19

Woburn reached the window of his room and saw the guards, watching him. He turned round and walked to the foot of the bed, turned and went back to the window. To and fro, to and fro. A radio was on, although it was long after midnight; subdued music, with a funereal note, was played most of the time, or the sharp tuning signal of the station. Woburn was hardly aware of it. He was still fully dressed. The plastic containers were still in his pocket. If he could get out, even if he could only send a message, a miracle might yet be brought about.

There were men outside this door; the others outside the window. Armed men. They were not armed with lethal weapons, but with the gas-pistols; if he tried to get away and was caught, he would be gassed, would lose control of his muscles, hear Davos or Faversham talking to him, patting his head, reproaching him - much as the keeper, Barney, had dealt with the panther. First, make him helpless; then talk to him, work on him, turn his mind as well as his body to putty.

To and fro.

Father of a new world.

Eve. Eve!

To and fro.

Sometimes he would see Adam Reed being hauled down from the tree, and being mauled. It made him grit his teeth as if he, not Adam, were in fact the victim. He knew what the man had suffered, what he must have suffered; flesh torn, nerves jagged, death near - and yet Adam hadn’t shouted, hadn’t screamed, hadn’t pleaded or begged for mercy. All he had done was to fight, and fighting, had died.

Now he, Robert Woburn, was the one hope. Thirty seconds on a telephone would conceivably save millions.

Where were the octi burrowing and multiplying?

Faversham knew, and so did Davos. There must be a list, a record. In that small room off the laboratory? Had they discovered Lidgett’s body? Would they suspect him, when they did? Had they a way of identifying fingerprints? If they had, he couldn’t last two minutes as the father of the new world.

Hideous, shaking, grotesque thought.

Eve!

The radio gave a sharp pip-pip-pip of sound, and then papers rustled, and a man spoke. This was the B.B.C. Light Programme, flatly and unemotionally. Woburn paused, and looked at the radio.

 

“As listeners will already have heard, the Light Programme will remain on the air throughout the night, broadcasting the latest flood position at half-hourly intervals, and special announcements may be made from time to time. All listeners whose homes are less than twenty feet above sea level are advised to have at least one member of the family on radio duty during the night, as special announcements of evacuation plans may affect them. It is important to remember that this applies to inland as well as coastal areas.”

 

Woburn winced. Inland?

 

“Pip-pip-pip.

“The time is now two o’clock, Greenwich mean time, three o’clock, British summer time. The great floods which have already engulfed many thousands of square miles of Great Britain and Europe show no signs of abating. Many coastal areas, especially those on the North Sea, have been completely inundated, and the loss of life is feared to be extremely heavy. Emergency plans to evacuate the civilian population from all of these districts have already been announced, and all civil and military transport has been mobilised. Full details will be given at the end of this special news broadcast.

“Pip-pip-pip.

“This is the B.B.C. Light Programme.

“Convoys of troops have been and are being rushed from various parts of Great Britain to the disaster areas, where a State of Emergency has been proclaimed. The military vehicles will be used to take survivors to higher ground. All river areas are to be evacuated. It is understood that the Prime Minister is making a personal tour of the disaster areas while this broadcast is being made. He has already announced that plans for relief of the extensive scale required have been put in hand, military, civil authorities and voluntary organisations all being called upon to help.

“Pip-pip-pip.”

 

There was more. Woburn didn’t listen, yet could understand all that had happened; could picture it happening. Mammoth waves; that was how it would appear to anyone who did not know what it was. Wreckage and ruin - and it could come from just a few octi bases.

There was a break in the announcer’s voice; then an edge of excitement. Woburn found himself looking at the radio again.

 

“A message has just come in from Los Angeles, saying that waves of gigantic proportions have swept over the coast of southern California, engulfing an area of thousands of square miles. Great loss of life is feared.”

 

And Woburn was locked in here, with horror in his mind, a great fear, and just one obsession. How could he make Davos or Faversham talk? If there was a way to do that there must be a way to escape. He kept arguing with himself, inventing possibilities, refusing to believe that there was no hope at all.

Then he went very still - and after a minute he spoke very quietly.

“My God,” he said, “I can beat them. Eve!” He uttered her name as if she were in the room as he rushed towards the door. He stopped abruptly, not through any change of mind, just a change of tactics. He had a strength greater than he had dreamed, a power over Davos, a power Davos had given him, but he mustn’t lose his head.

If he could find the right way to wield that power, he could at least gain time, and give the outside world some chance.

How could he wield it?

If he could talk to Eve . . .

At least that was one thing they would be glad for him to do.

He made himself sit on the edge of the bed, and smoked furiously while he tried to see all the new angles. He stayed there for ten minutes, then stubbed out a cigarette, and went to the door. It wasn’t locked, but the two uniformed men were outside, both elderly, both pleasant-looking.

“Is there anything we can do for you, sir?” one man said. He was very like Barney, who had a twinkle, a pleasant voice, a courteous manner - and who had released the panther which had killed Adam.

“I’m going to see Miss Eve.”

“I should think that would be all right, sir,” the man said.

Woburn snapped: “Of course it’s all right.” He turned from the doorway and marched to the head of the stairs; they followed him. Another man stood at the head of the stairs, one at the foot by the gallery. The two from his room followed him all the way. A man stood outside another room. Eve’s?

“This is Miss Eve’s room, sir,” the speaker said.

Woburn nodded, abruptly. He tried the handle of the door, wondering what to do if Eve had locked it. It wasn’t. He knocked, but there was no answer. He opened the door and went inside, closing the door with a snap. There was a bolt on the door. He shot it, before he looked round.

The bed was empty.

Fool, if Eve were somewhere else—

The french windows leading to a small balcony were open, and the dim light shone out into the night. He went across. He saw Eve standing against the rail of the balcony, looking out towards the starlit sky and the sea which had come that day, and to the mainland where disaster upon disaster was flooding the earth.

She heard him, and looked round sharply. He heard the intake of her breath, sensed the way that her body stiffened. He joined her. The night was warm and quiet, except for the droning of aircraft overhead; he hadn’t heard that in his own room. He could see the lights. He could see other lights, on the water some distance off, and it dawned on him that there were naval vessels out there, military or naval aircraft above, maintaining a constant, fearful patrol.

Nearby, were the island guards on their ceaseless watch.

“Eve,” Woburn said in a low-pitched voice, “there’s a way of gaining time, perhaps even beating them.”

She didn’t speak.

“I think we can play a card they haven’t thought about,” Woburn went on; then his voice fell away.

The starlight glistened on Eve’s eyes, but he couldn’t see her face clearly. She was still fully dressed. He tried to guess what had been passing through her mind; whether she knew the same kind of empty hopelessness, the same terrible despair, as he.

“I don’t believe there is anything we can do,” she said in an empty voice. “They’ve been talking to me. The octi are everywhere. They have only to have them fertilised with malic acid, and the floods will come. They’ve already started in Europe and America, they’ll start them in Australia, India and Russia in a few days.”

“Few days?” Woburn barked.

“Days, weeks, what does it matter?” Eve asked, and her voice still had the dead, empty note. “It’s unbelievable, but it’s happening. To me, to you.” Some feeling came into her voice, a kind of passion. “Don’t you know what’s happening, are you fooling yourself? The octi can flood the whole world. And my father, my father, sees you and me the father and the mother of a new one. It’s— it’s satanic! Don’t stand there and look at me, I tell you that my own father must be the very Devil himself! Who else would conceive such an idea? To murder millions, and calmly tell me that I have to live with you, have children so that— God! It’s so awful that when I think about it I could jump out of this window and put an end to it all.”

Woburn didn’t interrupt.

She turned away, and said drearily: “But how would it help? How would it help?” For a moment, there was silence; then with unexpected passion Eve swung round, snatched at Woburn’s hand and led him into the bedroom, across it, to a door which he thought led to a dressing-room. He had no time to notice the fittings, the furniture, the beauty of this room, before she flung open the door and threw out her arm in a gesture that had the touch of hysteria he knew so well. “Look at that!” she cried, “the bridal chamber, the womb of the new world!”

Woburn stepped inside; into a room of great beauty; into the conception of a man’s mind.

It was a great chamber, with circular walls, panelled in pale, unstained wood. In each panel hung a painting, and each painting had much in common with the others; scenes from the Garden of Eden. The Eve in every one was Eve beautifully painted. The Adam was the face of a man who lay in a coffin, ready for burial in unconsecrated ground. The domed ceiling might have been found in any great church, with its angels and its cherubim. There was the huge bed, with its gilded canopy, standing on a raised platform, with two steps leading up to it.

“They’ve been working on it for months,” Eve said hopelessly. “They wouldn’t let me go in, my father said that he wanted it for a surprise. He showed me tonight, and seemed to think I ought to be proud! Proud!”

She turned to face Woburn.

“Bob,” she said in a helpless tone, “what are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to tell him that unless he accepts certain conditions,” Woburn said, “we shall kill ourselves.”

She didn’t respond; the full significance of that didn’t sink in at first, he could tell that from her expression.

“ We’re going to— what?”

“Kill ourselves,” he repeated, very quietly.

He hadn’t realised how closely together they were standing. It was very close. He took her arms. In the gentle light here he could see every feature of her face, the tensions and the bewilderment. Gradually, bewilderment began to fade, as understanding dawned. He felt the quickening of her body. Hope poured back into her.

“Of course,” she said, “of course.”

“If the new Adam and the new Eve were dead,” Woburn said dryly, “where would the first creatures of his new world be? At least we’d have a chance of gaining time, it would be a sharp set-back for him. He can’t make us live together and he can’t make us live if we prefer to die. He can destroy the world or he can make this new Garden of Eden with us to inhabit it, but he can’t do both.”

Eve looked at him with twisted lips, with eyes which had a new-born calmness. He remembered the way she had reacted once before, when the humanity in her had brought a smile against all the odds. He remembered his own grin. Both of them felt much the same now as they had then.

“Bob,” she said, “we’ll go and tell them that we won’t have any children unless he does what we want. What would we call it? A limited experiment? And when he’s trying to cope, when he thinks we’re waiting for his answer, I’ll try to get away. If I can once reach the water—”

Suddenly, completely, she was in his arms, half laughing, half crying. He felt the warmth of her body, and knew that this was one way in which to comfort her. He felt as if this was not only the present, but their future. He and Eve; Adam and Eve. He could almost laugh. It was so simple, now that he saw it clearly; out of their weakness they had a greater strength than Davos and Faversham, they were the real masters..

Then Eve drew away from him.

“Bob.” Her voice was sharp.

“Yes?”

“Supposing it’s too late. Supposing the octi are maturing everywhere.”

Woburn said with new roughness: “Come on, let’s go and see him.”