The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell
to grow, and then Blackett delivered a long homily to the judge on what he believed to be the musical shortcomings of the statue. The judge, a crusty and short-tempered old man of the hanging school, immediately decided that we were trying to pull his leg. We were finished from the start.
The final judgment was not delivered until ten months after we had first unveiled the statue in the centre of Vermilion Sands, and the verdict, when it came, was no surprise.
Lorraine Drexel was awarded thirty thousand dollars.
‘It looks as if we should have taken the pylon after, all,’ I said to Carol as we left the courtroom. ‘Even the step-pyramid would have been less trouble.’
Raymond joined us and we went out on to the balcony at the end of the corridor for some air.
‘Never mind,’ Carol said bravely. ‘At least it’s all over with.’
I looked out over the rooftops of Vermilion Sands, thinking about the thirty thousand dollars and wondering whether we would have to pay it ourselves.
The court building was a new one and by an unpleasant irony ours had been the first case to be heard there. Much of the floor and plasterwork had still to be completed, and the balcony was untiled. I was standing on an exposed steel crossbeam; one or two floors down someone must have been driving a rivet into one of the girders, and the beam under my feet vibrated soothingly.
Then I noticed that there were no sounds of riveting going on anywhere, and that the movement under my feet was not so much a vibration as a low rhythmic pulse.
I bent down and pressed my hands against the beam. Raymond and Carol watched me curiously. ‘Mr Hamilton, what is it?’ Carol asked when I stood up.
‘Raymond,’ I said. ‘How long ago did they first start on this building? The steel framework, anyway.’
‘Four months, I think. Why?’
‘Four.’ I nodded slowly. ‘Tell me, how long would you say it took any random piece of scrap iron to be reprocessed through a steel mill and get back into circulation?’
‘Years, if it lay around in the wrong junkyards.’
‘But if it had actually arrived at the steel mill?’
‘A month or so. Less.’
I started to laugh, pointing to the girder. ‘Feel that! Go on, feel it!’
Frowning at me, they knelt down and pressed their hands to the girder. Then Raymond looked up at me sharply.
I stopped laughing. ‘Did you feel it?’
‘Feel it?’ Raymond repeated. ‘I can hear it. Lorraine Drexel – the statue. It’s here!’
Carol was patting the girder and listening to it. ‘I think it’s humming,’ she said, puzzled. ‘It sounds like the statue.’
When I started to laugh again Raymond held my arm. ‘Snap out of it, the whole building will be singing soon!’
‘I know,’ I said weakly. ‘And it won’t be just this building either.’ I took Carol by the arm. ‘Come on, let’s see if it’s started.’
We went up to the top floor. The plasterers were about to move in and there were trestles and laths all over the place. The walls were still bare brick, girders at fifteen-foot intervals between them.
We didn’t have to look very far.
Jutting out from one of the steel joists below the roof was a long metal helix, hollowing itself slowly into a delicate sonic core. Without moving, we counted a dozen others. A faint twanging sound came from them, like early arrivals at a rehearsal of some vast orchestra of sitar-players, seated on every plain and hilltop of the earth. I remembered when we had last heard the music, as Lorraine Drexel sat beside me at the unveiling in Vermilion Sands. The statue had made its call to her dead lover, and now the refrain was to be taken up again.
‘An authentic Drexel,’ I said. ‘All the mannerisms. Nothing much to look at yet, but wait till it really gets going.’
Raymond wandered round, his mouth open. ‘It’ll tear the building apart. Just think of the noise.’
Carol was staring up at one of the shoots. ‘Mr Hamilton, you said they’d melted it all down.’
‘They did, angel. So it got back into circulation, touching off all the other metal it came into contact with. Lorraine Drexel’s statue is here, in this building, in a dozen other buildings, in ships and planes and a million new automobiles. Even if it’s only one screw or ball-bearing, that’ll be enough to trigger the rest off.’
‘They’ll stop it,’ Carol said.
‘They might,’ I admitted. ‘But it’ll probably get back again somehow. A few pieces always will.’ I put my arm round her waist and began to dance to the strange abstracted music, for some reason as beautiful now as Lorraine Drexel’s wistful eyes. ‘Did you say it was all over? Carol, it’s only just beginning. The whole world will be singing.’
1957
For the first few days all went well.
‘Keep away from windows and don’t think about it,’ Dr Neill told them. ‘As far as you’re concerned it was just another compulsion. At eleven thirty or twelve go down to the gym and throw a ball around, play some table-tennis. At two they’re running a film for you in the Neurology theatre. Read the papers for a couple of hours, put on some records. I’ll be down at six. By seven you’ll be in a manic swing.’
‘Any chance of a sudden blackout, Doctor?’ Avery asked.
‘Absolutely none,’ Neill said. ‘If you get tired, rest, of course. That’s the one thing you’ll probably have a little difficulty getting used to. Remember, you’re still using only 3,500 calories, so your kinetic level – and you’ll notice this most by day – will be about a third lower. You’ll have to take things easier, make allowances. Most of these have been programmed in for you, but start learning to play chess, focus that inner eye.’
Gorrell leaned forward. ‘Doctor,’ he asked, ‘if we want to, can we look out of the windows?’
Dr Neill smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘The wires are cut. You couldn’t go to sleep now if you tried.’
Neill waited until the three men had left the lecture room on their way back to the Recreation Wing and then stepped down from the dais and shut the door. He was a short, broad-shouldered man in his fifties, with a sharp, impatient mouth and small features. He swung a chair out of the front row and straddled it deftly.
‘Well?’ he asked.
Morley was sitting on one of the desks against the back wall, playing aimlessly with a pencil. At thirty he was the youngest member of the team working under Neill at the Clinic, but for some reason Neill liked to talk to him.
He saw Neill was waiting for an answer and shrugged.
‘Everything seems to be all right,’ he said. ‘Surgical convalescence is over. Cardiac rhythms and EEG are normal. I saw the X-rays this morning and everything has sealed beautifully.’
Neill watched him quizzically. ‘You don’t sound as if you approve.’
Morley laughed and stood up. ‘Of course I do.’ He walked down the aisle between the desks, white coat unbuttoned, hands sunk deep in his pockets. ‘No, so far you’ve vindicated yourself on every point. The party’s only just beginning, but the guests are in damn good shape. No doubt about it. I thought three weeks was a little early to bring them out of hypnosis, but