Famine Read online

  “Hallo.”

  “Hallo,” said Palfrey. “What are you reading?”

  “Russell’s Conquest of Happiness.”

  Palfrey almost gaped.

  “With the world falling to pieces about you?”

  She laughed. “If I have to die, I’d rather die happy.” She stopped speaking, and a dark thought had obviously crossed her mind. “Did that sound callous? I’m sorry if it did, but I think my husband was happy. In fact I’m sure he was. And I never could live in the past.”

  “Yesterday’s past always seems a long way away,” remarked Palfrey gently. He stood in front of her, taking the book. “My wife would have enjoyed knowing you,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “And my secretary thinks you are good for me.”

  “Does she?” Eagerness lit up Beth’s eyes. “Oh, I’m so glad. And I do hope she’s right.”

  “So do I,” said Palfrey drily. “Will you think me absurd if I call you Beth, not Betty?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Thank you,” Palfrey stared at her for what seemed a long time, and there was a kind of peace inside him; at least temporary freedom from the awful turmoil which had been so agonising a short while before. “We think we have a clue about the origin of these creatures.”

  Beth waited, her breathing quickening.

  “In Lozan. I’m to fly out there tonight, with a small team of investigators.”

  Still she kept silent.

  “Will you come?” Palfrey asked.

  “If you think I’ll be useful.”

  “I would like you to come.”

  “Then of course I will,” she said.

  Palfrey moved away and sat on the edge of his desk, still looking at her, and still puzzled by this unexpected peace. Beth’s expression was calm and interested. He had the strange idea that although she grasped what he had said she did not see the full implication; there was an unsophisticated simplicity about her.

  “You’ll need to study reports which won’t make nice reading,” he said. “They can’t be much nastier than the things I’ve seen.”

  “That’s true enough,” Palfrey conceded. “Can you be ready by half past twelve.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll see you then,” he said. “Here.”

  She gave a rather wistful smile, perhaps a little mechanical, or perhaps more truly puzzled, and went out. He picked up his telephone and told Joyce to let her see the Copuscenti and Walsh reports, the Campson autopsy report and the analysis of the reports from overseas. That done, he began to read the analysis again. The horror was no less, but the effect on him was quite different; it was as if Beth Fordham acted on him as a sedative. Whatever the cause, he could now think more clearly and objectively. If one ignored the leukaemia danger, one must try to estimate the amount of food already eaten, and how many people it would affect. If there were ten million eating that amount of food dally— and if they multiplied quickly, obviously they would greatly aggravate the shortages in countries where there was already a food problem.

  One such place was Lozania.

  “What do you expect to find in Lozania, Palfrey?” asked the Prime Minister.

  “I hope, information of these creatures.”

  “What do you think of the Copuscenti and Walsh reports?”

  “Accurate,” Palfrey answered.

  “Yes. If the consumption of food goes on at the present rate, how long do you think stocks will last?”

  “We don’t know how long the present situation has been developing. If they are infested by the creatures, the food situation in China, the Far East generally, India and Pakistan and some South American countries could be grave within two months.”

  “Or less.”

  Palfrey said slowly: “I should have said acute in two months. It’s grave now.”

  “And Europe?”

  “It will depend on the harvest,” Palfrey reasoned, but there was no conviction in his voice.

  The Prime Minister moved away and studied the analysis again. In a voice as flat as Palfrey’s he said: “I have analysed and studied all the reports. It is now known that there are seventy-five colonies under the earth, much the same as the one you first discovered. If these creatures get hungry they will steal the food before it is harvested.”

  “That’s another of my fears, sir.”

  “My God!” Mason said, as if the horror suddenly struck home. “My God, if we can’t kill them, what are we going to do? How many are there? How can we possibly cope? The War Minister suggests gas, but how can we gas these creatures without gassing the people? Palfrey—” Mason caught his breath. “Is there a chance? Or have we discovered this situation too late? Even without them the world food problem is acute. The World Food Organisation prophesies four major famine areas next year – Southern China, North-East India, Pakistan and Indonesia. Others will be on the borderline. If these creatures multiply, the famine will come much sooner even than we feared. We simply have to stop their breeding and multiplying, we have to find a way of saving the food for the people already in the world. Do you think you might have a real hope in Lozania?”

  “As far as I can judge, it’s the only hope we have,” Palfrey said soberly. “I wish—”

  There was a tap at the door of this small room at Number 10, and the Prime Minister looked across in annoyance, but called: “Come in.” A middle aged man entered, austere-looking, grave.

  “I’m sorry to worry you, sir, but there is an urgent telephone message for Dr. Palfrey, from Smolensk.”

  Immediately Palfrey’s thought sprang to Stephan Andromovitch, the Russian who was second in Command of Z5.

  Andromovitch was a huge man, six feet seven tall, broad, massive, a giant in size as well as in achievement. He had been for many years almost the only reliable source of communication between East and West, the only man trusted by Moscow and Peking as well as by Washington and Whitehall. Of late, Palfrey had been accepted too, and regular channels of communication had been opened. There was at least a measure of trust in many spheres.

  No one who saw Andromovitch for the first time was surprised at the faith he inspired. He had big features, inevitably, and undoubtedly he was handsome, but it was his expression, at times almost beautiful, which broke down the barriers of prejudice and distrust. Many a hard-bitten, sophisticated, even callous journalist had described the giant Russian as having the face of a saint.

  On the day when Palfrey had been in the centre of the situation in London, at the time of the horror in Piccadilly, Andromovitch had been in one of the richest wheat-producing areas in Western Russia, not far from the Polish border. He had been summoned by a Z5 agent who was a Party Member and leader of the Commune of Istra which had thrice won a prize for growing the finest crops in the Soviet Union. This year, the wheat had promised to be exceptional, even for Istra. That afternoon, Andromovitch had stood with a silent crowd of peasants, seeing how vast fields of wheat had been eaten down to the stubble. There could be no harvest here, the crop had gone.

  There was worse.

  Towards the east, where the land rose in gentle slopes, some earth subsidence had been discovered and with a company of Red Star Army, Andromovitch had investigated, and had used cyanide gas, as on vermin.

  Everyone had stood, appalled.

  Here was a primitive underground city, like the one near Salisbury in England, but with one dreadful difference. All the inhabitants were dying, or dead, the young outnumbering their parents by tens of thousands.

  “I saw these things myself, Sap,” Stefan Andromovitch said in a hard voice. “I saw women who had died as they gave birth. I saw seven of the females who had been delivered of ten young. The average litter, and that is the only word I can think of, was eight.

  “These creatures multiply ten-fold with each gener
ation.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Mountain of Horror

  “Your Excellency,” said the Lozanian interpreter, “I have the honour to present Dr. Palfrey.”

  “Doctor.”

  “Excellency.”

  “And Mrs. Fordham.”

  “Madame.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. President.”

  “Mr. Andromovitch.”

  “Mr. President.”

  “Professor Copuscenti.”

  The Professor, perhaps more tense than any of those present, bowed stiffly.

  The introductions, at the Palace of the Hills, overlooking the great Bay of Lozania, took less than five minutes. Copuscenti gave the impression that he thought every second was wasted. Stefan Andromovitch seemed the least troubled, the most composed, and Beth Fordham glanced at him continually, in wonder or in awe. The President, a silver-haired handsome man with bright, dark eyes and a high-bridged nose, bore the reputation of a benevolent dictator, his neo-Fascist leanings long part of the international scene. Once looked for, the resemblance between him and the tiny creatures was as noticeable as that between them and Taza.

  Palfrey gave an involuntary shiver of apprehension.

  “Mr. President,” he said at last, “the matter is urgent.”

  “This I know,” said the President. “Dr. Palfrey, there are some matters I would prefer to discuss with you alone.”

  “I would have to tell my colleagues immediately, sir.”

  “I agreed to the ambassador’s request that I should acquaint you of certain facts only if they could be kept in complete confidence.”

  Copuscenti was glaring at the President, his hands clenching and unclenching.

  “Your Excellency,” Palfrey said, “if we cannot find the truth about these creatures, quickly, the world will perish. Your name, your country’s name, will have no significance if that should happen. If we can avoid identifying you or Lozania, we will – but if you have to be named so as to give us a chance of survival, then I shall name you.”

  “Time!” Copuscenti breathed. “Every minute matters.”

  “Dr. Palfrey,” said the President in his excellent English, “we are a small nation and we have been dependent on the largesse of our wealthier neighbours for a long time. We have few natural sources of wealth or energy, and the cost of nuclear power was far beyond our economy. We had the assistance of both Russian and German physicists. We worked along different lines from those of other nations. We discovered a method of carrying out certain limited experiments, even of nuclear weapons, without them being detected. We were confident of the success of our endeavours but the nuclear reactor research station was closely guarded. We selected a place which was accessible from the mainland and yet was far enough away to be cut off if anything went wrong. I speak, of course, of the Isle of Lozan.”

  Palfrey could picture the island in his mind’s eye. It was two or three miles off the coast, in the middle of the magnificent bay, a rocky island which had seemed ugly and bare of vegetation, a derelict jewel in the vivid blue of the sea.

  “We flew over it,” Copuscenti muttered. “Get on, get on.”

  “During the two world wars we have used the Island of Lozan for storing our precious inheritances – our art treasures, our historical relics, our records – everything. There are three secret tunnels from the mainland to the island.”

  Palfrey had known there were such tunnels, but no more.

  “When we began our nuclear research and our experiments we worked on the Isle,” the President went on. “All our hopes were vested in it. We made it a self-sufficient underground city with huge food stocks and supplies of all kinds. If anything happened above ground, we believed the underground city would be safe.”

  After a pause, the President continued: “Five times we carried out undetected tests of defensive weapons which appeared to be wholly successful. We housed two thousand families on the Isle, in an underground city which had every amenity we could give it, to provide both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. We also had some research laboratories – we were studying the effect of radiation on such diseases as cancer and leukaemia.”

  Palfrey had vivid pictures of the subterranean city near Salisbury and the other near Smolensk. He did not speak, and none of the others spoke, each fascinated by what this grave-faced, austere man was saying. Palfrey was aware of Beth’s arm touching his – both with assurance and for assurance.

  “These families were to stay on the island until the work had been finished, and we had reached our objective – nuclear power, the solution to our economic ills and our pitiful standard of living—”

  Suddenly the President broke off, turned away and pressed a button on his desk. A whirring sound followed, and a large white screen dropped down over one of the windows. On a table opposite to this was a movie projector already loaded. The President moved across to it.

  “Please bring chairs.”

  “Have we time—” Copuscenti began.

  Palfrey’s hand tightened on his arm, silencing him. Andromovitch picked up a heavy chair in each hand, the others took one each.

  “Because of the vital importance of security we had the island of Lozan watched by television and cine cameras, all equipped with sound recording attachments,” the President continued. “All the approaches were covered, and television and film cameras were placed at strategic points through the reactor station, which was built on several subterranean levels beneath the island. There was an underground city with all facilities for communal and family life, as well as the factory or research establishment, where the workers lived. Do you follow?”

  “Clearly,” Palfrey said, and Andromovitch said: “Most certainly.”

  “These cameras were all under electronic control, and movement was sufficient to operate them. Some were in action all day, and the closed circuit television was watched every minute. Each day, too, the film was brought here and studied. Any suspicious movement would be detected at once. I am about to show you of what happened on the second day of April, this year – four months and five days ago.

  “After you have seen the pictures, there will be other films, which have been edited so that they present the story of events chronologically. A moment please, while I switch off the lights.”

  He moved away; there was a click, and darkness dropped into the room. A moment later the beam from the projector pierced the dark, and the date April 2nd 196- appeared on the screen. Immediately afterwards a picture of the Isle of Lozan appeared in vivid colour, quite beautiful with its surf – and sand – ringed beaches, its inlets, its cliffs, the rich vegetation on the rocky slopes, the white houses, the children playing in or near the water, the mothers watching. The island was surrounded by deep water, big ships were in the channel between it and the port of Lozan, where a cruise ship gay with flags, and garlanded with flowers, was moving slowly from the dockside.

  Copuscenti gasped: “I remember! I remember, the earthquake …”

  To him, to Palfrey, to them all, what followed was not only hideous and horrible, but so vivid that it felt as if they were living through the awful day itself, and the weeks which followed.

  All was peace and beauty on the island and in the Bay of Lozan on that lovely April day, when the sun shone and the wind blew.

  Then, suddenly, the water at one side of the island erupted.

  One moment, there was the idyllic scene; next it was blotted out by a great wall of water, and as this rose, the whole island vanished except for the top of the mountain. In a few seconds, an enormous tidal wave crashed with uncontrollable fury, swallowing up small craft and large. The sky turned dark. The cruise ship, so majestic for so long, was struck with such force that it was lifted out of the water and flung onto the quayside. As suddenly it was engulfed, swallowed in the mighty wave with
all buildings and other ships nearby.

  There was left only the horror …

  The picture changed, to show the aftermath, a sultry sea, and on its bosom the wreckage of large craft and small, and the bodies of countless men and women and children. There was a great pall in the sky, hiding the sun, casting a red, sullen glow over the water.

  One side of the island had vanished into the sea. The other remained, as it appeared today; dead and desolate.

  As Palfrey and the others watched, appalled, the scene changed to pictures inside the island fortress, underground. They saw an underground city, far larger than that which Palfrey had seen near Salisbury, and Andromovitch near Smolensk; but much the same, with huge dormitories, communal kitchens, communal recreation rooms, a cinema, a theatre, nurseries – and in one place, new born babies with their mothers, a woman in the very act of giving birth.

  The picture seemed to break; one moment everything was normal, the next it was as if everything was hurled into the air, in fire and smoke and awful bedlam. And the screaming rose to a terrible pitch …

  Slowly, the smoke settled; and faded – like the mist had done on Salisbury Plain.

  The President said huskily: “Not all the cameras were destroyed.”

  On the screen there appeared the date: April 30th.

  After it, there came a different picture, a kind of miniature, like a child’s model of the city they had seen destroyed in front of their eyes. The picture covered the same area, but ten, a hundred times more was crowded into it, and instead of the magnificent underground city it was primitive and rough. There were people, too; tiny people.

  They moved about, near-naked, with a controlled busyness. No one smiled, or relaxed, or talked; instead, each group went about its work with a controlled application and energy which was appalling in itself; for these were tiny creatures; ant-like; yet they were midget humans, behaving as if they were trained to every movement and terrified in case they failed to do what they were there to do. Among them were a few slightly taller creatures who behaved as if with authority.