Nine

Various people passed back and forth in front of him. A military truck, its headlamps slicing darkness, took the eastern fork of the crossroads. He could make out the humped shapes of soldiers, their grim faces appearing intermittently as street light fell into the back of the truck. And there was silence. He thought of the widow and dismissed the whole thing: she had fallen down the stairs, perhaps she was dead. At a time like this considerations of this kind were irrelevant. Another dead widow in the world, another callous fact. He moved to the centre of the crossroads and paused. The people he had noticed at first were nowhere in sight—so far as he could see the place was deserted. Even the buildings around him were in darkness. He saw the red light of the truck disappear along the black stretch of road and, drawn by this, began to walk after it. He wasn’t altogether certain but it seemed likely that he was walking east. He couldn’t even remember if the border lay in that direction but he knew the sheer necessity for action. If the widow was dead … He saw a car come up in front of him and involuntarily he stepped back into the bushes at the side of the road. It was easy, he thought, to acquire the habits of the fugitive. The car came up and then went past in a frightening streak of light and when the noise of the engine had faded there was a silence as desolate as anything he had ever experienced. It was so dark that he did not know what lay to the left and right of him. Possibly there were fields—but in the absence of light it was impossible to be certain. Once, as he walked, he thought he saw a light shimmering in the distance but as he came nearer to it it faded and died. Possibly some sort of optical illusion. Perhaps someone moving out there with a lantern. Eventually, overcome with tiredness and nauseated by the increasing amount of pain in his leg, he sat down. He fell asleep—he didn’t know for how long—but when he woke it was still dark. Forcing himself to get up, he continued walking. He couldn’t afford to sleep: before very long they would come after him, if they were not after him already. Every step he took now seemed to send a bolt of pain through him—and the extraordinary thing about it was that the pain seemed at first to be in the left leg, next in the right.

After some minutes he lay down again. The grass was cold. It seemed to suck at his face and hands, and invisible things that floated through the dark touched his skin. He did not lie for long this time because the damp grass was beginning to soak through his trousers and he could not afford to run the risk of catching a chill. As he walked along he had the odd feeling that he was just another pedestrian who has been surprised by darkness and has lost his way. The sense of danger, previously so acute, seemed to have dissipated itself. For a minute or so he relaxed, breathing the icy night air deep into his lungs. A scuttling sound from the hedge made him freeze. Some small bird, some animal, burrowing through the leaves. There were other faint noises around him too, that he noticed for the first time: the distant call of birds, the cry of a cat, the shriek of a night-owl. He listened carefully like someone who has suddenly discovered another dimension of sound. The road took a turn after that and through a clump of trees he observed a collection of pale lights. How far they were from him he could not guess, but he recognised the need for caution. He went towards the lights and as he did so several distinct features appeared.

First he realised that there were more lights than he had at first imagined; what had seemed to be half-a-dozen sources of light were in fact about fifty or sixty. Secondly, he noticed that some sort of activity was going on; he could make out the vague shapes of people moving back and forth in front of the lights. And third, he observed that the lights themselves seemed to hang suspended in mid-air without physical support. He stopped for a moment, feeling a faint sense of danger again. Where there were people it was bound to be dangerous—but what could he do? The road led straight past the lights and unless he turned back—which he could not possibly do—he would have to go straight past them himself. Besides, there was no reason why—if he were seen—anyone should suspect him of a crime. He was simply a man taking an evening stroll, he was nothing more than that. He slowed his pace and when he was within a hundred yards of the place he realised that the lights were supported by thin wires and that the men beneath them were in the act of constructing something. They moved back and forward with wheelbarrows. Several empty trucks were parked beyond the lights and a couple of men leaning against them were smoking cigarettes. He paused, breathing slowly. He felt within himself the sense of urgency that seemed to have deserted him: there was nothing else for it, he would have to keep moving quickly if he was to put a good distance between himself and the town before dawn.

Keeping close to the hedgerow, he continued along the road. Twenty yards from the place he saw a half-constructed building and there, just in front of him, was a notice with the words: To the Site Agent’s Office. For a second his heart seemed to stop beating. He held his breath and a hundred thoughts ran through his brain. Here was the very place that only a few days ago he had desperately wanted to know about. Now, when another sort of desperation had seized him, he would have to ignore the opportunity of finding out some of the facts that had been kept from him. He looked past the notice-board where a thin dirt-track ran up to a prefabricated wooden hut. A lamp was burning in the window and the silhouette of a man could be seen bending over some papers. The Site Agent, he thought. The Site Agent!

He waited a moment, taking the opportunity to observe the place closely. The half-constructed building, he saw now, was oval in shape. Men moved inside it with wheelbarrows and seconds later came out again. He could not see properly whether the building had a flat roof, or whether its roof had not yet been constructed. But staring at it he could attach no definite function to it—it was oval, and seemed to have been built in layers, the bottom layer being perhaps about six feet high, the top about two, and the layers in between being of proportionately diminishing dimensions. He looked beyond the lights to the trucks and realised that they were military vehicles—exactly like the one he had seen take the eastern fork at the crossroads. As he stared, he had the impression that all the activity going on before him was somehow ghostly—an optical effect imparted by the peculiar yellow flare of the light-bulbs. He turned again to look at the prefabricated hut which was now in darkness. A door swung open and a man stepped out, tugging at the tops of his trousers. Was this the Site Agent? Berg wondered. Was this the man he had accidentally telephoned that day that now seemed like centuries ago?

The man came down a flight of wooden steps, his shoes ringing against them. He walked across and stopped just in front of the building. Crossing his arms, he watched the men with their wheelbarrows and then he turned round—as if by some odd intuition—and looked in Berg’s direction. Berg moved into the hedge, holding his breath, feeling a growing sense of panic. What if he had been seen? What would happen then?

But the man had turned round again and was looking at the workers. Berg took the opportunity to move and, crouching very low, made his way to the other side of the road. There he began to walk: in a matter of seconds he would be out of range of the lights, he would be back in the realms of darkness. He moved forward. Voices from the Site carried across to him even if he could not hear what was being said. He had to keep moving: time was precious. He was exposed by the lights but if no one looked he would be safe: in seconds now, in seconds, he would pass beyond the glare and be back in the safety of the dark.

The road took a sudden and totally unexpected turn.

It was then that he encountered the wall. He groped along it, fumbling for some way past it. It was made of brick, built to a height of about twelve feet. It extended from one side of the road to the other, allowing no means of passing it.

Leaning against it breathlessly, Berg realised then that the eastern fork from the crossroads was a dead-end street. He sat down and a feeling of sheer despair came over him. The road led only to the Site and nowhere else. The road ended at this solid wall.

It meant that he would either have to strike across the fields—if there were fields beyond the hedgerows—or go back the way he had come. If he returned to the crossroads it would be light by the time he reached them and someone was certain to recognise him. If he went beyond the hedgerows he was almost certain to lose his sense of direction without a road to guide him. He could not think: it was as if there were not only a wall at his back but another in his mind.

What was he supposed to do now? As he waited time went past; as he remained indecisive, Sbodin was probably pursuing him now.

But what was he supposed to do?

He rose to his feet and went to the hedgerow. He looked over the top, straining his eyes to see through the impenetrable blackness of the night. There was nothing. He might just as well have been staring at an alien landscape. No landmarks, no lights, no pathways—nothing but a darkness that seemed to swirl over everything like a fog. Out there he was certain to be lost and if he were lost then in time he might even go back on his tracks and return inadvertently to the town.

He walked back along the road a little way and stopped just before the lights came in view. He could see, very vaguely, the glare of them burn up the darkness.

Did he return to the crossroads? Or did he go over the hedge and off the road?

All at once a light flashed across his face. Bewildered, he swung round. Beside him stood a man with a flashlight. He could not see the man’s face but in the reflection of the torch he saw—with a lost, sinking feeling—the metal buttons on the man’s tunic.

‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know this is a forbidden road?’

Blinded, Berg opened his mouth: ‘But——’

The flashlight moved forward; a hand fell across his shoulder. He was forcibly turned round and made to walk ahead. He was made to walk as far as the Site where the workers, seeing this stranger, dropped their wheelbarrows and stared.