intervals of looking over her shoulder for murderers, she tried telling herself that this was just some poor fool who’d finally flipped after doing too many bank reconciliation statements, but the name Vanderdecker was too big and too noisy to ignore.
She packed everything she thought she could possibly need, plus a pot of marmalade and her hot water bottle with the woolly tiger cover, into her car and drove. At the first National Lombard cash dispenser she saw, she stopped and withdrew all the money the machine would let her have. If only she’d been sensible, she told herself, and not been put off by all those idiotic white horses in their advertising campaigns, she could have had a bank that wouldn’t betray her whereabouts to Slough every time she made a withdrawal.
The question was where to go, but the answer wasn’t easy. She thought of her parents’ house, but the thought made her shudder; her father had succumbed to National Lombard Unit Trust propaganda nine months after retiring to the Sussex coast. Surely they wouldn’t do anything to hurt her parents? Better not to think about that.
Where else, then? Her sister had a National Lombard Home Loan, so that was out. Ever since she had left the world behind and taken to accountancy she had alienated all her friends by boring them to tears with accountancy stories. That only left…
No.
Yes, why not? It’s a long way from London. Even idiots have their uses. Even obnoxious, repulsive, pathetic little gnomes. She found a call-box and fished out her diary. Fortunately, the local vandals had spared the dialling codes section and she located the code for Wick. The phone started to ring. It was answered.
“Is that you, Shirley?” she asked. Shirley said yes, it was.
Jane took a deep breath. Even when her life was quite possibly at stake, this was extremely distasteful.
“Look, Shirley,” she said—the very words were like a live worm in her mouth—“I’m going to be up near you for a week or so, can I come and stay?”
Shirley said, “Well, it’s a bit short notice, isn’t it?” Jane’s fingernails were hurting the palm of her left hand. She fought herself and won.
“Look, Shirley, I’m in a call-box, I haven’t got much change. Will it be all right? I’ll be with you tomorrow afternoon some time. See you.”
She slammed down the receiver quickly and jumped back into the car.
Maybe being murdered would be better after all.
Fair stood the wind for Scotland, which made a pleasant change. Indeed, it was nice to be going somewhere, as opposed to just going, and Vanderdecker found the crew rather less tiresome than usual.
The first mate climbed up onto the quarter-deck. He was going to ask the captain a question. Vanderdecker could hear his brain turning over like a coffee-mill before he so much as reached the foot of the stairway.
“Captain,” said the first mate, “we aren’t going to land, are we? When we reach wherever this place is we’re going to.”
“Yes,” said Vanderdecker, cruelly. As he had expected, this was beyond the first mate’s understanding. Antonius stood very still for a while as the coffee-mill approached maximum revolutions.
“Yes we are,” he finally asked, “or yes we aren’t?”
“Yes we are,” Vanderdecker said. “We’re going to land.” Antonius considered this reply and then looked at his watch, just to make sure. “But captain,” he remonstrated, “we can’t do that, it isn’t time yet.”
“So what?” Vanderdecker said, “we aren’t going to have a good time and get drunk. We’re going to see if we can find that blasted alchemist.”
“But won’t they just run away?”
“Possibly,” Vanderdecker admitted. “But it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? If we wait another five years we may be too late. They may all have gone away anyway by then.”
“Oh,” said Antonius, relieved to have been given an explanation even if he couldn’t understand it. All he needed to know in order to feel reassured was that there was a reason and that somebody was in control of it. Vanderdecker envied him.
“After all,” Vanderdecker went on, “we’ve got absolutely nothing to lose, have we?”
“I don’t know, do I?” said the first mate truthfully. “That’s why I asked.”
“Take it from me,” said Vanderdecker firmly, “we’ve got nothing to lose. If we’re lucky it could be the answer to the whole mess. If not, well, it makes a change, doesn’t it?”
The first mate nodded and went away. The coffee-mill was still turning fitfully, but it would soon be still again. Vanderdecker, for his part, was beginning to have his doubts. What if the smell did drive everyone away as soon as they came within smelling distance of the plant? And presumably it wasn’t going to be all that easy getting to see Montalban even if he was till there. He knew that all self-respecting governments are less than happy about the thought of members of the public tripping lightly round nuclear power stations, or even coming near them in a disconcerting manner. Now there was something about the sailing ship
Vanderdecker was still busy worrying himself to death (so to speak) with these and other misgivings when the look-out sighted Duncansby Head. This was Vanderdecker’s cue to get out his charts and his sextant, since there were other perils to navigation in these waters besides patrol-boats; for one thing there were rocks, and also sandbanks, eccentric and malicious tides and sundry other hazards to navigation. It was refreshing to be doing some real sailing again, and the Flying Dutchman’s mind soon became far too full with getting there to contain any worries about what he was going to do as and when he succeeded in this aim.
“If I remember right,” said the captain to the first mate, “there’s a little cove around here somewhere that we can hide up in.”
It was getting dark, and Vanderdecker was worried about shoals. They hadn’t progressed very far with their inch-by-inch search for Dounreay, but progress was necessarily slow because of the need to keep out of sight. Now a good skipper can plot a course that keeps him from being seen from the shore; or he can hug the coastline in such a way as to render himself almost invisible from the open sea. But not both at the same time. As it turned out, the
Vanderdecker found the cove in the end, just before it became too dark to see anything at all, and the anchor slithered down and hit the water with its usual dull splosh. The crew settled down to sleep, but Vanderdecker was too restless to join them. Somewhere out there he might find the answer to his problem, and although common sense told him that the power station was not something he was likely to overlook, he felt an urge to get off the ship and go and have a look about. He licked his finger to reassure himself that the wind was still out to sea, lowered the boat, and rowed ashore.
A brisk climb brought him to the top of the low, shallow cliff, and he walked down the slope on the other side. To his dismay, he saw a building with lights in the windows, and the wind was changing. No good at all. He set off briskly in the other direction.
How it happened was always a mystery to him. One minute he was walking along the tarmac road, the next minute a car came round the sharp bend, failed to stop, and slammed into him. He went over the bonnet, bounced on the roof, and slid over the hatchback rear end to the ground. The car screeched to a halt (and why the devil couldn’t you have done that in the first place, said the Flying Dutchman under his breath), the door flew open, and the driver came running towards him. Vanderdecker groaned. Whoever this road-hog was, he was going to get the shock of his life just as soon as he next breathed in. Served him right, too.
It wasn’t a he, it was a she. Very much a she, bending over him and looking extremely worried.
“Oh God,” she said, “are you all right?”
Vanderdecker stared in disbelief. Even he could smell it, and he had long since stopped noticing the smell, except when it was at its most virulent. For some reason, contact with dry land tended to make it even more rank
