Out with it then! Out with the bloody stupid conviction that has been building up at the back of your mind like water behind a dam.
Avery took a deep breath and said it aloud. ‘They’re not human beings at all. They are bloody bug-eyed monsters.’
The words exploded in the quietness of the room, seemed to echo thunderously from the metal walls.
And at that moment, as if at a signal, the wall that had separated him from Barbara disappeared. Only this time it was not Barbara on the other side. It was someone else.
A girl. Brown hair, wide frightened eyes, body subtly mature, face round and young.
‘Where’s Barbara? Who are you?’ snapped Avery. His voice sounded harsh. He didn’t mean it to be, but it was.
‘I’m Mary Durward…. I—I…. How did you get there?’ She was clearly very frightened.
Avery remembered that he was unwashed, unshaved. He smiled. He must be looking rather sordid, like something sinister out of a B feature. Hell, this was a B feature. ‘There was a girl called Barbara Miles in the cell next to mine,’ he explained. ‘At least, I thought there was. You can’t be sure of any damn thing in this place.
… My name is Richard Avery, by the way.’
She brightened a little when she saw that he was not as fierce as he had looked. ‘The same thing has happened to me. The man next door was called Tom Sutton. They— they let us talk together. Then there were some more questions to answer, and we were separated again.’
Avery thought for a moment. ‘Let’s try to piece a bit more of the jigsaw together. Where did they collect you —Kensington Gardens or Hyde Park?’
She looked startled. ‘Kensington Gardens. How did you know?’
‘I’ve made a study of the habits of Abducted Persons,’ he said drily. ‘There was an attractive little crystal, I suppose.’
‘I thought it was somebody’s brooch,’ she admitted. ‘And I ’
‘And you bent down to pick it up. The next thing you know, you’re in the nut-house. Right?’
She smiled. There was something very pleasing about her smile. Suddenly, Avery was intensely sorry for her. She didn’t look anywhere near as tough or resilient as Barbara. She only looked about eighteen. And lost. Very lost.
‘Do you know what it’s all about?’ she asked hopefully.
‘No. I’m afraid I don’t know anything at all—except that it seems to be a real situation. At first I thought it was all in my overwrought little mind…. May I step into your parlour, said the spider to the fly.’
She smiled again. Avery offered her a cigarette and took one himself. They sat down together on the edge of her bed like—as he thought—a couple of stranded tourists waiting for a train that they knew will never arrive.
‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ he said, ‘and see if we can’t find some common denominator. Where do you j live, how old are you, what do you do?’ 1
‘Lancaster Gate,’ she answered. ‘Twenty three, secretary.’
‘Married?’
‘No.’
‘Do you live with anyone?’
She shook her head. ‘Solitary bed-sitter.’
‘What about the man next door—I mean the man that was in the next cell to you?’
‘Tom Sutton. He was picked up in Kensington Gardens, too. He’s a public relations type. Quite nice, but still ’
‘Still a type?’
‘Perhaps I’m being unfair…. He seems to think the whole thing could be some weird kind of publicity gimmick.’
Avery shrugged. ‘Tell me that long enough, and I’ll believe it myself Do you know if he is married?’
‘I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.’
‘Barbara doesn’t have the married look, either,’ said Avery. ‘Anyway, let’s make assumptions just for the hell of it. Now what have we got so far? One TV actress, one secretary, one P.R. man and one teacher—that’s me, by the way—all blessedly single and with dangerous tendencies to stroll in the park and spot magic crystals…. It’s not really very statistical.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If it was just random selection, somebody ought to have been married.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe Barbara or Tom is.’
‘Would that make any difference?’
‘It might. I’m just grasping at straws A personal question: are you in love with anybody?’
She shook her head emphatically. ‘I was once.’
‘So was I. Still am, I suppose, but she’s dead…. I don’t think Barbara is in love particularly. What about this Tom Sutton?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then make an intelligent guess.’
‘I should say not, but I don’t really know.’
‘That will have to do. Anyway, it fits a theory.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t mind twisting the odd facts to fit a theory.’
‘What is the theory?’
Avery was silent for a moment or two. Then he said: ‘Well, I’ll stick my neck out. I don’t think it happened by accident. I think we were all chosen. If my theory fits, we were chosen because we didn’t have any strong emotional ties. Now why were we chosen? Answer: to undergo some sort of test. So far, they—whoever they might be—have taken pretty good care of us, but they have also been finding out a devil of a lot about us: the way we think, how bright we are, what our emotional attitudes are. Now comes the gilt-edged question: who or what are they? And inevitably we get the bumper fun book answer: they are not human. They are not human because they didn’t use what may be loosely called human techniques to set up this little experiment. That thing,’ he gestured towards Mary’s teletypewriter, ‘is the sort of mechanism that would be used by some nonhuman being to establish contact without giving us all fits. And while this cell itself could probably be very easily constructed by present-day technology, its not the sort of thing that would be Now, how does all that sound?’
Mary shivered. ‘It sounds horrible—and plausible.’
‘I bet you’ve got quite a stack of supplies in that trunk under your bed, haven’t you?’
She nodded.
He smiled grimly. ‘There’s every sign that it’s going to be quite a long experiment—phase two to be conducted elsewhere.’
Mary offered no comment. Avery was about to develop his ideas further when he became aware of a faint scraping sound.
‘Look at the floor!’ he commanded urgently, and did so himself.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked, bewildered.
‘I just heard the panel open—your panel, I think. Maybe there’s a crystal in the recess. That’s how Barbara and I were caught last time. We ignored instructions and got knocked cold.’
‘We’re going to have to look up sooner or later. We can’t stay like this. Besides, we haven’t done anything wrong, have we?’
‘Who the devil knows what’s right or wrong in this place?’ he demanded irritably. ‘Wait a minute. Only one of us will look—and I’ve just elected myself on a seniority basis. If I keel over, don’t do anything. Keep your gaze well away from the hatch. We’ll make them think of something else. All right? I’m going to look now.’
There was a pause, then Avery said disgustedly: ‘Serves me right. You can relax, Mary. It’s coffee for two.’
She looked up and giggled. ‘I forgot to tell you. I ordered coffee just before the wall slid back.’
‘For two?’
‘No. I didn’t think there would be company.’
‘Then we must have an intelligent waitress,’ he said drily.
The coffee relaxed them, transforming the tension into an almost social atmosphere. They smoked a couple of cigarettes and, for the time being, Avery decided not to develop his bug-eyed monster theory any further. Mary Durward looked very much like a girl in need of some reassurance. The trouble was he didn’t know what kind of reassurance it was possible to give.