NOBODY was hurt, except in spirit. The firemen, mud-covered scarecrows, clambered back up the dry river banks. Sayell saw me and set a course that would take him as far as possible from where I was standing. I could do him a big favour by ceasing to exist.
The tender in the river bed, of some value just a few seconds earlier, was now so much junk. And the other tender could accomplish just half what had been possible a couple of minutes ago.
I knew how Sayell felt. In the face of disaster, continuing disaster, you had to do something. You had to try anything that might do some good. If it failed … well, you’d tried.
I left the group of firemen, knowing that if there was somewhere where I could be useful, it wasn’t there. Sayell wouldn’t listen to me. He was on a razor’s edge. The fact that I had been right two or three times and he had been wrong would make it utterly impossible for me even to get him to listen to me again.
Sheila wouldn’t need help with the children and old people over the hill. She was young and strong and didn’t dither, and in emergency anyone old or young would be glad to obey such a leader. It was when people hadn’t a leader, or only a quasi force-of-circumstance unconfident leader like Sayell, that everybody ran about like frightened hens.
I moved back the way I had come, along the river behind the huts. Since there was nothing particularly useful I could do this side of the river, I should get across to the other side. Although I couldn’t cross where I was, and would die if I did, it would be necessary to go only a few hundred yards in either direction to be able to cross either the bed of the river or the river above the obstruction.
There might, I thought, be a chance of clearing the blockage which had dammed the river. That would certainly help, if it could be done. A river running past a fire like this was better than a dry bed. At the very least, it was a firebreak.
I wasn’t really thinking, merely reacting as a human animal. Most other animals would have put as much distance as possible between them and the fire, but as a human being I had to sniff round the conflagration and see if there was anything to be done.
Some events are numbing, like a blow on the head which doesn’t put you out but leaves you staggering through pain and nausea and dizziness and momentary blackouts. This was one. If you stared at the fire … well, you couldn’t do it for long, and there was really nothing to see but glare and smoke and flame and horror, if you let your mind analyse what you were seeing. But anyway, after you’d had a glance or two across the river, you realized that you couldn’t afford to watch the fire.
It was hypnotic as well as terrifying. There was flame motion, smoke pattern, that caught you and held you like the one movement in an utterly still scene. Your eyes could water and smart, but a second would grow to a minute, ten minutes, and it would be an instant.
To retain the power of movement, the power of action, you stopped looking across the river.
I knew perfectly well that if I wanted to find people who had escaped from the blazing town, if I wanted to know how it happened, I should go the other way, downriver. Practically all the roads and lanes and other escape routes came out that way. Upriver on this side there was nothing but the track that led to my house and then curved away from the river to a few farms, and on the other, Castle Hill and a rubbish dump.
But the giants were upriver.
In retrospect it’s strange that the giants and their part in what was going on could be practically ignored for so long.
Obviously, as I’d said to Sheila on that mad drive back to Shuteley, they were in this business up to their necks. At the least, they had known what was going to happen. At most, they were entirely responsible for it.
Yet if somebody starts a fire, a little fire that can destroy only a single house or a farm, if somebody standing beside you strikes the match and fires the hay, you don’t go for him. Your first move, instinctive and correct, is to deal with the fire.
Coldly, logically, it might be valid to go for the fire-raiser, to make sure he does no more damage. But the fire-raiser might do no more damage anyway — and the fire already exists.
The giants were still at the back of my mind, with what might well become known as the Great Fire of Shuteley taking all my attention.
Then as I passed a gap through which the scene across the river could be glimpsed, I saw something that brought the giants right back into the picture.
It was one of those snapshot impressions you get as you pass the end of a lane, or a window, or a gap in the hedge. The brain takes the snapshot like a camera, the picture remaining often sharper and clearer than a scene you’ve viewed for ten minutes.
Between me and the dull embers of a building across the river which could burn no more, I had seen one of the giants — over there. He was tall and blond, but he was not Greg. He wore what looked like a plastic coverall over a hump on his back. His eyes were hidden behind thick glasses.
The whole thing was so much like something in a horror film that I paused for a few seconds before going back, refusing to believe I had really seen him.
No one could live over there. No one could breathe. Certainly no one could walk in any kind of footwear I could imagine, because the ground was redhot. And a plastic spacesuit would shrivel up instantly like a fertilizer bag thrown into an open fire.
I jumped back, after that moment of disbelief, but of course the giant, even if real, was past my narrow angle of view. I burst through the riverside, and there was nobody to be seen.
Yet I had seen him. The clear picture in my mind beat back the disbelief. He was neither Greg nor any of the giants I had consciously looked at. The picture didn’t fade. I could still see it. Shutting my eyes, I could even notice things I hadn’t noticed before.
What had looked like a hump must be the breathing apparatus which made it possible to walk through fire. The giant had been hurrying, not quite running, carrying nothing in his hands, under his arms or on his shoulders. He had worn a transparent plastic covering, enclosing his head and all the rest of him. Under the covering he seemed to have nothing but the hump. He was either naked or nearly so. Colours of things seen in such a setting could be anything at all, since yellow-orange-crimson flame filled the sky.
And one thing more — he had not meant to be seen. You only have to glimpse an incompetent amateur sneak-thief for a moment to realize he’s up to something and doesn’t want to be observed. There had been something similar in the way the giant was hurrying. Possibly an obstruction had forced him to skirt the river for a few yards, visible from the other side. Deeper in the blazing town, he could not have been seen. Flames and smoke, if nothing else, would have swallowed him from view.
Although he had been hurrying downriver, back the way I had come, I didn’t change my mind and go that way. If he really existed, if his incredible fire-suit really worked, no doubt he could walk through the middle of the fire as easily as he could skirt the edges. The people downriver would not see him, if he didn’t want to be seen.
I went on. If one of the giants was wandering alone through the blazing town, the rest of them might be doing the same, including Miranda. ‘I think I’ll be seeing Dina,’ she had said. ‘We’ll do something …’
She had also said: ‘No, I shan’t see you again, Val.’
Maybe she was wrong.
• • •
When I saw the blockage it was clear that explosives were going to be needed before the river returned to its usual course.
Shuteley Castle had stood on Castle Hill, the one piece of high ground on the north side of the river, just above the Old Bridge. A ridge ran along the south side, but on the north, only at the eastern extremity of the town did the ground rise to any height. There the castle stood — or had stood.
It had glowered across the town from a curious round mound which looked so artificial that historians argued about the possibility that Saxon serfs had piled Castle Hill high with nothing more than picks and shovels.
Anyway, the fire had spread round the bracken which fringed the hill. It seemed that the bracken itself had held up the hill, for when it was gone, the castle and most of Castle Hill had collapsed into the river, taking the Old Bridge with it.
Above the obstruction the river tumbled into a hole which had not been there before, making a small but quite impressive waterfall before dashing itself against the huge mound of rubber which was all that remained of the castle and the hill on which it had stood. The river tried to climb over the mound, which was ten feet too high, and then took the path of considerable, but least resistance and streamed off southwards in about a dozen rivulets through a gap in the south ridge.
Until then I had not worked out that I’d either have to cross this side of the obstruction or cross twice, first the diverted river and then the river itself.
I didn’t like the look of the streams rushing behind the ridge. They were shallow but very fast. It would be impossible to keep my feet if I tried to wade through, and when water flings you about you’re liable to crack your head on a stone.
It would be hazardous to try to cross the river bed on the west side of the mound of rubble, because it was steep and very loose. And back the way I had come the heat across the river was too fierce. Only close to the blockage, where what remained of Castle Hill afforded some protection from the heat, and where there was nothing left to burn on the other side, crossing might be possible.
So I started picking my way across the obstructions itself.
After I’d gone about ten yards, climbing towards the top of the mound, I found I couldn’t go back. Loose earth and stones were sliding down the slope under my feet, and the best I could do was slip two feet back and gain three. If I tried to go back, I stood an excellent chance of being buried alive.
I had a moment of sheer panic as I neared the peak of the mound and rubble sliding beneath me threatened to sweep me off the dry side of the blockage. I saw myself falling about fifty feet over rubble which would come with me, almost certainly burying me beyond any hope of rescue (if I happened to be alive when I reached the bottom) and far beyond any possibility of digging myself out.
I fought against the slide, running against it like a man on a treadmill over a precipice. The light was tricky and my sense of direction was not all it might have been. The glare of the fire cast long moving shadows, smoke stung my eyes, and on the other side of the mound the darkness was so intense that I couldn’t even see the white water.
I overdid it.
One moment I was fighting clear of the drop into the dry bed. The next I was teetering over blackness, flicked by spray from the blocked river below. And all the time the rubble beneath me cascaded this way and that, now into the dry bed, now down the slope to the south bank, now into the foaming river.
Suddenly there was nothing beneath my feet at all. Then I was in water. Then the whole world exploded.
I came to soaked, cold, shivering, with an aching head and the rush of water in my ears. For a moment I was blind.
Dazed and deafened, I nevertheless realized where I was. I was somewhere in the middle of the delta of streams rushing into the blackness of the south side of Shuteley. The water rushing past me was not more than a few inches deep.
It seemed to take a long time before I worked out what to do and where to go. The huge mound of debris in the river bed cut off all heat and so much light that I found it hard to recover any sense of direction. And after being toasted for so long I could have sworn the water all round me was only one degree above freezing point.
At last I realized that if I forced my way through streams flowing from left to right I must come to dry land. Then all I’d have to do was cross a normal river that didn’t know what trouble it was going to run into farther on.
I got across the streams somehow — and then couldn’t find the river. I seemed to be in a kind of marsh with rivulets running in all directions. Only the glow of the fire, cut off by the pile of rubble which had stopped a river, enabled me to find my way back to the bank of a more or less normal Shute.
I made my way along the bank.
Dizzy and with a head which seemed to be cloven in two, I shied away from the very thought of attempting to swim across the river. I’d probably be swept down to the whirlpool which had already knocked me silly. The Shute had always been a placid river, and in this hot summer it had been more placid than ever. But any river becomes angry if it’s baulked and not allowed to follow the course it has taken for centuries.
Presently, stumbling upriver, I became aware that one of my discomforts had gone. I was still soaked, but I was no longer shivering. It was, as usual, a hot night.
My house ought to be visible in the reflected glow. Yet it wasn’t. Ahead of me, nothing was visible.
This was very strange. By comparison with the glare behind me, I was walking into darkness. Nevertheless, the red glow, the heat of which I could still feel on the back of my neck and through my wet clothes, should have lit up the river ahead at least as far as my house.
And ahead there was nothing.
I sniffed, and not because I smelled something. Quite the reverse. There was a sudden startling absence of smell. I was puzzled as a sleeper awakening to silence is puzzled, before he realizes that a clock has stopped.
Voices upriver gave me a clue. I had moved into a region of odourless vapour which didn’t sting the eyes, had no smell, and cut visibility. I moved on. The voices grew louder.
Then I stopped.
I had almost reached my house. It was invisible, but it could be no more than a hundred yards away. I had followed the river to the copse — and there, just in front of me, was a bridge where there had never been a bridge. And there were people on it, crossing from the other side to the copse.
Not for the first time that night I acted without thought. I went closer, but along the bank, stealthily. I slipped silently into the water. Cautiously, carefully, I paddled under the bridge.
The people I had seen on the bridge were giants, in plastic suits with the hump I had already noticed, and baffled, bedraggled, frightened people who could only be refugees from the Great Fire of Shuteley.
• • •
The bridge was as startling in its way as luxon.
It was only a catwalk perhaps a foot wide with two rails three feet apart. There were no supports and no reinforcements of any kind. It lay across the river like a plank, but I felt it, pushed against it, and it was solid as a rock.
There was little or no risk that I’d be seen under the bridge. The smokescreen, or whatever it was, that the giants were using as cover cut visibility very effectively. It was not like fog or mist. You could see ten yards very distinctly, twenty to thirty yards vaguely, and beyond that was blackness. Sound, too, was muffled.
All the giants wore plastic suits and small, quite neat boots. Underneath they all wore as little as possible, and nevertheless seemed to be bathed in sweat.
The dark goggles their eyes would need in the centre of a conflagration were folded down across their chests. Wearing them, out of the fire, they would be blind.
The others, the people who had come from Shuteley, wore a simpler sort of plastic suit, loose pants and tunics which, unlike those of the giants, were thrown open. Instead of the hump the giants had, they had merely a small black box apparently stuck to the inside of the plastic.
I thought suddenly of Jota and his part in all this. Had the giants recruited him, or was he lying drugged in one of the tents at the camp?
Miranda was not among those I saw.
Vague recollections of time stories I had read raced through my mind. Of course, I had never taken time travel seriously … it was the kind of thing which, if it ever happened, was never likely to impinge on me and affect my life.
One of the assumptions made in such stories suddenly assumed significance. You couldn’t steal a man from the past, because of the effect his disappearance would have in his future, your past and present. But a man whose life was over, through accident — a man about to be destroyed in an explosion, buried for ever by an avalanche, engulfed in a mine disaster … such a man, on the point of ceasing to exist, could be plucked from his time without affecting subsequent events significantly.
Was that what the giants were doing?
I wanted to hear what was being said, and that posed a problem. In the river I was too near the flowing water to be able to make anything out, and if I crawled up the bank, the giants coming along the other side and crossing the bridge might see me.
So I drew back a little and swam across the river far enough downstream to be invisible from the bridge. As I neared the other side, the bank, though not high, hid me. Then I crawled along the bank until I was under the north end of the bridge, still hidden by the bank, and pulled myself partly out of the water.
I heard: ‘Well, you’d be dead otherwise.’
‘But what are you going to do with us? Where are we going?’
‘You’ll be safe.’
‘This is the Mathers place. Where’s Mr. Mathers?’
‘In his house asleep.’
‘My wife … what about my wife? I haven’t seen her since …’
‘She’ll be all right.’
‘I don’t want to go. I want to go back and …’
The giants’ voices were slightly muffled by their suits, but on the whole easier to make out than those of the frightened, anxious, shocked refugees. I could hear only snatches, of course, as people passed over my head.
‘We’ll never get back?’
‘You’ll be well looked after. Think of it this way — you’re going to heaven.’
‘Heaven?’
‘To you it’ll be heaven. Nobody with a choice would stay here.’
‘What do you want us for? Did you start the fire?’
‘No, we didn’t start the fire.’
‘Why did you take us past Castle Hill and the dump? There was nobody there — ’
‘We didn’t want to be seen. If it meant being seen, we couldn’t help you.’
‘My Moira … I saw her catch fire. I’ll never forget her scream. She blazed like …’
‘We saved you, didn’t we?’
‘Why couldn’t you save Moira?’
‘Others were looking. People who aren’t here. We couldn’t let them see us.’
‘If you can walk through the fire, why don’t you …’
And then again: ‘This must be the Mathers place. Where the insurance manager lives. Is he in this somehow?’
‘He couldn’t be more out of it.’
‘You mean he’s dead?’
‘Just dead to the world.’
The conversation went on, and I strained my ears to hear it, but the two who were talking were half-way across the bridge now and it was another snatch of talk I heard.
‘What happened to the fire brigade? Why didn’t they …’
A very common word on the lips of these poor bewildered survivors was ‘why’. If they didn’t ask why God had permitted such a disaster, they asked why they had escaped, why others hadn’t escaped, why the strangers, if they could do so much, couldn’t do even more, like putting out the fire.
From the giants’ replies it was obvious that to them, as to Miranda before I managed to get through to her, the people of Shuteley were little more than characters in a play. The answers were quiet, soothing, apparently truthful as far as they went, which wasn’t far.
‘Where did you come from?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘You’re the kids that I saw in town yesterday, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I thought you had anything to do with the fire …’ A stream of invective followed, empty, hopeless obscenity, for the man who was speaking knew perfectly well he could do nothing but curse. He couldn’t even fight the giants or resist them — the giants, girls and boys, had spread themselves out among these refugees to prevent protest or rebellion.
I realized that there were a great many more of the giants than I had even seen, far more than there could have been at the camp. I had not known of more than about a score of them. There must have been at least forty crossing the bridge, not counting any who might have crossed before I arrived on the scene.
I knew from the snatches of conversation I heard that the giants had been careful to be observed by no one who was going to live through the fire. They had led these people through the fire, in their simpler fire-suits (probably simpler so that they could be put on quickly and with no risk of mistake), and by a route chosen to avoid being seen. The crowds of people who must have escaped the fire would not gather about the north-east end of town at the rubbish dump, but at the other end, where the roads were, and the straggling cottages which must have escaped the fire, and the nearest farms. That could have been confidently predicted.
Presently the procession ended. There was a gap, and then three more figures appeared, two huge, one small.
They were Greg, Wesley and Miranda.
Wesley reached the bridge, just above me, and spoke.
Oddly enough, it still surprised me, after all that had happened, that the giants’ language, when they were speaking to each other and not to us, was not the English of the mid-20th century. It was English, and I could understand most of it by listening to the sense rather than the sound. But many of the words were not quite right, several of the vowels had changed, and since the speech was colloquial there were many phrases that were hard to figure out.
What Wesley said, roughly, was: ‘That’s … (the lot?) now. We’ve left nothing but the stasis and the two …(?) in it. Who’s going back?’
‘I am,’ said Greg.
‘We’re both going back,’ said Miranda.
I couldn’t see Wesley, but I sensed his uncertainty. ‘Okay,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I’ll go on and tell them to … (?) everything but the stasis, is that right?’
‘And the stasis just before dawn,’ said Miranda.
‘Sure. You’ve got to be there then. If you’re not — ’
Greg said a word which was entirely new to me, and yet the meaning couldn’t have been more obvious. The politest translation would be ‘Go away’.
Wesley went away, crossing the bridge and disappearing into the copse.
Moving slightly, I could see Greg and Miranda quite well, for they had stopped short of the bridge and were not looking at it. Keeping my eyes on them, I could duck out of sight at any moment before I could be seen, if they turned their heads.
They wore suits exactly like the others. The briefs they wore underneath seemed to be pink or grey. Seeing them both running with sweat, I wondered why they didn’t take off their plastic suits or at least open them up. I also wondered why a technology capable of constructing flimsy suits which could withstand the highest temperatures couldn’t go a step farther and make them comfortable as well.
Miranda said: ‘Let’s go back, then.’
‘And wait till dawn?’
‘Yes.’
Greg laughed. ‘So that you can keep your eye on me, darling. Waiting for a wrong move.’
‘The next wrong move,’ said Miranda steadily.
He laughed again. ‘You idiot,’ he said. ‘You’re all idiots, you and the others behind this … (?). When you found you couldn’t keep me out of it, you should have cancelled it. You knew I’d kill it.’
‘We knew,’ said Miranda, and I heard the defeat in her voice. ‘But you might fail. Lots of things might have happened. Maybe they still will. It might have — ’
For the third time, irritatingly, Greg bellowed with laughter. It was the laughter of a vandal, a spoiled kid with an inflated idea of his own value in the world. It was the laughter of a bully.
‘Jota,’ Greg said, ‘has a little talent. I have the Gift, Nevertheless, Jota may be as important as you think. I think he is. That’s why I had to see that your plans for Jota didn’t work out.’
‘Greg,’ said Miranda quietly, ‘listen to me for a minute. Please listen.’
‘Go ahead. There’s plenty of time. I’ll listen.’
‘You’re not necessarily bad. You never had a chance. That sounds trite, and it is. You were not only bigger and …(?) and better-looking than anybody else, as far back as you can remember, but when girls began to interest you you didn’t have to bother to be nice to them or even go to the trouble of deceiving them. You had it all … You’ve often thought about how you’re different from ordinary people, Greg. Have you ever thought about how ordinary people are different from you?’
This time Greg didn’t laugh. He was interested enough to let her go on.
And as I waited, rather chilled by the water in which I was partly immersed, I felt for a stone or a stick.
Whether Miranda was on my side or not, I couldn’t be on Greg’s side. It couldn’t be a mistake to stop Greg if I could.
• • •
‘People who haven’t the Gift,’ Miranda said, ‘have to learn to coexist. When they’re babies they know instinctively that they have to get and keep their parents on their side. As children they know that other children may sometimes be rivals, but they have to be allies too. So what you never learned was — ’
Greg bellowed again. ‘Is this all? I thought for a moment you had something to say. Now listen to me. First, take off that suit.’
‘I can’t, I have to go back and — ’
‘You’re not going back, darling. Not to the stasis. Not across the bridge. Not anywhere.’
I might have moved then, but with a silent suddenness which startled me so much I almost cried out, the bridge above me winked out.
It just wasn’t there. It didn’t burn or fade or shimmer or flash. It simply ceased to exist.
Although probably both Greg and Miranda noticed this out of the corner of their eyes, neither bothered to look — which was just as well, because I might have been slow in ducking out of sight.
Miranda took a step back and turned as if to run. Greg reached out casually with his long arm and tumbled her to the ground.
Standing over her, he said: ‘But before I kill you, darling, I want to tell you that things couldn’t have been arranged better if you’d let me plan them all myself. The stasis goes just before dawn, right? Just before dawn you’ve got to get those two out and get back in yourself, right? They’re left alive, here, and you’re safe back home, right?’
‘Yes,’ said Miranda.
‘There are two spare suits in the stasis so that you can get those two out, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wrong. They’re gone.’
Miranda sat up quickly. ‘I watched you all the time — ’
He laughed. ‘I know you did. So I got Wesley to shift them. He wasn’t keen, but he didn’t want to die. So he … (?) for me.’
‘He’ll know …’ Miranda began, and stopped.
‘He won’t know anything. He has no idea what the suits are for. But that’s not all. Suppose I just kill you here and now, swim across and tell everybody you went back by yourself …’
I didn’t fully understand all this, but from her startled gasp it was obvious that Miranda did. It was as if she had allowed herself to be locked in a dungeon of death, as part of a plan, and then felt in her pocket and discovered she didn’t have the key.
Greg couldn’t let it go — he had to savour his cleverness to the full. ‘They’ll believe me. They’ll have to. You know that anything I say is the truth — always has been the truth. All I’ve ever had to do is go into any …(?) office and make a statement. Whatever I say, it has to be the truth. Otherwise — ’
She leaped from under him and ran like a deer. Greg lunged after her. My hand forced, I scrambled up the bank and went after them. In my right hand I held a heavy stone.
They could both run much faster than I could. I’d have lost them in the strange mist that hid the bridge … but only a hundred yards away, it ceased to exist. And I came on Greg and Miranda, only six feet from the river, with Greg again standing over Miranda.
I let fly with a stone. It caught Greg full on the back of the head, and he staggered. His legs collapsed under him. He pitched right over Miranda and landed on the other side of her.
We could have escaped if we’d been quick enough. But Miranda stared up at me in surprise, astonished to see anyone at all, more astonished to see me. And I coughed as a cloud of smoke swirled round me — just out of the giants’ protective mist, I had forgotten to be careful how I breathed.
Greg was up. He lashed out at my head, and although I escaped the full force of the blow, I went down heavily. The next second Greg had Miranda in his grasp. Holding her, he made a quick pass at me, and something stung my eyes.
I couldn’t move. I could see and hear, I could move my eyes and, with an effort, my head. But that was all.
‘What went wrong, Miranda?’ Greg asked, looking down at me. ‘Why is he here?’
‘I don’t know. I left the …(?) in the house, below the bottom shelf in a cupboard. It was set slow-to-limit, short of death. Anybody in the house should have got sleepy very gradually, and then — ’
‘So it didn’t work. Or he went out too soon. It doesn’t matter. Take off your suit, Miranda.’
‘No.’
‘Take it off. I’m going to take him into Shuteley, in your suit. Then I’ll open it.’
I didn’t shudder, because I couldn’t.
Picturing what was going to happen to me (walking through an inferno, unharmed, and then a wrench as the plastic suit was torn, then …) I must have missed something. A moment later Greg was saying:
‘I want you, darling.’
‘Don’t try to be funny.’
‘I’m very serious. There’s nothing more important in the world to me. I want you, here and now.’
Incredibly, Miranda, who had been standing up to him, opposing him, arguing with him, was as weak and pliable as if under hypnosis.
Well, was that it? Hypnosis?
‘I thought …’ she said, visibly struggling.
‘You thought after that one time, when you resisted, and I let it go, that you could stand against me. That I didn’t want you. That you still had some authority over me. That for some reason, any reason, I was never going to claim you.’
He laughed. It was a forced laugh. There was no mirth in it. And I realized now that Greg’s laugh was always forced, completely lacking in real enjoyment.
At once, as if he had never laughed, he went on fiercely, malevolently: ‘I set you up, darling. For when I wanted you. And the time is now.’
There was a brief pause. Then, slowly, reluctantly Miranda touched her plastic suit at several points, at the throat, at her waist, at her knees. It split and fell off her, and the box at the back came with it. So did the boots, which were part of the suit. So did the dark goggles.
Like an automaton she stepped close to Greg.
And he hit her.
I’d never seen such a blow. At the very least he was twice her weight. He hit her as a very large man could have hit a rather small child, but perhaps never had in human history; surely even a human beast would find it impossible to hit someone so much smaller so hard.
Her feet left the ground. She would have been thrown several yards away. As it was, she sailed far out over the river, unconscious before she touched the water, and was swept away.
She was possibly dead before she landed. In the river, unconscious, she would drown.
Greg was satisfied. He scarcely glanced at the river. Instead, he bent to pick up her suit.
Straightening, he looked down at me. Greg must be used to looking down on people. Yet he still seemed to enjoy it immensely.
‘I’m a little sorry for you, Val,’ he said, in ordinary English. ‘You didn’t know what you were up against — despite knowing Jota. Miranda knew. Wesley and all the others knew — especially the girls, of course. You didn’t, you poor fool. If you’d stayed quietly at home tonight, you’d at least have lived. Miranda left a sleep cylinder in the house to make quite sure, because of what we had to do here.’
He shrugged. ‘You needn’t worry — I won’t open your suit until we’re right in the middle. You’ll scarcely feel a thing. It’ll be over in a second.’