CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER Read online

  Peter was saying with a trace of anger, “Look, you haven’t had as much to do with this kind of—”

  And she was interrupting: “I won’t kowtow to their damn commercial demands!”

  “But if we’re going to raise the wind—”

  “Wind you know about, don’t you? Every time you open your mouth a positive gale spills out!”

  “Better to burp it up than play King Frog and burst with your own self-righteousness!”

  For an instant they were glaring at each other across the paper-littered table. Then Ellen gave a tinkling laugh. The tension broken, they both turned to her.

  “Excuse me,” she said when she recovered. “I was just thinking…”

  “What?”—curtly from Peter.

  “You sound like a married couple. The way you’re squabbling, I mean!”

  For an instant they bridled; then her point sank home, and they sat back ruefully and in unison picked up their respective glasses of beer and took another sip, as though the simultaneity of the act had been rehearsed.

  Peter said after a pause, “Well, I must admit I used sometimes to think of working on Continuum as though our team were a kind of enormous marriage, where everyone had to play along or else risk wrecking the current project. I suppose any kind of cooperative venture—”

  “Is as difficult as marriage if without the legal bond,” Claudia put in. “Ellen’s right. I’m sorry, Peter. I am being obstructive. You do have experience in selling a story to the media. All I know about is how to persuade my peers and my publishers, and I’m not even very good at that. You don’t suppose Ellen could act as referee?”

  “You can’t be serious!” Peter started to retort—yet the phrase died halfway through. Turning, he stared at his daughter, who was gazing eagerly at them, and saw her as though for the first time. She was objectively taller than when she had arrived at his home, by two centimeters; she was growing at such a rate, the jeans he had bought her then seemed to expose more of her shins every day. (Memo to self: buy new, and soon.) Her smooth brown skin, her slender grace, her long sleek hair, had already attracted boys from her school and elsewhere in the neighborhood, wanting to take her out… and for some unfathomable reason he had let her go with them, convinced on a level below consciousness that she was not about to come to any harm. In a fit of uncharacteristic incertitude he had asked Claudia’s opinion on the matter, and he remembered her brusque reply: “We all have to grow up some time, and she’s grown up faster than most. She can take care of herself!”

  It was a risk, admittedly, but it did save worrying about baby-sitters. (Baby? But Peter kept that to himself.)

  He said after a moment for reflection, “You know, you have a point. If there’s any truth in what the market survey people say—”

  And could have bitten his tongue out as he realized what he had been about to utter. Covered in embarrassment, he reached for his beer glass again.

  But Ellen repeated her tinkling laugh. Easing her chair forward—it was on casters—to make herself a member of their circle, she said, “I know, I know! The newspapers aim at a readership with a mental age of twelve, right?”

  “Uh—”

  “And I’m a bit older than that, but not by much, so I might serve as a sort of touchstone, right?”

  Not for the first time, Peter had the impression that this accidental daughter of his was an extremely worthwhile acquisition. What would life with her be like a few more years from now, though? If she was this sharp and this alert at present, despite what she had been through, she was apt to turn into…

  Something.

  But he quelled that response by turning the “something” into the sense of the phrase “quite something!” And was able to say—to Claudia—“We’d have to do an awful lot of explaining first, wouldn’t we?”

  “I’m not so sure.” Claudia was surveying Ellen with an inspectorial eye. “I think she’s been paying a lot of attention to what we’re talking about, because it’s part of your job. Same as she watches the TV news and reads all the papers because of what you do for a living.”

  Peter started; he hadn’t realized she was taking so keen an interest in his and Ellen’s day-to-day existence.

  Still, it was of a piece with her normal attitude. He could not envisage her failing to research a colleague…

  He said with more gruffness than he had intended, “Well, all right. Let’s try our presentation out on her, and see if it will click with Jake Lafarge. I don’t suppose”—and this time the words were tinged with unintended bitterness—“his mental age is any higher than Ellen’s!”

  Dead silence, bar what sounds drifted in from the street (and how many fewer they were, Peter thought irrelevantly, than in the street where he had formerly lived and Claudia did now: how many fewer fire alarms, police cars, sounds of riot and commotion, breaking glass…)

  And Ellen was on her feet, cheeks aglow and pouting.

  “If you’re just going to make fun of me—!”

  He reached out an arm and caught her as she made to vanish into her own room, pulling her around to dump her on his lap.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking! I mean, I wasn’t thinking about you, but about Jake! He— Never mind. You can get an impression of Jake from reading the paper he edits, okay?”

  Of a sudden Ellen was smiling. He put an arm around to cuddle her and leaned his cheek against her smooth tresses.

  “Actually it’s a very good idea. That is, if you don’t mind being treated as a one-person captive audience…?”

  She shook her head vigorously.

  “Well, then,” Peter said with a cock of one eyebrow at Claudia, “let’s run it up the flagpole and see if Ellen can salute it.”

  “Sometimes,” Claudia retorted caustically as she sorted through the mass of rough notes on the table, “I suspect you must be far older than you claim… Okay, here we go.”

  An hour later, when Ellen had dutifully retired to bed and Peter was seeing Claudia out the door, the latter said, “You know something?”

  “What?”

  “Getting back that daughter of yours is the best thing that could have happened to you. She’s humanizing you.”

  “I don’t quite…” With a lot of blinking.

  “For pity’s sake!” Had she been younger, Claudia would have stamped her foot. “Even if you don’t notice, I do! A few weeks ago you were a go-getting self-serving so-and-so and totally unaware of it—even proud of it! Since the kid moved in, you’ve softened. Gotten nicer. More caring. Do I have to run through the entire thesaurus?”

  The street door was ajar to what might be the last warm night of autumn; the hallway was in darkness because he hadn’t switched the lights on—it had become a reflex since he realized how limited his budget was with a child to look after. But there was a diffuse glow from the streetlights. Around here they worked more often than not.

  In the dimness he could read Claudia’s expression, and it mingled admiration with frustration.

  “Goddamn it!” she forced out at last. “I think I could even come to like you, Peter Levin! Me, who after I broke up with my husband swore I was going to hate men for ever!”

  And she put a muscular arm around his neck and pulled his mouth down to meet hers.

  She kissed delightfully. Her tongue on his hardened him on the instant. But she withdrew the instant he tried to cup her breast, and disappeared behind a slamming door.

  “See you at the Comet office, ten tomorrow!” was the last he heard. “And say thanks to Ellen! Now I think we have a deal!”

  In his new sanctum David Shay checked his morning post. There was little of importance among it, bar one item. As nearly as he could make out from her semi-literate scrawl, Bethsaida was pregnant, and since she must have been fertilized at a time when her husband was away on the cruise liner he was threatening divorce. He authorized transfer to her of $50,000 from his Bahaman account, which ought to shut them both up for a fair while, and consig
ned her letter to the shredder beside his desk, along with most of his other mail. Then, leaning back, he yawned and stretched and looked about him.

  The temporary home he had chosen for himself and his family was a large Victorian house within easy reach of London, in the Surrey district of Virginia Water. It was set well back from the main road among trees that were about to drop their leaves, but still afforded adequate privacy, since there was a winding driveway flanked with evergreen shrubs. It had stood empty for nearly a year, being too large for most people nowadays, with its twenty rooms, extensive outbuildings and enormous garden. Running it properly, the estate agent had said apologetically, would call for at least three live-in staff, and the seller was so greedy he had at first insisted on nothing less than an Arab millionaire as the new occupier. However, with the general decline in world trade no such buyer had appeared, and the Shays had leased it for twelve months at a most advantageous rate.

  David’s mouth quirked up at the corners. The rent had rather less to do with the owner losing patience than with the dinner he, Harry and Alice had invited the estate agent to at a fashionable local restaurant, during the course of which he had been able to turn the charm on full. Of course, he had had to work the same trick on the landlord as well, but that wasn’t hard…

  Hard.

  Reminded, he rubbed his crotch. He must do something, and soon, about arranging for those live-in servants, and he wanted them all to be young and female. He made a mental note to mention it to Harry and Alice when they came home tonight—they were in London at the moment. He himself was far too busy setting up his new gear, the last of which had been delivered yesterday. He would have brought what he was used to from California, but the voltage difference might have caused problems and in any case most of it was two or even three years old. Better, therefore, to scrap it and acquire a whole new setup, even though there were bad reports about the competence of UK maintenance engineers.

  Bad reports…

  He glanced at the TV, that was playing the early evening news, and sighed aloud. Did there have to be another disaster every single day—or further horrors in the long-running dramas? Was the human race really composed of, or at any rate ruled by, total idiots? The evidence seemed incontrovertible. The Netherlands were under martial law because the Surinamese, inspired by the “heroic resistance” of the Sri Lankan Tamils, had decided to undertake a similar campaign of sabotage. The Sikhs in India had killed their tenth Congress Party MP, along with his entourage, by mining a road-bridge he was due to cross. Yet another attempt to launch an SDI “defense” satellite had ended up with the launcher crashing in the deep Atlantic, and people were starting to claim that communists must have hacked their way into the computers that designed either the launch vehicle itself or a key part of its control system. Right now the heavy betting was on a programmer who had quit in disgust after having created such a gang of indispensable software for the DoD that even the American government—read taxpayer—couldn’t afford to scrap it and start over.

  But that, of course, might be a red herring; a bit of “disinformation” put about to disguise the fact that the Soviets were able to tap into NORAD, the Pentagon, all the main defense contractors…

  Which, in David’s view, went without saying. Idly he keyed a code that interrogated the master launch computers at Cape Canaveral. Inside thirty seconds he was looking at the fault-diagnosis display from the just-crashed rocket. Without bothering to read it, he hit the cancel command. He had only done it in order to confirm that his new rig was status go.

  Now, therefore, he could start work on the most important task that lay ahead of him. Who was his real—his biological—father? There was an obvious first line of approach: he must search the Police National Computer for gossip, slander, and any other malicious allegations about his mother. From that source, he was virtually certain to obtain clues to the clues that might reveal his paternity.

  And if not, there were many other avenues to be explored.

  He had mentally drafted the necessary program while traversing the North Pole on the way back to Britain. In odd moments since then he had found time to debug it. Now it was ready to run. It would certainly take hours, maybe days, but it was ready. He called it up and activated it, then rose from his chair and stretched and yawned again.

  At that precise moment the sound of a car approaching up the driveway reached his ears. It halted; the engine was switched off. Shortly after, the front doorbell rang.

  For a moment David considered pretending that the house was empty, but had to discard the idea as soon as formulated. Had it indeed been so, electronic devices would have interrogated all callers, recorded their replies, and fixed their images on tape. The security level here was high.

  Annoyed that he hadn’t thought of switching the machines on, he headed for the door.

  “Good afternoon!” said a bright-faced young woman in a brown trouser-suit, a portable computer no larger than a camera slung over her left shoulder on a yellow strap. “I’m Gladys Winter! Are your parents at home?”

  She had been alone in the car—or, at any rate, there was no one else in it now. Of course, one or more fellow-passengers might have darted off to scour the grounds…

  David realized he was beginning to feel paranoid. Why should she not have come here by herself? He said in as normal a tone as he could contrive, “I’m afraid they went up to town for the day. Can I help you?”

  “Well, maybe you can.” Gladys consulted her computer. “I gather you returned from the States after an absence of some years, and—well, for some reason your parents don’t seem to have made arrangements for you to attend school this year. At any rate our records…”

  She droned on for another couple of sentences, while David cursed himself yet again for overlooking an important point. But he kept control.

  “Now this is something they would certainly wish to talk about if they were here,” he said when he had the chance. “Won’t you come in for a moment? And—excuse me, but are you on your own?”

  Gladys blinked. “What makes you ask that? Who else can you see around here?”

  “Well, I just thought that if you had a companion he might have—uh—vanished into the bushes…” With a winning smile.

  An answering grin. “I see! Yes, men aren’t so good at holding their water, are they?… May I come in?”

  Didn’t I just say so?

  But David stepped aside politely and closed the door.

  Guiding her into the newly—and lavishly—furnished drawing room, he bade her sit down and offered her a drink, which she refused. He didn’t insist; he needed to exploit his charm for more important matters.

  “Now what precisely can I do for you?” he murmured as he installed himself beside her on a chintz-covered sofa, donning as grave and adult an expression as he could contrive but seizing every chance to breathe toward her face and brush her with his arm or hand.

  She explained about Acts of Parliament, local regulations, sundry by-laws and statutory instruments authorized by the Ministry of Education… growing more and more agitated as he found other opportunities to touch her: first her cheek, then her bust, then her waist and hips.

  “So, you see—” she attempted to conclude, but he cut her utterance short, clasping and kissing her fingers.

  “So you see, there’s no need to worry about me. Regardless of English law, I don’t have to go to school. Do I?”

  “I—”

  “I mean, you wouldn’t think of reporting me and my parents as lawbreakers, would you?”

  “I… Well, no. I suppose not.” Gladys ran a finger around her collar as though it had grown unbearably tight, but made no attempt to release her other hand.

  “Isn’t that the part of your work that you hate most?”

  “Frankly…” Of a sudden she relaxed and smiled. Her face, which was rather square and flat, underwent a transformation. “Yes, I do hate having to report people for neglecting their kids. How did you guess?
”

  David evaded an answer. Instead he parried, “And do you think I’m being neglected?”

  “Goodness! The way you talk, the surroundings here…” A helpless gesture as though she was trying to seize a handful of air and mold it into meaning. “Of course not! It’s just that your family’s name cropped up on our main computer, so—”

  “Which computer is that, by the way?” David inserted. By this time he had progressed from caressing her hand and wrist to stroking her nape.

  “The Department of Education’s.”

  Mm-hm. What was that traditional saying of the Jesuits? “Give me a child before he is seven and after that you may do with him what you will!”

  A policy being as thoroughly exploited by the present British government as ever by the régime Franco visited on Spain when it too was a once-great nation mourning the loss of its overseas empire. One of these days, when he found time, David planned to analyze that parallel to see whether it stood up as well as he imagined.

  Not, however, today.

  Gladys was rising, albeit with visible reluctance, having punched an entry into her computer, and was saying, “Well, I won’t delay you any longer. Obviously there’s been a mistake. Your parents are planning to send you to a private school, aren’t they? Sometimes that sort of data takes a long time to find its way into our records.”

  Figures! The richer you are, the better you can elude Big Brother!

  But since she was here, there was one thing she could do for him. David glanced at his watch and saw that over an hour remained before the earliest time he could expect Harry and Alice to return from London.

  “What about blowing me before you go?” he said with his sweetest smile and most cajoling tone.

  “Well, I wouldn’t normally, but—”

  “You like me, don’t you?”