Prisoner of Fire (20 page)
The phantasm dissolved.
The paras in the room below heard Sir Joseph’s cry. Signora Maria Mancini heard his cry.
But there was nothing to be done.
Vanessa sighed.
Professor Raeder said: “Welcome home, Athens. It is accomplished?”
“It is accomplished.” The voice was Quasimodo’s.
“Rest easy, then, Athens. I am well pleased. At the count of ten, you will execute my command. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Disperse!
”
Suddenly, the inert paranormals in the room began to stir, to shake themselves, rub their eyes.
Only Vanessa remained motionless.
Professor Raeder gazed at her. “So. Athens, perhaps, remains in shock. I will test her E.E.G. recording.”
Alfred was the first to recover full consciousness.
“Alfred, dear boy, I congratulate you for your efficient block. Kindly hold this laser pistol and point it meaningfully at Dr. Badel while I investigate Vanessa’s condition. Soon we shall all rest, but one wishes to leave matters tidy.”
Alfred, still yawning, took the laser pistol and held it towards Roland. Professor Raeder wheeled what was
apparently an electro-encephalogram machine towards Vanessa’s trolley, and placed the helmet on her head.
“Amazing! She is still supercharged. Theoretically it is not possible. All the energy should have been discharged at Sir Joseph Humboldt. But she is still supercharged. How can this be?”
The others, Janine, Quasimodo and the rest, were showing signs of life.
Roland Badel thought it was now or never. He had a flash of inspiration.
“Throw it back at them, Vanessa!” he shouted. “Throw it all back at them! Athens, reject”
Vanessa groaned.
Professor Raeder glanced at Alfred. “Kill him, boy. He has presumed.”
But Alfred’s eyes opened wide. He shuddered and fell backwards, contorting, gibbering.
Professor Raeder scrambled for the laser pistol. He got it. Even in the semi-darkness, Roland Badel could see his smile of triumph.
Suddenly, the laser pistol fell from Raeder’s hand. He looked down in amazement. Then he dropped on all fours and began to bark like a dog. Then he gobbled like a turkey. Then he fell foaming at the mouth, twitched a little and lay still.
Quasimodo stood up. He looked at Roland. Without a word he fell on his face. Janine stirred, suddenly contorted into the womb position, moaned piteously and lay still.
Robert and Sandra barely moved. They whispered and died.
There was silence in the darkened room.
Unsteadily, Roland Badel rose to his feet. He staggered across to the trolley on which Vanessa lay.
“Vanessa, my darling love, how are you?”
She looked
at him. She looked at him with eyes wide with innocence. She looked at him with the anxious, wondering gaze of a child.
“Daddy? You are my daddy, aren’t you? You have come to take me home.”
Clinically, Dr. Roland Badel observed the symptoms of withdrawal. “Yes, I have come to take you home.”
“You are my daddy?”
His heart broke. Except that hearts do not break. He wanted to die. He wanted to live. He looked at the pale, beautiful girl who had regressed to childhood.
“Yes, Vanessa, I am your daddy.”
“And you love me?”
“I love you.”
“I have had nightmares. Terrible nightmares. Please take me home… Have I been a good girl?”
It was such an innocent question. “Yes, Vanessa, you have been a very good girl, and I will take you home.”
“And I will stay with you for ever?”
“Yes, you will stay with me for ever.”
Vanessa sat up. “I had a bad dream,” she said. “But I suppose all little girls have bad dreams… They do, don’t they?”
“Yes, my dear. All little girls have bad dreams.”
“Is it morning?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
Roland went to the window and flung back the curtains. “Yes, it is almost morning.”
There was a grey light in the sky. Soon the sun would climb. Vanessa got off the trolley, gazed at the dead around her.
“Who are all these people, Daddy? Why are they sleeping on the floor?”
“They were very tired, Vanessa. They did not have time to go to bed.”
“Can we
go home now? I don’t want to stay here. Something feels wrong.”
“Yes, my dear. We can go home.”
Somehow, Roland managed to get her out of the house. He remembered Professor Raeder’s warnings about the mines. He didn’t care a damn. In the half-light he took Vanessa away from the house, expecting death at any moment. It would have been welcome.
But death did not come. Either the proximity mines had been de-activated or he and Vanessa were just plain lucky. Either way, it did not matter.
“How far is home, Daddy?”
“A long way, Vanessa. We may have to cross an ocean. Will you mind?”
She held his hand tightly. “Not if I am with you.”
W
ITH THE SENSATIONAL
death of Sir Joseph Humboldt, the government fell. The British Unity Party, an authoritarian political force spawned by the all-party Law-and-Order movement in the turbulent 1970s, was helpless without its acknowledged leader, thus displaying the inherent weakness of monolithic political systems.
In the general election which followed, the New Consensus Party—radical-liberal in its basic attitudes—gained an overwhelming victory. Upon becoming Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Thomas Green, M.P., dismissed the Security of the State Bill which his predecessor had hoped to translate into an Act of Parliament. Later, he was largely responsible for the existence of an international treaty, under the aegis of the United Nations, which banned the development of paranormal talent for any purposes other than psychotherapy, strictly controlled scientific and medical research, and space communications.
At the precise moment of Sir Joseph Humboldt’s death, Jenny Pargetter was dozing in the hovercar which her husband was driving towards the Scottish Highlands. She woke up and screamed. Simon’s attention was distracted. The hovercar crashed head-on with a heavy transit vehicle. Simon Pargetter was killed instantly. Jenny, with both legs amputated above the knee, survived her injuries. But she took her own
life after reading the account of her daughter’s experience which was published in the major newspapers of the world and which was partly responsible for inspiring Britain to take the case of the international exploitation of paranormal children to the United Nations.
Dr. John Lindemann managed to flee to the U.S.S.R., where his skilled services were gratefully accepted—until the account of Vanessa Smith’s ordeal was made public. At which time, he disappeared, his fate being unknown. British and U.S. intelligence assumed that he had been liquidated as a source of political embarrassment.
Professor Holroyd, Principal of Random Hill Residential School, died apparently by his own hand a few hours before the death of Sir Joseph Humboldt. At the inquest, experts in calligraphy refused to testify that the suicide note was genuine. A verdict of murder, by a person or persons unknown, was given.
Richard Haynes, First Private Secretary to Sir Joseph Humboldt, became an alcoholic. After learning the true account of Vanessa Smith’s experiences, he voluntarily entered a psychiatric hospital. On being pronounced cured, he asked to remain at the hospital, working there for many years as a porter.
Maria Mancini returned to Italy and married a man considerably younger than herself, an ambitious member of the Diplomatic Service. She never returned to the United Kingdom.
Dr. Roland Badel, under the name of Oliver Anderson, eventually took Vanessa Smith, believing herself to be his daughter, to San Francisco, where he rapidly established himself as an artist of some importance. The account of Vanessa’s experiences that he sent to the news media contained enough detail to establish
authenticity, but gave no reference to her whereabouts. All the letters bore a Peruvian post-mark.
Vanessa Smith died at the age of thirty-two of advanced physical senility. But even to the end, she retained the mind and spirit of a small child. She died with a teddy-bear called Dugal in her arms.
Upon her death, her body was cremated and the ashes flown back to England to be buried by the side of a casket containing the ashes of a child called Dugal Nemo.
Oliver Anderson, naturalised American, survived her by thirteen years. His most well-known painting—a portrait entitled
Prisoner of Fire
—for which in his lifetime he refused all offers, was sold for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars after his death.
An unknown person established a fund whereby one white rose and one red were to be placed daily upon the graves of Vanessa Smith and Dugal Nemo in perpetuity.
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Edmund Cooper (1926 – 1982)
Edmund Cooper was born in Cheshire in 1926. He served in the Merchant navy towards the end of the Second World War and trained as a teacher after its end. He began to publish SF stories in 1951 and produced a considerable amount of short fiction throughout the ‘50s, moving on, by the end of that decade, to the novels for which he is chiefly remembered. His works displayed perhaps a bleaker view of the future than many of his contemporaries’, frequently utilising post-apocalyptic settings. In addition to writing novels, Edmund Cooper reviewed science fiction for the
Sunday Times
from 1967 until his death in 1982.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © The Edmund Cooper Literary Trust. Contact e-mail
[email protected] 1974
All rights reserved.
The right of Edmund Cooper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11653 5
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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