Inside, the woman was waiting for them. ‘What happened?’
‘He’s dead, of course. He got the xeeb.’
‘Did he have to get himself killed doing it?’
‘There was one weapon on board and one place to use it from,’ Philip Hardacre said. Then his voice went quiet. ‘Why are you still wearing your space-suit?’
‘I wanted to get the feel of it. And you said to take it off.’
‘Why couldn’t you have taken the gun into the airlock?’
Her eyes went dull. ‘I didn’t know how the lock worked.’
‘But Ghlmu did. He could have operated it from in here. And you can shoot, or so you said.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry I like,’ the young fellow said. He didn’t sound like a school professor now, or afraid of her. ‘Sorry brings back that old guy as alive as ever he was, doesn’t it? Sorry is about the best I ever heard. And sorry is something else too. Sorry as all hell is how I feel when I drop you off in Venusport and take the shuttle to Earth by myself. You like Venusport, don’t you? Well, here’s your chance to get lost in it.’
Philip Hardacre finished composing the old Martian’s limbs and appendages and muttered as much as he knew of the prescribed incantation. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.
‘Get supper,’ the young fellow said to the woman. ‘Right away.’
‘This was your hunt,’ Philip Hardacre said to his friend’s body.
WHO OR WHAT WAS IT?
I want to tell you about a very odd experience I had a few months ago, not so as to entertain you, but because I think it raises some very basic questions about, you know, what life is all about and to what extent we run our own lives. Rather worrying questions. Anyway, what happened was this.
My wife and I had been staying the weekend with her uncle and aunt in Westmorland, near a place called Milnethorpe. Both of us, Jane and I that is, had things to do in London on the Monday morning, and it’s a long drive from up there down to Barnet, where we live, even though a good half of it is on the M6. So I said, Look, don’t let’s break our necks trying to get home in the light (this was in August), let’s take it easy and stop somewhere for dinner and reckon to get home about half-past ten or eleven. Jane said okay.
So we left Milnethorpe in the middle of the afternoon, took things fairly easily, and landed up about half-past seven or a quarter to eight at the… the place we’d picked out of one of the food guides before we started. I won’t tell you the name of the place, because the people who run it wouldn’t thank me if I did. Please don’t go looking for it. I’d advise you not to.
Anyway, we parked the car in the yard and went inside. It was a nice-looking sort of place, pretty old, built a good time ago I mean, done up in a sensible sort of way, no muzak and no bloody silly blacked-out lighting, but no olde-worlde nonsense either.
Well, I got us both a drink in the bar and went off to see about a table for dinner. I soon found the right chap, and he said, Fine, table for two in half an hour, certainly sir, are you in the bar, I’ll get someone to bring you the menu in a few minutes. Pleasant sort of chap, a bit young for the job.
I was just going off when a sort of paunchy business type came in and said something about, Mr Allington not in tonight? and the young fellow said No sir, he’s taken the evening off. All right, never mind.
Well, I’ll tell you why in a minute, but I turned back to the young fellow, said, Excuse me, but is your name Palmer? and he said Yes sir, and I said, Not David Palmer by any chance? and he said No sir, actually the name’s George. I said, or rather burbled, A friend of mine was telling me about this place, said he’d stayed here, liked it very much, mentioned you, anyway I got half the name right, and Mr Allington is the proprietor, isn’t he? That’s correct, sir. See you later and all that.
I went straight back to the bar, went up to the barman and said, Fred? and he said Yes sir. I said, Fred Soames? and he said, Fred Browning, sir. I just said, Wrong Fred, not very polite, but it was all I could think of. I went over to where my wife was sitting and I’d hardly sat down before she asked, What’s the matter?
What was the matter calls for a bit of explanation. In 1969 I published a novel called The Green Man, which was not only the title of the book but also the name of a sort of classy pub, or inn, where most of the action took place, very much the kind of establishment we were in that evening.
Now the landlord of the Green Man was called Allington, and his deputy was called David Palmer, and the barman was called Fred Soames. Allington is a very uncommon name — I wanted that for reasons nothing to do with this story. The other two aren’t, but to have got Palmer and Fred right, so to speak, as well as Allington was a thumping great coincidence, staggering in fact. But I wasn’t just staggered, I was very alarmed. Because the Green Man wasn’t only the name of the pub in my book; it was also the name of a frightening creature, a sort of solid ghost conjured up out of tree-branches and leaves and so on that very nearly kills Allington and his young daughter. I didn’t want to find I was right about that, too.
Jane was very sensible, as always. She said stranger coincidences had happened and still been just coincidences, and mightn’t I have come across an innkeeper called Allington somewhere, half forgotten about it and brought it up out of my unconscious mind when I was looking for a name for an innkeeper to put in the book, and now the real Allington’s moved from wherever I’d seen him before to this place. And Palmer and Fred really are very common names. And I’d got the name of the pub wrong. I’m still not telling you what it’s called, but one of the things it isn’t called is the Green Man. And, my pub was in Hertfordshire and this place was… off the M6. All very reasonable and reassuring.
Only I wasn’t very reassured. I mean, I obviously couldn’t just leave it there. The thing to do was get hold of this chap Palmer and see if there was, well, any more to come. Which was going to be tricky if I wasn’t going to look nosy or mad or something else that would shut him up. Neither of us ate much dinner, though there was nothing wrong with the food. We didn’t say much, either. I drank a fair amount.
Then halfway through, Palmer turned up to do his everything-all-right routine, as I’d hoped he would, and as he would have done in my book. I said yes, it was fine, thanks, and then I asked him, I said we’d be very pleased if he’d join us for a brandy afterwards if he’d got time, and he said he’d be delighted. Jolly good, but I was still stuck with this problem of how to dress the thing up.
Jane had said earlier on, why didn’t I just tell the truth, and I’d said, since Palmer hadn’t reacted at all when I gave him my name when I was booking the table — see what I mean? — he’d only have my word for the whole story and might still think I was off my rocker, and she said of course she’d back me up, and I’d said he’d just think he’d got two loonies on his hands instead of one. Anyway, now she said, Some people who’ve read The Green Man must have mentioned it — fancy that, Mr Palmer, you and Mr Allington and Fred are all in a book by somebody called Kingsley Amis. Obvious enough when you think of it, but like a lot of obvious things, you have got to think of it.
Well, that was the line I took when Palmer rolled up for his brandy, I’m me and I wrote this book and so on. Oh really? he said, more or less. I thought we were buggered, but then he said, Oh yes, now you mention it, I do remember some chap saying something like that, but it must have been two or three years ago — you know, as if that stopped it counting for much. I’m not much of a reader, you see, he said.