The Sheep Look Up Page 7

  This was Towerhill, latest of the prosperous winter-sports resorts of Colorado, and they were in the Apennine Lodge, smartest and most expensive of its accommodations. Brand-new, the place struggled hard to appear old. Skis hung from plastic beams, a simulated log fire burned in a stone hearth. Beyond a double-glazed window taking up most of one wall powerful arc lights played on a magnificent dark-striped snow-slope running nearly to the crest of Mount Hawes. Until last year, although this town was barely fifty miles from Denver, the road had been bad and only a handful of visitors had chanced on it. The increasing tendency for people to take mountain vacations, however, since the sea had become too filthy to be tolerable, could not be ignored. The road now was excellent and the area had exploded. There were three ultramodern ski-lifts and a branch of Puritan Health Supermarkets. There were facilities for skijoring behind snowmobiles and Colorado Chemical Bank planned to double the size of its operation here. One could go skating and curling and American Express had taken up its option on some offices. Next year they promised a ski-jump of Olympic standard.

  On the screen a group of men, women and children were shown shivering outside a cluster of improbably-shaped buildings. They were poorly dressed but on average rather good-looking. Meantime police with dogs conducted a search.

  Oh. Trainites. What the hell?

  After his second drink Bill Chalmers was feeling better. It had been a filthy day: driving to Denver this morning over roads that had been ploughed and sanded but were still slithery; sweating out that awful lunch at the Masons’, aware of “an atmosphere” but unable to pin down the cause; breaking it up finally when their son Anton, six, had a row with the Mason kids aged five and four and ran away screaming ...

  But they were back safely, and he liked Towerhill: its air of affluence which was a snook cocked at the prophets of doom, its enclosing mountains, its unbelievably blessedly fresh air. One saw big-city visitors, their first day, going out in filtermasks, not convinced they were okay without them.

  The screen showed a map of Central America with an arrow pointing to somewhere, then photographs of two men, both white.

  “Tania!”

  “Yes, I’d love another,” his wife said, and went right on comparing symptoms with the lawyer’s wife from Oakland she’d met yesterday. “Now me, I had this funny rash, and a prickly feeling all over ...”

  Christ! Can’t anybody talk about anything these days except allergies and neuroses? Once a man could be satisfied to be a breadwinner. Now he has to be a medicine-winner as well. And it never does any good.

  “Yes, well!” the lawyer’s wife said. “Now I got this hot-and-cold feeling, and sometimes actual dizziness.”

  Abruptly he realized they were talking about pregnancy, and instead of fuming he found himself shivering. Of course he’d taken out abnormality insurance when Anton was on the way, but despite his position with Angel City it hadn’t come cheap, and when Anton had been safely delivered Tom Grey had told him just what odds they had been bucking. Words reheard in memory made him tremble: cystic fibrosis, phenylketonuria, hemophilia, hypothyroidism, mongolism, Tetralogy of Fallot, alexia, dichromatism ... A list that went on forever, as though it were a miracle anyone at all became a normal adult!

  It made one understand why Grey was a bachelor. He himself wouldn’t risk a second kid.

  The TV went over to sports results. For the first time several people paid it full attention.

  “Tania!”

  She finally turned. The lawyer’s wife escaped to join her husband on the far side of the room.

  “Did you have that heart-to-heart with Denise?”

  “Oh, God,” Tania said, leaning back and crossing her arms. “So that was why you brought us here—to spy on the Masons!”

  “It was not!”

  “Then what in hell makes it so urgent? You don’t have to be back at the office before Monday! And why didn’t you ask me in the car instead of snapping my head off every time I spoke?”

  All around, their attention caught by voices sharpening toward the pitch of a quarrel, people were turning to look. Hideously embarrassed, Chalmers adopted a conciliatory manner.

  “Tania honey, I’m sorry, but it is important.”

  “Obviously! More important than me or Tony! More important than my first chance in years to relax and make some new friends! Look what you’ve done—chased Sally away!”

  He just sat there.

  After a moment, however, she relented. Four years ago they had been through the unemployable stage; she knew what it would mean to lose his job.

  “Oh, hell ... Yes, I wormed it out of her. She’s a crank. Practically a Trainite.”

  Chalmers pricked up his ears. “How do you mean?”

  “A crank, like I say. Won’t let him fly. Says she wants her grandchildren to see the sun. What difference it makes if a plane flies with one seat empty, I don’t know! But she thinks Phil’s in some kind of trouble because she made him drive to LA, only he won’t come out and put the blame squarely on her. And she wants desperately to know what the problem is. In fact she brought the matter up. I didn’t have to. Because he was awful over Christmas, apparently. What’s more he keeps finding excuses not to screw her. Wouldn’t have made it even on New Year’s, she said, not unless she’d actually seduced him—”

  The last word was drowned out by a sudden thudding noise from the sky, as though a giant had clapped hands around a mosquito. Everyone winced. An anonymous voice said, “Oh, a filthy sonic boom. Don’t you hate them?”

  But it should have been over in an instant. It continued: after the initial bang, a growling sound, lower-pitched, but enduring, like stones being rubbed by the current of a fast river or a vigorous tide on a pebbly headland. Poised to renew their conversation, people realized that this wasn’t right. The noise grew louder, grinding. They turned and looked at the window.

  Tania screamed.

  With implacable majesty, to the beating of countless drums, half a million tons of snow and ice were marching on the town of Towerhill.

  CHARGE ACCOUNT

  Reporter: General, it’s no exaggeration to say the world has been appalled at your decision to arrest and expel the American relief workers from Noshri—

  General Kaika: Do you expect us to let them remain when they have poisoned thousands of our people, killed them or, worse still, driven them mad?

  Reporter: There’s no proof that—

  General Kaika: Yes, there is proof. All the people of the town went mad. They attacked our own troops who had freed them from the occupying forces. They were poisoned by the evil food sent under the pretence of relief supplies.

  Reporter: But what conceivable motive could—?

  General Kaika: Plenty of motive. For one thing, Americans go to any length to prevent an independent country whose government does not have white skin. Colored governments must bow to Washington. Consider China. Consider Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Ceylon, Indonesia. If ever we have a strong united country of black people in Africa they will no longer be able to tread down their black countrymen.

  Reporter: Are you saying there was a deliberate plot to weaken your forces and win the war for the invaders?

  General Kaika: I am making investigations to confirm. But it is white men who made the war to start with.

  Reporter: There weren’t even any white mercenaries with the—

  General Kaika: Was it black men who filled the Mediterranean with poison? No, it was destroyed by the filthy wastes from European factories!

  Reporter: Well, the Aswan dam—

  General Kaika: Yes, yes, the Aswan dam may have tipped the balance finally, but before that the sea was dying. Because so many had to starve on the African coast there began this war. That is why I say the white countries are responsible. It is the typical white habit to ruin what you have and then go to steal from other people.

  Reporter: Oh, General, you’re stretching the facts a bit!

  General Kaika: Is the fact tha
t it is dangerous to swim in the Mediterranean? Is the fact that the fish have died?

  Reporter: Well, yes, but—

  General Kaika: I have no more to say.

  RATS

  Jeannie was already home, of course, her Stephenson electric tucked into a corner of the garage. Pete was on the ten-to-six shift today and her job at Bamberley’s stopped at five.

  Pete Goddard hated his wife going to work. He wanted her at home, looking after a couple of kids. That, though, would have to wait until after his next promotion. These days nobody in his right mind would start a family before he could afford proper medical care for his children. Up here in the mountains it wasn’t so bad as in the cities; even so you couldn’t be too careful.

  As he scraped his boots before treading on the front step, there was a slamming sound in the sky. He glanced up just in time to meet an eyeful of snow shaken off the overhang of the porch. Ah, shit, a sonic boom. Oughtn’t to have been that loud! One grew used to one or two a day, but faint, far away, doing no damage beyond maybe startling you into spilling a cup of coffee. Down at the station house Sergeant Chain could look forward to a rash of complaints. As though there were anything the police here could do. As though there were anything anybody could do.

  Jeannie was in the kitchen. Not much of a kitchen, equipped with repossessed appliances. But they usually worked. She was busy at the stove: a pretty girl, much lighter than he and a year older, bound to be plump before thirty but what the hell? He liked plenty of meat. Blowing her a kiss, he collected his evening pill, the one for his allergy, and headed for the sink to draw some water.

  But she stopped him with a cry. “No, Pete! I found a don’t-drink notice when I got home. See, on the table?”

  Startled, he turned and spotted the bright red paper printed in bold black letters. The familiar phrases leapt out at him: fault in the purifying plant—must not be drunk without boiling—rectified as soon as possible ...

  “Shit!” he exclaimed. “It’s getting to be as bad as Denver!”

  “Oh, no, honey! Down in the city they get these all the time, like every week, and that’s only our second since the summer. Won’t a beer do?”

  “A beer? Sure it will!”

  “In the icebox. And one for me. I got this complicated recipe going.” She brandished a clipping from the newspaper.

  Grinning, he made to comply—and his hand flew to his hip after his not-present gun as he exclaimed in dismay.

  “What?” Jeannie spun around. “Oh, not another rat?”

  “Just the biggest I ever saw!” But it was gone now. “I thought I told you to call the exterminator!” he snapped.

  “Well, I did! But he said he has so much business we’ll have to wait at least another week.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Pete sighed. “Everybody I meet ...” He let the words trail away and opened the icebox. On two shelves, packages with a familiar trade mark: a girl holding an ear of corn between her tits, to make a sort of prick-and-balls pattern of them.

  “Hey, you been to Puritan again!”

  “Well, I spent my bonus,” Jeannie said defensively. “And things there aren’t that much more expensive! Besides, they do really taste much better.”

  “What bonus?”

  “Oh, you know! I told you! All us girls in the packing section who worked overtime to get that shipment away before Christmas. Twenty bucks extra from Mr. Bamberley!”

  “Oh. Oh, yeah.” Taking his beer and hers from the six-pack. What the hell? Twenty bucks today was a spit in the ocean. Though he would rather have put it toward their policy with Angel City, saving against the time when they could afford a baby. All these scare stories about chemicals. Just an excuse to double the prices at Puritan ...

  Reminded of the plant, though: “Say, baby, how’s your leg?” That smooth patch of skin, as though part of her thigh had been glazed.

  “Oh, they were right first time. It is a fungus. You know we have to wear masks against actino-what’s-its-name. I picked up something of the same kind. But the ointment’s fixing it.”

  Pete repressed a shudder. Catching a fungus! Christ, like something out of a horror movie! It had dragged on for more than a month, and even now he kept finding himself obsessively inspecting his own body. He gulped at his beer.

  “Say, honey, I meant to tell you,” Jeannie said suddenly. “I saw you on TV!”

  “What, at the Trainite wat?” He dropped into a chair. “Yes, I noticed the guy with the camera.”

  “What were you there for?”

  “Didn’t they explain?”

  “I only switched on in time to catch the end of it.”

  “Ah-hah. Well, we had this call from LA. Remember the cat who used to run the wat was killed down there before Christmas? Seems he was either crazy or stoned. So they said turn the place over for drugs.”

  “I thought Trainites didn’t hold with them.”

  “Well, it’s true we didn’t find anything ... Weird place, baby! All like fixed up from scrap. Kind of handmade. And the people kind of—I don’t know. Odd!”

  “I saw some of them at Puritan,” Jeannie said. “They looked pretty ordinary. And their kids are very well behaved.”

  Too soon to talk about the best way to raise kids. Some day, though ...

  “They may look harmless,” Pete said. “But that’s because here there aren’t enough to cause real trouble. I mean like apart from painting up these dirty skulls and crossbones. Down in LA, though, they block streets, wreck cars, smash up stores!”

  “But Carl says everything they do is meant to wake people up to the danger we’re in.”

  Oh, the hell with Carl! But Pete kept that to himself, knowing how fond Jeannie was of him: her younger brother, nineteen going on twenty, the bright one of their family of five kids who’d dropped out of college after a year complaining of lousy teaching and was currently also working at the Bamberley plant.

  “Look, any way they want to live is fine by me,” he grunted. “But it’s my job to stop anybody wrecking or looting or interfering with the way other people want to live.”

  “Well, Carl’s been to the wat several times and according to him—Oh, let’s not argue!” Consulting her recipe. “Well, we have to wait ten minutes now, it says. Let’s go into the living room and sit down ...” Her face clouded. “Know something, honey?”

  “What?”

  “I do wish I had one of those instant cookers. Microwave. Then it wouldn’t matter when you came in, dinner could be ready in a moment.”

  The phone rang.

  “Go sit down. I’ll get it,” she said. He grinned at her and obeyed. But, even before he’d made himself comfortable, she was calling to him in a near-scream.

  “Pete! Pete! Get your coat and boots!”

  “What? What the hell for?”

  “There’s been an avalanche! It’s buried all those new places the other side of town!”

  NO BIGGER THAN A MAN’S HAND

  ... published today as a United Nations Special Report. The alleged rise of intelligence in so-called backward countries is ascribed by the scientists who conducted the three-year investigation to improved diet and sanitation, while the as-yet unconfirmed decline in advancd nations is attributed to intensified pollution. Asked to comment on the report just prior to leaving for Hollywood, where he is tonight slated to open his annual retrospective, Prexy said, quote, Well, if they’re so smart why aren’t they clever? End quote. At a press conference in Tegucigalpa the disappearance of Leonard Ross, field agent for Globe Relief, and Dr. Isaiah Williams, the British medico who’s also unaccounted for, was officially ascribed today to terrorism. Troops are searching the area intensively, but so far have reported no success. Following the shock resignation of the former president of the “Save the Med’ Fund, Dottore Giovanni Crespinolo, the Italian government has flatly denied his charge that the vast sums donated by corporations and individuals in forty-eight countries in the hope of saving the doomed landlocked sea have been em
bezzled. Reports from Rome, however ...

  MEMENTO LAURAE

  Never in his life had Philip Mason felt so miserable. He paced endlessly around the apartment, snapping at the children, telling Denise to leave him alone for God’s sake, when all the time what he really wanted to say was that he loved them desperately and always would.

  Yet the consequences of New Year’s Eve ...

  When he felt depressed at the last place, things had been easier to bear: a house, much further from the city center—beyond the river—with its own garden. There he’d been able to hide away and be miserable by himself. But the river fires had been bad last year; more than once he’d been unable to get to work because the bridge was closed, and half the time smoke made it impossible to use the garden or even open the windows.

  So they’d moved to this air-conditioned apartment block. Handier for the office. And, of course, for the hospital where Josie’s squint was being treated and the short muscles in Harold’s leg were being drawn out.

  He couldn’t explain! Dared not! And now couldn’t get out of explaining, either!

  But at least he had a few minutes to himself. The kids were asleep, having taken a long time to calm down following their disastrous encounter with Anton Chalmers: pushy, arrogant, greedy, bullying, bad-tempered—but, of course, absolutely healthy. “Survival of the fittest and all that shit” ... to quote his insufferable father.

  And Denise had gone to the Henlowes’ apartment on the second floor. That was where you scored in this building. Everyone nowadays seemed to know a means of getting something from somebody. But it was best to stay out on the fringes. It was becoming as bad as what the history books recounted about Prohibition, what with the black gangs fighting on the streets over the right to distribute African khat, and the white gangs blowing up each other’s homes for the right to trade in Mexican grass.