As we cleared the heaped rubble it seemed he heard me and knew I was right. Shaking as if in a fever, which he might well have been, he came to a halt and said: “So close, so very close … but God! I can’t fail now. Lord, don’t let me fail now!”
“You said something about not intending to surface here,” I reminded him, holding him steady. “About maybe having to swim?”
At which he sat down on a block of concrete fallen from the ceiling before answering me. And as quickly as that he was completely coherent again. “Wouldn’t even try to surface here,” he said, shrugging his thin shoulders. “There’s far too much water up there—and too many of those monsters that live in it! But we must hope that the rest of the system, between here and Piccadilly Circus, is in better condition.”
“Is that where we’re heading?” I inquired, grateful for the break as I sat down beside him. “Piccadilly Circus, I mean? So how do we manage it? Will it mean getting down in the water?”
Swaying a little as he got to his feet, he looked over the rim of the platform before answering me. “Are you worried about swimming? Well don’t be. The water here isn’t nearly as deep as I thought it might be … I think it must find its way into the depths of the shattered earth, maybe into a subterranean river. So even though we won’t have to swim, still it appears we’ll be doing a lot more wading; knee-deep at least and maybe for quite a while. So now for the last time—even though it’s already far too late—I feel I’ve really got to warn you: if you want to live, to stand even a remote chance, you’ve got to turn back now! Do you understand?”
“I think so, yes,” I told him. “But you know, Henry, we’ve been lucky so far, both of us, and maybe it’s not over yet.”
“I can’t convince you, then?”
“To go back? No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think I want to do that. And the truth is, we all have to die some time. Whether it’s at Piccadilly Circus under the twisted tower or back there where those—those beings—were splashing about in the water; I mean, what’s the difference where, why, or how we do it, eh? It’s got to happen eventually.”
“As for me,” he said, letting himself down slowly over the rim of the platform into water that rose halfway up his thighs, “it is a matter of where I do it—where I can be most effective! My revenge, you said … and at least you were right about that. But you: you’re young, strong, apparently well-fed! Which is a rare thing in itself! You probably came in from the woods, the countryside—a place where there are still birds and other wild things you can catch and eat—or so I imagine. So for you to accompany me where I’m going … ” He shook his head. “It just seems a great waste to me.”
There was nothing in what he’d said that I could or needed to answer; so as I let myself down into the water beside him, I simply said, “So then, are you ready to move on?” And since his only reply was to lean his bony body into the effort—for the flow of the water was against us and strong—I added, “I take it that you are! But you know, Henry, pushing against the water like this will soon drain you. So may I suggest—only a suggestion, mind you—that you let me carry the case? If you want to do the job you’ve set yourself, whatever it is, that’s fine. But since I’m here, why not let me help you?”
He turned to me, turned a half-thankful, half-anxious look on me, and finally reached out with his trembling arms and gave that small heavy suitcase into my care. “But don’t you drop it in the water!” he told me. “In fact don’t drop it at all—or bank it around—or damage it in any way! Do you hear?”
“Of course I do, Henry,” I answered. “And I think I understand. I’ve seen how you take care of it, and it’s obvious how crucial it must be to your mission, whatever that turns out to be. Perhaps as we move along, you’d care to tell me about it—but it’s also fine if you don’t want to. First, though, if you don’t mind, could you get my cigarettes and lighter out of the top pocket of my parka?” For I was hugging the case to my chest with both hands, well above the water level. “The water’s very cold and a drag or two may help to warm us—our lungs, anyway. Light one up for yourself and one for me.” And when he had managed that: “Thanks, Henry,” I told him out of the corner of my mouth, before dragging deeply on the scented smoke.
He smoked, too … but remained silent on the subject of the suitcase, and in particular its secret contents.
I thought I knew about that, anyway, but would have preferred to hear it from him. Well, perhaps there was some other way I could talk him into telling me about it. So after we’d waded for another ten or twelve minutes and finished our cigarettes:
“Henry, you asked me a while ago if I had any idea who you are.” I reminded him. “Well not, I don’t, but it might pass some time and keep our minds active—stop them from freezing up—if you’d tell me.”
“Huh!” he answered. “It’s like you want to know everything about me, and I don’t even know your name!”
“It’s Julian,” I told him. “Julian Chalmers. I used to be a teacher and taught the Humanities, Politics and—of all things—Ethics, at a university in the Midland.”
“Of all … all things?” Shivering head to toe, he somehow got the question out. “How do … do you mean, ‘of all things’?”
“Well, they’re pretty different subjects, aren’t they? Sort of jumbled and contradictory? I mean, is there any such thing as the ethics of politics? Or its humanity, for that matter!”
He considered it a while, then said, “Good question. And I might have known the answer once upon a time. But then I would have been talking about—God, it’s c-cold!—about human politicians. And since the actions or mores of human beings don’t really apply any more—”
But there he’d paused, as if thinking it through. And so:
“Go on,” I quickly prompted him, because I was interested. And anyway, I wanted to keep him talking.
“Well, the invaders,” he obliged me, “I mean all of them—from their leaders, the huge tentacle-faced creatures in their crazily-angled manses, to the servitors they brought with them or called up after they got settled here—all the nightmarish flying things, and those shapeless, flapping-rag horrors called hounds—and not least those scaly half-frog, half-fish minions from their deep-sea cities—not one of these species seems to have ever evolved politics, while the very idea of ethics seems as alien to them as they themselves are to us! But on the other hand, if you’re talking human politics, human ethics—”
“I don’t think I was,” I said, then just as quickly let the subject drop as another maintenance ledge came into view on the left. We couldn’t have been happier, the pair of us, to get out of the water and up onto that ledge; and, somewhat surprisingly, we were relieved to discover that a welcoming draft of air from somewhere up ahead was strangely warm!
“Most places underground are like this,” the old man tried to explain it. “When you get down to a certain depth, the temperature is more or less constant. It’s why the Neanderthals lived in caves. It was the same the last time I was here, which I had forgotten about, but this warm air has served to remind me that we’ve reached—”
HYDE PARK CORNER
He let the legend on the brightly-tiled wall across the tracks finish the job for him, precisely and silently.
“So, what do you think?” I asked him, as we moved from the ledge onto the underground station’s platform. “How are we doing, Henry?”
“Not good enough,” he answered. “We should be doing a whole lot better! My fault, I suppose, because I’m not as strong as I used to be. I’m just too frail, too