Operation Pax (34 page)

Jane too was peering into a laboratory. ‘Well, it looks like research, all right. But as for the set-up–’

‘The main building, as we’ve seen, is pukka clinic. Wealthy drunks faithfully attended to. Perhaps used as guinea pigs at times, but only in a quiet way. Move a bit in this direction and you come to the research outfit. Has all the appearance of being pukka too. Inquiry into the physiology of alcoholic addiction, or some such rot. Some advanced drunks, perhaps, as cot-cases. You can always be a little bolder in experimental treatment with “no-hope” patients – particularly if they come from the humbler classes of society. Move a little farther and perhaps you come to more fundamental research. But by that time, if you ask me, you’re over the bridge and on the island. And just what you keep isolated there, the world simply doesn’t know. Suppose a high-class patient, strolling in the grounds, hears some rather nasty noises from that direction. Why, our talented research scientists are doing something useful to one of those dear little pigs.’

Jane found her breath disposed to come and go in shaky sobs. ‘If half of what you’re imagining is true, it’s–’

‘Quite so. But don’t forget it now has only about half an hour to go. We’re right on top of it.’ Remnant stamped his foot on the flat roof. ‘And now we drop.’

‘Five minutes is too long. If we can drop, let’s drop quick. But how?’

‘If we dropped down on the other side, we might be able to force a door or window giving on the corridor. But this’ – and again Remnant stamped – ‘is still, remember, no more than outworks. We want to get straight at the brain centre. And the dividing line, I’d say, is that handsome room with the bathing nymphs. Beyond that, there’s a change of atmosphere – that little bedroom, for instance. A more honest word for that would be a cell. And close after that there’s the bridge. I wonder if one could get along the top of it? Let’s see.’

They retraced their steps. Jane stopped by the first skylight at which Remnant had paused, and herself peered down. She drew back her head hastily. ‘There’s somebody there,’ she whispered. ‘A woman. She’s lying on a little bed.’

‘She must have been in another corner when I looked.’ Remnant in his turn peered down. ‘Seems the moment to take a chance.’ He put his foot through the skylight.

The crash of splintered and falling glass seemed terrific. But Remnant thrust at the thing with his foot again and again. Within seconds the skylight was a wreck. The woman below had sprung up and was staring at them. ‘Friends,’ Remnant said. ‘We’re breaking up this whole racket. Sorry to startle you.’

‘
Aber!
’ It was less a word than a hoarse cry. ‘You are truly friends?
Gott sei Dank!
You may be just in time. They have taken my boy. They have taken my boy to the island. Never have they done that before.’

‘We’ll have him back to you in no time.’

‘But you cannot get in! Look – between us still there are these bars and that strong mesh.’

Remnant knelt down. The skylight had been as flimsy as such things commonly are. But they remained, at the level of the ceiling of the cell-like apartment below, a barrier of the sort the woman had described. Remnant nodded. ‘I see. But don’t worry. You couldn’t do much with it from below. But from up above it may be a different matter. Please stand right back.’ Remnant rose, retreated a dozen paces, and ran. A yard before the shattered skylight he leapt high into the air, and then went down with his feet rigid under him. There was a resounding crash. Jane ran forward and looked down. Remnant was on the floor below, scrambling to his feet from amid the debris of twisted bars and tangled wire netting. He looked up. ‘Did I say you put a fist through it?’ he called. ‘A foot’s even better. Now then, down you come. Imagine you’re making one of those thrilling midnight climbs into college.’

With what she felt was a dangerous approach to hysteria, Jane laughed loud. Then she scrambled over the edge and dropped. Remnant caught her. ‘Good girl.’ He turned to the woman. ‘We know a good deal. Explain about yourself. As quick as you can.’

‘I am Anna Tatistchev, a doctor.’ The woman’s eyes were wild with anxiety, but her speech was collected. ‘I was persuaded – it is now a month almost – to come here with Rudi, my small boy. I was to be shown work of medical interest in which I might assist – living quietly for a time, as it was necessary for me to do.’

Remnant nodded. ‘You mean you were hiding from someone?’

‘From the English police. Rudi and I ought not to be in England. So I came. For a time the work seemed indeed interesting and honourable. Then I suspected. There were patients – experiments too – that I did not understand. Or not at first. Then my position was difficult. They had chosen well. An outlaw is helpless.’

Remnant had walked to the single door of the room. He held up his hand for silence, and listened. He shook his head, came back, and smiled. ‘Isn’t “outlaw” pitching it a bit steep?’ Anna Tatistchev looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Never mind. Go ahead.’

‘I found that my so-called employment was almost imprisonment. I have known prisons, but this, for me, was a new kind. But I came to know that it was that. Twice only I found a way to send out a message to my friends. I did not yet wish them to come, for I believed that there was much evil here of which I might discover the secret. Evil so great that my own safety must not be counted. No – and not even that of my boy. Twice I slipped notes deep in a pile of letters that I knew would be taken, without more examination, to the
Ortspostamt
– the little post office. And there was a telephone from which I believed I could send a call for help if some crisis came. And yesterday – it came.’

‘And you managed to telephone?’

‘This morning – yes. And I hoped that my message got through. But I was detected as I was speaking. So my imprisonment was made strict in this small room.’

‘They know that you got this telephone message out – giving the address of this place?’

The woman nodded. ‘They know that.’

‘Then they must certainly be packing up. But why did a crisis come yesterday?’

‘It is obscure. But there have been several misfortunes – calamities. One is very technical, and I have been able to find out little. But some preparation of great intricacy – one vital to what goes on here – has become impure, and so is nearly all gone inert. The little that is left will be similarly useless in a day or two. And there is even some hitch in starting the long process of synthesizing it again. I suspect that some – how would you say? –
entscheidend
–’

‘Crucial.’ Jane pounced on the word at once.

‘–that some crucial formula is not available. Then, there was a death. One of the Assistant Directors – the only one with whom I have had dealings – died. It is my thought that he was killed.’

‘Capital.’ Remnant nodded briskly. ‘One less to deal with.’

‘And the man who first persuaded me to come here – a man called Squire – has been in trouble. I believe it is thought that more than once he has acted rashly in finding people who might be obliged to stay here – to stay here and to submit to things. And I think too that there was an escape. It may have been an escape of such a person.’

‘It sounds a pretty full day. And the result is that something is being hurried on?’

‘I fear that it is so. There are to be two or three swift experiments. It is a matter of using quickly, and while it is still potent, the substance–’

‘I understand.’ Remnant was dragging a small table to the middle of the room and perching a chair on it. He was clearly determined that action should begin without delay. ‘But what are these experiments? What does the whole thing aim at?’

‘It is a scientific conspiracy. They call it Operation Pax.’

‘Operation Pax?’

‘The aim is to find a means of neutralizing the combative – the aggressive – component in the human personality, and perhaps of spreading this, like a disease, through whole populations. They call that the General Pacification.’

Remnant received this in silence. But Jane spoke up at once. ‘
Would
that be a bad thing?’

‘It is the question I asked. At first it seemed to me that here was something perhaps of great benefit to mankind. I soon saw that it was the intention of these men to use their achievement in evil ways. They planned the means of making whole peoples – whole nations – helpless, impossible to arouse. These would be mere cattle – mere sheep – while others would remain wolves, lions, beasts of prey. And they would sell this instrument of power. More – they would
be
this power. For somewhere in this organization, in some inner circle to which I have not penetrated, there is a lust for power, an unlimited ambition, that is very terrible.’

Remnant was testing his means of climbing again to the shattered skylight. ‘Certainly a very considerable project,’ he said. ‘What we call a tall order, Dr Tatistchev. But, only half an hour ago, we have seen it under way ourselves. Now we’re going to stop it.’

‘But surely–’ Jane hesitated. She was struggling for clarity amid the fantastically vast issues which had suddenly opened around her. It was like being a swimmer unexpectedly submerged deep in a whirlpool to escape which it was vital to strain every nerve and muscle. ‘Surely it is like the other great discoveries of science – very powerful for either good or evil? Surely it is a matter of how it
would
be used?’

Anna Tatistchev nodded gravely.
‘Fräulein
, so I too thought. But it is not so.
Gar nicht!
For the process is not a modification, but a destruction. It would create not another sort of men, but something less than men.’

‘Quite right. It’s pure devilry.’ Remnant spoke absolutely. He sounded not at all like a man whose intellectual vigour had been inadequate to support the discourses of the Stockton and Darlington Professor. ‘Every creature born into a world like this needs every scrap of aggressiveness, or whatever you call it, that he can summon up. Most of us might use it better than we do. But the thing itself is ours; it’s a need and a birthright; and the chap who’d steal it must have it turned against him overwhelmingly. That, as it happens, is our job now. I haven’t overmuch of it myself, but–’

Jane again found herself laughing. But this time it was not in the least hysterically. ‘What you have will do to be going on with. And we’d better
be
going on with it. Let’s climb out.’

‘Then out we go. But there’s something more to find out first.’ Remnant turned to Anna Tatistchev. ‘Do you think they have other places besides this?’

‘I think they have.’

‘Well, now – they must be packing up, you know. They simply must. That escape, your telephone message, things we’ve done this morning if by now they’ve discovered them: these things are their marching orders. But you think the active villainy is going on still?’

‘I am sure it is. There are two reasons. One is the using to the best advantage of what little remains of the substance of which I have spoken. And that is why I fear for Rudi. It was only early yesterday that I came to suspect this of a child’s being required. It is believed that with a child certain effects may be more lasting and complete than any achieved so far. And they have taken my boy to the island! I beg that you and your friends should act quickly.’

Remnant nodded in brisk reassurance. ‘As it happens, we haven’t any friends here yet. But we, ourselves, are going to act now.’

‘
Got sei Dank!
Then you will be in time. It was only within this half an hour that they took him. And they will have to put him to sleep. There is a certain harmless drug which must act – I think for perhaps an hour – before the thing is done… But you must hasten very much, because of the other.’

Jane caught her breath. ‘The other?’

‘A young man. For him too I think they intend the injections. And then, if they had to abandon this place, they would take them both away. For these are crucial experiments. And it might be a long time before the substance is prepared again.’

‘Have you seen this young man? Do you know his name?’

‘His name – no. He has not told it to me. But I have seen him and two or three times spoken. He is tall and fair, and his complexion – I do not know the word–’

Jane was trembling all over. ‘You mean–’

‘It is
sommersprossig
.’

‘Freckly… It’s Geoffrey!’

The little prison-like room swam round Jane, and she sank down on to the bed. Remnant strode across to it and gave her an uncompromising shake. ‘Steady on. This is the best news we’ve had yet. The chap’s alive. And we’ll have him joining in the kicking in no time.’

Anna Tatistchev too had come over to Jane and taken her by the hand. ‘He is your husband?’

‘He is going to be.’

‘Nothing has happened yet. He is well. His danger too is great, but your friend will save him.’

‘It’s horrible – abominable!’ Jane sat up straight. ‘He has been kept here for weeks in this frightful peril, and nothing has been done.’ She turned to Remnant. ‘For God’s sake put your fist through the rest of the place – quick!’

‘Come along, then. Up we go.’

Jane climbed on the table. She hesitated. ‘You spoke to him? Did he speak of how he came here, or of – of things outside?’

‘I was told that he was a very bad dipsomaniac, segregated here, and for whom there was little hope. Then I suspected that he was really imprisoned. Several times we spoke through a door before I had a glimpse of him. He told me that he had come here disguised, and for adventure – pretending to be homeless and friendless – because he had stumbled on the suspicion that the clinic was criminal. And they held him. I told him of how my own suspicions had grown, and of how I too now knew all the evil. We have talked hurriedly – secretly – of the danger, and of some plan. But then they took him to the island.’

Remnant jumped on the table. ‘Well we’re going there now.’ He picked up Jane as if she had been a child, mounted the chair, and gave her a vigorous hoist that sent her scrambling out on the roof. He turned to Anna Tatistchev. ‘I think three may be too many at the moment. Is anybody likely to come in on you here?’