Vertigo

into regions of weakening gravitic flux. A prime requisite, though, had been perfect visibility below. The chances of a falling unit causing any damage to life or property were virtually non-existent in his present geographical location, but a deep- rooted instinct would not let him consider dropping a dense object through cloud. He would simply have to accept the limitation on his flight.

The realisation came as less of a disappointment than Hasson might have expected an hour earlier. He had already climbed higher than most fliers even cared to think about, and the nameless hunger within him was slowly abating. On the other hand, he had reached a dimensionless zone — once the domain of the big jets — and going on upwards into regions of darker blue seemed just as logical and natural as returning to the ancient kingdoms of men. With his head tilted back, and arms and legs trailing limply, Hasson continued his climb, his posture an unconscious echo of the one in which mediaeval artists depicted human souls ascending to heaven. A single point of light — possibly Venus — appeared in the aching purity above him, beckoning, and Hasson swam towards it. His rate of ascent was decreasing with every minute, in inverse proportion to the drain on his power packs, but a further hour took him to an altitude of twenty-five kilometres. The world curved away beneath him in nacreous splendour. There was no visible movement anywhere, except for the hastening progression of needles across the dials on his chest panel. Hasson flew onwards.

At thirty kilometres above sea level he checked his instruments and saw that his upward movement had all but ceased. His CG field generator, with less and less invisible grist for its mills, was expending stored energy at a prodigious rate simply to keep him from falling. The only way in which he could gain more height would be to discard the dead power packs, but he had ruled that action out, and in any case the result would be of no great significance. He had done what he set out to do.

Hanging motionless in the icy blue solitude, poised on the threshold of space, Hasson gazed all about him and felt… nothing. There was no fear, no elation, no wonder, no sense of achievement, no communion with the cosmos — removed from the context of humanity he had lost his humanity.

He completed a full survey of the heavens, knew himself to be a stranger there, then adjusted a control on his belt and began the long and lonely fall to Earth.

five

Hasson awoke to a room which was brilliant with diffused sunlight and he knew without looking at his watch that he had slept late. His head was throbbing so powerfully that he could actually hear the squirting pulses in the temple which was pressed into the pillow, and his tongue felt like stiffened chamois leather. There was also a fierce pressure in his bladder as a result of alcoholic enhancement of his body’s diuretic processes.

Not a hangover, he protested to the morning. The last thing I need is a hangover. He lay still for a time, reacquainting himself with the room, wondering what had happened on the previous day to trigger the nervy fluttering of excitement he could feel at the threshold of consciousness. There was pleasure involved — that much he knew — the pleasure of… Hasson closed his eyes momentarily as a picture of May Carpenter came into focus in his mind, quickly followed by all the recriminations and objections appropriate to his age, background and temperament. She was too young; she was mated to his host; he was fantasising like an adolescent boy; she was not his type; it was highly unlikely that she could have any interest in him whatsoever — but, but, she had looked at him in a certain way, and she had said, “That’s lucky for both of us,” and she had said, “Perhaps it’s just as well,” and the fact that he had never actually communicated with her and had no knowledge of her as a person was not very important, because there was an abundance of time in which to…

A sudden renewal of the pressure in his abdomen brought Hasson to his senses, making it dear that he had to face the task of getting himself into an upright attitude after many hours of lying in bed. The first stage in the operation was to transfer himself, still in the horizontal position, from the bed to the floor, because he was tackling an engineering job of Brunelian magnitude and the first requirement was a firm and immovable base. He began by dragging his legs sideways to the edge of the mattress by hand, then he rolled over, grasped the underlying frame and drew himself into a kind of a controlled fall to the floor. The inevitable flexure of his back and the abrupt change of temperature initiated a period of torment which he bore in near-silence, staring at the ceiling through slitted eyes. When the spasms began to subside he rolled again until he was lying in the prone position and could begin the slow process — largely guided by trial and error — of raising his upper body and very carefully, like a mason inserting props to hold an unwieldy mass of stone, bringing more and more of his skeleton under it until he had achieved verticality.

Two minutes after making the decision to rise, Hasson was on his feet — breathing heavily, chastened by what he had just been through, but now capable of movement. He shuffled about the room, putting on a dressing gown and collecting toilet articles, then listened at the bedroom door to satisfy himself that opening it would not precipitate the ordeal of having to speak to strangers. The landing was deserted and the upper part of the house had an empty feel to it, although there were muted sounds of activity from below. In the bathroom he brushed his teeth and made the depressing discovery that two mouth ulcers he had thought to be fading away were more painfully active than before. Returning to the bedroom, he contemplated the idea of getting under the covers again and switching on the television, but the dehydration of his system had given him a powerful yearning for tea or coffee which could not be denied. He dressed and made his way down to the kitchen, wondering how he would react if he found May there alone. He tapped the door gently, went inside and saw Theo Werry seated by himself at the circular table, eating a dish of cereal. The boy was wearing slacks and a red sweater, and there was a pensive expression on his handsome young face.

“Morning, Theo,” Hasson said. “No school today?”

Theo shook his head. “This is Saturday.”

“I’d forgotten. The days don’t seem to mean much to me now that…” Hasson checked himself and glanced around the room. “Where is everybody?”

“Dad’s outside clearing snow. The other two have gone into town.” Theo’s choice of phrase and a certain dryness of tone informed Hasson that he did not care much for May or her mother.

“In that case, I’ll brew myself some coffee,” Hasson said. “I don’t suppose anybody will mind.”

“I’ll do it for you, if you like.” Theo half-rose from his chair, but Hasson persuaded him to go on with his breakfast. While performing the domestic routine of making the coffee he spoke to the boy about his tastes and pursuits, discovering as he did so that conversation with Theo was less of a strain on him than trying to exchange pleasantries with adults. They talked briefly about music and Theo’s face became animated as he learned that Hasson shared his liking for Chopin and Liszt, as well as for some modern composers working for hard-toned piano.

“I suppose you listen to the radio a lot,” Hasson said, sitting down with his coffee, and realized at once that he had made a mistake.

“That’s what everybody supposes.” Theo’s voice had grown stony. “It’s fun being blind as long as you have a radio.”

“Nobody thinks that.”

But it’s supposed to be a great solace, isn’t it? Everywhere I go people turn on radios for me, and I never listen to them. I don’t enjoy being blind — unsighted, they call it at school — and nobody’s going to make me look like I’m enjoying it.”

“That’s a great bit of corkscrew logic,” Hasson said gently, all too aware of his own stumblings under the burden of illness.

“I guess it is — but then a wood-louse isn’t a very logical creature.”

“Wood-louse? You’ve lost me, Theo.”

The boy gave a humourless smile which saddened Hasson. “There’s a Kafka story about a man who woke up one morning and found he had turned into a giant cockroach. It horrifies everybody that one, the idea of being turned into a cockroach — but if he’d really wanted to sick people off Kafka should have made the guy into a wood-louse.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re blind and they’re busy. I’ve always hated those things because they’re blind and so busy. Then I woke up one morning and found I’d been turned into a giant wood-louse.”

Hasson stared at the black, vapouring liquid in his cup. “Theo, take some advice from a leading expert on the gentle art of beating oneself on the head with a club — don’t do it.”

“Mine’s the only head I can get at.”

“It was rough on your father too, you know — he’s having a bad time as well.”

Theo tilted his head and considered Hasson’s remark for a few seconds. “Mr Haldane,” he said thoughtfully, “you don’t know my father at all. I don’t think you’re really his cousin, and I don’t think you’re really an insurance salesman.”

“That’s funny,” Hasson parried, “that’s what my boss used to say to me every month when he looked at my figures.” “I’m not joking.”

“He used to say that as well, but I surprised him by inventing a new kind of policy which let people insure themselves against being uninsured.”

Theo’s lips twitched. “I read a story once about a character called Nemo the Nameless.”

Hasson chuckled, impressed by the speed with which the boy had classified his absurdity and correctly matched it. “You sound like another Stephen Leacock buff.”

“No, I don’t think I ever heard of him.”

“But he was a Canadian humorist! The very best!” Hasson was mildly surprised to find he could be enthusiastic about anything connected with literature — for months he had been unable even to open a book.

“I’ll try to remember the name,” Theo said.

Hasson tapped him lightly on the back of the hand. “Listen, I’m about due to re-read some Leacock. If I pick up a couple of books perhaps I could read them to you. What do you say?”

“That sounds all right. I mean, if you have the time…”

“I’ve got loads of time, so we’ll make it definite,” Hasson said, musing on the fact that immediately he had started thinking about doing something for somebody else his own state of mind had improved. It seemed there was a lesson to be learned. He sipped his coffee, wincing occasionally as the hot fluid came in contact with a mouth ulcer, and tacitly encouraged Theo to talk about anything that came into his mind, as long as it had nothing to do with Hasson’s past and his supposed family connections with Al Werry. Theo’s interest in flying quickly came to the fore, and almost at once there were references to Barry Lutze and to a local gang of cloud-runners known as the Hawks. As before, Hasson was disturbed to hear a note of uncritical admiration manifest itself in Theo’s voice.

“I’ll bet you,” he said, deciding to risk endangering his new- found relationship with the boy, “the leader of that outfit is called Black Hawk.”

Theo looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“It had to be that or Red Hawk. Those characters always have to hide behind some kind of label and it’s amazing how limited their imaginations are. Practically every town I’ve ever been in has had a Black Hawk or a Red Eagle fluttering around the place at night terrorising the smaller kids, and the funny part of it is that each and every one of them thinks he’s something special.”

Theo stood up, carried his empty cereal dish to the recycler and returned to the table before speaking. “Anybody who wants to do any real flying has to cover up his name.”

“That’s not the impression I get from the sports pages and TV. Some people become rich and famous through real flying.” Hasson knew from the expression on Theo’s face that his words were having no effect. The phrase “real flying’, as used by youngsters, meant flying illegally and dangerously, Throwing off all petty restrictions and flying solely by instinct, flying without lights at night, playing aerial Catch-me-if-you-can in the canyons of city buildings. The inevitable consequence of that kind of “real flying” was a steady rain of broken bodies drifting to the ground as their power packs faded, but it was a characteristic of youth that it felt itself to be immune from calamity. Accidents always happened to somebody else.

One of the difficulties Hasson had encountered in his years of police work was that all the arguments were emotional rather than intellectual. He had lost count of the occasions on which he had interviewed members of a group who had just seen one of their number smeared along the side of a building or sliced in two on a concrete pylon. In every case there had been an undercurrent of feeling, akin to dawn-time superstition and primitive magical beliefs, that the deceased had brought misfortune down on himself by violating the group’s code of behaviour in some way. He had defied the leader’s authority, or had betrayed a friend, or had shown he was losing his nerve.

The death was never attributed to the fact that the young flier had been breaking the law — because that would have opened the door to the notion that controls were necessary. The nocturnal rogue flier, the dark Icarus, was the folk hero of the age. At those times Hasson had begun to wonder if the whole concept of policing, of being responsible for others, was no longer valid. The CG harness, as well as inspiring its wearer to flout authority, aided and abetted by giving him anonymity and superb mobility. A Black Hawk and his aerial cohort could range over thousands of square kilometres in the course of a single night and then disappear without trace, like a single raindrop falling into the ocean of society. In almost every case, the only way to bring a rogue flier to book was