in a cage. We must get all the fragiles together, somehow, and tell them what we know. Away from school. But how can we do that?”
Ernest thought for a moment or two. “I suppose we could say it was a matter of life and death, and swear them to secrecy.”
“Secrecy! There’s little chance of that.”
“Which may be a good thing,” said Ernest surprisingly. “After all, we want an end to secrecy, forever…. Why don’t we ask every one to rendezvous in Hyde Park by the old play school? It’s easy enough for us all to get to.”
“It is as good a place as any. In fact, it is singularly appropriate. Play school! We have been living in one all our lives…. Oh, well, let’s go home, Ernest, and go to bed for the last time like clockwork people. I must think what I am going to say tomorrow—assuming anybody turns up.”
“Some will come,” said Ernest. “Sheer curiosity…. Michael, I wonder what happened to the fragiles at North London High School? Perhaps they tried something like this.”
Michael sighed. “I think there never were any fragiles at North London High School—if, indeed there is a North London High School. It was just part of the experiment. That’s all.”
He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thinning out and patterns of stars were beginning to appear. I wonder, he thought, if those are the patterns one should be able to see over a city called London on a planet called Earth.
29
Play school was derelict—an empty house with no function. A shell with convolvulus and ivy climbing up the walls. A mausoleum of childhood. A memento mori.
Michael sat on the garden wall near the gate. He was alone. Emily and Ernest were busy—he hoped—persuading the other fragiles to come and hear the oracle speak.
Michael was alone; alone and cold in the late afternoon sunlight. Alone with bizarre thoughts, and memories that offered no comfort. Several times he had silently counted the number of fragiles that he knew. There were only forty-three. No matter how hard he tried, he could not make the number any larger. His mind had been playing tricks. He had imagined there would be more—considerably more.
Forty-three fragiles in the whole of London! Then how many drybones? Five hundred, a thousand, two thousand? Impossible to estimate. But the drybones had been sufficient for their purpose. There had been enough of them to continue—for a time, at least.
Michael shivered. The air was warm; but thoughts and feelings were bitterly cold. Sitting on the wall, he remembered the time when all the children at play school had been sent on an adventure walk to collect leaves. He remembered the little girl who had followed him, the girl with yellow hair who was called Ellen Terry. He remembered how he had tried to lose her; how he had tried to outpace her; how, in desperation, he had at last tried to kill her. But he had discovered that drybones don’t die easily.
And he remembered about the odd little boy who screamed that he hated children because they were not real people, because they could not take off their heads. The little boy who was carried screaming and kicking out of the room, and was never seen again. And Michael remembered how little Horatio Nelson had calmly advised him that if he wished to kill Ellen Terry he would have to push her out of a high window.
Poor Horatio. He had learned to hate and fear drybones before anyone else had…
Michael looked up and saw that a few groups of people were strolling across Hyde Park toward play school. Judging by the numbers, Emily and Ernest must have been far more successful than he had dared hope. Suddenly, he began to feel optimistic. But his optimism was short-lived. The figures were revealed not as fragiles but as drybones, all of them. More groups were following. They came toward Michael and stood a few paces away from him in a semicircle, silent, waiting.
They gazed at him, expressionless. Cold sweat began to trickle in rivulets down his face. The semicircle grew and grew. It seemed to contain almost every drybone that Michael had ever seen or known. There were his own parents, parents of other fragiles, teachers, drybones who were familiar background figures in streets and parks. There was Aldous Huxley—except that it couldn’t be Aldous Huxley, because Aldous Huxley was dead. And there was Arthur Wellesley —except that it couldn’t be Arthur Wellesley…
They all gazed at him in silence. Michael was shaking with fear. He wanted to run, scream, die. But pride made him stay seated on the wall. He wiped the sweat from his eyebrows, and hoped that the drybones did not know that he was half paralyzed with fear.
The waiting, the silent waiting seemed to expand into an eternity. But presently, other, smaller groups came across the park—the fragiles, at last. Michael was too numb to try to count them; but it looked as if most had come. They, too, were amazed at the presence of so many drybones, and stood for a while at the perimeter of the crowd, gazing anxiously at Michael.
Then Emily slowly worked her way through the crowd and came to the front. So did Ernest. So did one or two more fragiles. Their nearness cheered Michael a little, and strengthened him. Emily smiled and her smile somehow began to melt the freezing paralysis.