The Peace Machine

flagrante delicto with his secretary on the office carpet while supposed to be working overtime. Spain never tired of retelling the Story.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Hutchman said. He picked up his pencil and made a show of jotting figures on his notepad, but Spain stayed around for a further fifteen minutes discussing office politics. By the time he left Hutchman’s ability to concentrate had been seriously impaired and he had begun to feel tired. He forced himself to work on, intending to have the schematics worked out before going to bed so that in the morning he could concentrate on the problems of buying hardware. It was past nine when he crammed all the paperwork into his briefcase and went out into the darkness. The soft, thick October air was filled with the smell of decaying chestnut leaves and a brilliant planet shone low in the western sky, like a coachlamp. He breathed deeply while walking to his car — inhale for four paces, hold for four paces, exhale for four paces — and waved goodnight to the officer in the security kiosk at the main gate. It was a pleasant night, providing one didn’t think too deeply about man-made suns in brief blossom over defenseless cities.

The Home Counties evening traffic was at its incredible worst and at one point, where he should have made a right turn onto the Crymchurch road, he had to turn left and make a twenty-minute detour with the result that he did not reach home until well past ten o’clock. The house was ablaze with light behind its screen of poplars, as though a party were in progress, but there was utter silence when he went in through the side door from the carport. He found Vicky scanning a magazine in the lounge and one glance at her white, set face reminded him that he had omitted to telephone and let her know he would be late. A standard lamp close behind her chair cast a cone of apricot-coloured light in which the magazine’s turning pages flared briefly.

“Sorry,” he said, setting his briefcase on a chair. “I was working late at the office.”

Vicky flipped two pages before replying “Is that what you call it?”

“I do call working, working; late, late; and the office, the office,” Hutchman said tartly. “Which particular word are you having difficulty with?”

Vicky nodded silently, continuing to flick through the magazine. This was the phase of an argument in which Hutchman usually did well because his wife disdained word-spinning. Later on, when the rapiers were broken and the cudgels came out, she would gain the upper hand, but it would be the small hours of the morning before that stage was reached, and there would be very little sleep for either of them. The prospect of another tortured night filled Hutchman with helpless anger.

He stood in front of Vicky and addressed the top of her head. “Listen, Vicky, you don’t really think I’ve been with another woman, do you?”

She tilted her gaze to meet his, a look of polite surprise on the small desperate face. “I didn’t mention another woman, Lucas. Why did you?”

“Because you were about to.”

“Don’t let your conscience put words into my mouth.” Vicky reached the end of the magazine, turned it over, and began flicking pages at precisely the same rate as before.

“I haven’t got a conscience.”

“I know that. What’s her name, Lucas? Was it Maudie Werner?”

“Who’s Maudie Werner, for God’s sake?”

“The new… tart in data processing.”

Hutchman blinked incredulously. “Look, I work in Westfield’s and I don’t know this person — how can you possibly know her?”

“You must be very slow, Lucas,” Vicky said. “Or you’re pretending to be. I was talking to Mrs. Dunwoody last week and she told me the word went round the firm about Maudie Werner the day she arrived.”

Hutchman turned without speaking and went into the kitchen, the struggle to control his nerves making the act of walking seem difficult. He took some cold chicken and a carton of Russian salad from the refrigerator and put them on a plate.

It’s happened again, he thought. Like telepathy. Spain’s mind and Vicky’s working in exactly the same way, on exactly the same subterranean level. He salted the chicken, took a fork from a drawer, and went back into the lounge.

“Tell me, Vicky,” he said, “am I some kind of a sexual simpleton? When I leave a room do the men and women in it leap at each other and frig like rabbits till they hear me returning?”

“What are you talking about?”

“About the impression I sometimes get from you and one or two other people.”

“And you,” Vicky said scathingly, “try to tell me that I’m crazy!”

Even when his wife had finally gone to sleep, Hutchman lay in the darkness for a long time listening to the invisible tides of night air flow around and through the house. His mind was racing, taking fragments of the day — glossy catalogues heavy with a smell like that of fresh paint, the complex schematics drawn by hand, Spain’s blurred face staring, the evening news of mobilizations and fleet movements, Vicky’s neurotic jealousy — assembling them in fantastic composites of foreboding which dissolved and reformed into new patterns of menace. Sleep came suddenly, bringing with it another dream, in which he was shopping in a supermarket. A frozen-food bin was close by and two women were examining its contents.

“I like this new idea,” one of them said. She reached into the bin and lifted out a white spiky object, like a skinless and terribly misshapen fish. It had two sad gray eyes. “It’s the latest thing in food preservation. They give it a pseudo-life which maintains it in perfect condition till its ready for the pan.”

The other woman looked alarmed. “Isn’t that cruel?”

“No. It has no soul, and it feels no pain.” To prove her point, she began snapping off the white fleshy extrusions and dropping them into her basket. Hutchman backed away from the scene in horror, because, although the fish-thing lay motionless and allowed itself to be demolished, its eyes were fixed on his — calmly, sadly, reproachfully.

CHAPTER 4

October — the entire span of which was occupied by the building of the machine — was a difficult road, in Hutchman’s mind. It was a road measured by double-sided milestones showing both the decreasing distance to the project’s completion and the everwidening gulf over which he and Vicky viewed each other.

One of the first had been the day on which he had acquired the praseodymium crystal and enough of the green isotope to produce the necessary fifty milligrams of cestron in a reasonable time. He had gone straight from work to the refectory at the Jeavons and eaten a quick snack, avoiding conversation with others even though he had a feeling that a dark-haired woman several tables away had been known to him in the past. That night he had worked later than usual to set up the gas-collecting system, and on reaching home had found himself locked out.

This can’t be happening to me! Hutchman shook his head in disbelief, but his key was unable to turn the lock of the front door and the side entrance was securely bolted against him. He paused, staring down at his silhouette on the moonlit path, one part of his mind sliding into irrelevant thoughts as to why the shadow cast by the moon made his head seem smaller than in the shadow cast by a streetlighi. The house was dark and silent, robbed of its familiarity by circumstance. It suddenly came to him what a shocking thing it would be if he, Lucas Hutchman, were forced to stay outside all night. Even more appalling was the discovery of how effective the childishness of one adult can be against the reasonableness of another. He tried all the windows in vain then returned to the main bedroom window and began tapping the glass. As the minutes went by with no response his self-control began to fail and he drove his fist harder and harder, hoping the pane would shatter.

“Vicky!” He called her name in a fierce low chant. “Vicky! Vicky!”

The lock clicked loudly on the front door. He ran to it eagerly, yet half-afraid of what he might do to Vicky with the clublike objects his fists had become, and found David peering at him with the eyes of a tarsier.

“Sorry, son. I got locked out.” Hutchman lifted the pyjamaclad child and carried him into the house, closing the door with his heel. He put David into bed then went into the main bedroom where Vicky was lying perfectly still, pretending to be asleep. The thought of being able to lay his cold, weary body down beside her, and of not having to stay outside in the ancient England of runes and robbers which seemed to recreate itself in the darkness, drained away his anger. He undressed quickly, got in between the sheets, and slid his arm around the familiar torso. On the instant, Vicky was out of bed and standing at the far side of the room, her naked body voluptuously shaded by the moonlight.

“Don’t touch me.” Her voice fractured, like ice.

He sat up. “Vicky, what’s the matter?”

“Just don’t try to touch me. I’ll sleep in the other room.”

“Why are you behaving like this?” Hutchman spoke carefully, aware of how much was in the balance. He knew perfectly well what the uncomfortable little tableaux was all about — memories of previous walks through this section of the Marriage Exhibition came shimmering. How dare you suggest there’s anything wrong with my mind! Is a woman insane if she doesn’t want a filthy disease brought into the house, to her and her child? The trouble was he could not say he knew what was in her mind because — Vicky fought like a retiarius, always spreading her net in the same way while poising the trident — she would turn it into an admission of guilt.

“You will not sleep in the other room,” he said firmly.

“I’m not sleeping in that bed. Not now.”

Not now that it could be contaminated with his filthy disease, Hutchman interpreted, seeing the net swirl toward him again. He evaded it by saying nothing. Instead he got out of bed and moved toward her. Vicky vanished through the bedroom door, and it took him a second to realize she had turned right toward the front door. He followed her into the short corridor as the main door opened to admit a gust of night air which probed insouciantly around his unprotected body. Vicky was outside, standing in the center of the lawn.

“Don’t touch me,” she shouted. “I’d rather stay out here all night.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Hutchman said aloud, but not addressing anyone. “What am I going to do?” Vicky could run well, so there was little hope of his catching her even if he decided to give chase and risk attracting the attention of outsiders. He turned back into the house, leaving the door open, and walked slowly into the second bedroom. Sometime later he heard the front door closing and there came a momentary hope, dismaying in its intensity, that Vicky would come to him with dew-cold breasts and thighs, seeking warmth. But she went into the other room, leaving him huddled in his bitterness.

Attempting an explanation would have been disastrous whether it was believed or rejected. Either way, Vicky would talk — to her parents, to her friends and neighbours, to his colleagues — and that would be dangerous, because people would remember the things she said. The short-term goal of completing the machine was filling his mind, but beyond it the first outlines of a plan were taking shape. Vague though it was, one element was apparent — the frightful danger to himself, his wife, and even David. The machine had to be built in secret, yet before it would serve its purpose the secret would have to be broken thoroughly and systematically in a process which Hutchman could initiate but would find difficult to control. And Vicky, whom he had never been able to control, had to be kept in utter ignorance, even while stress patterns rippled through the structure of their marriage, building up in holographic concentrations around critical points such as the second milestone.

A gas centrifuge, in perfect condition but at a price he could afford, had become available in Manchester. Hutchman drove up and collected it with the intention of being back in Crymchurch by late evening, but the Midlands were submerged in fog. He got no further south than Derby before news of a multiple crash with fatalities at Belper prompted him to seek out a motel. It was almost midnight when he called Vicky to let her know he would not be home. The phone rang blurrily, as though the moisture-laden air was slowly drowning all things electronic and mechanical, and there was no reply. Hutchman was not particularly surprised. Vicky would have a fair idea of who was ringing, and why, so by not answering she was putting him at a disadvantage.

He set the phone down and stretched himself fully clothed on the chalet’s neat bed. That morning he had told Vicky the simple truth about his visit to Manchester, knowing her mind would shy away from the technicalities involved, and had asked her to come with him. She had said that he knew she would not keep David away from school for the day, and her tone implied that he would not have offered to take her with him otherwise. One up to Vicky. The damned machine, he thought. It’s costing me too much. Who do I think I am, anyway? Sixteen days had elapsed since the bomb had exploded on Damascus and as yet nobody had accepted the blame or, to put it another way, been able to do enough