The Insulators Read online

  He did not say goodbye; he did not look at the others, not even at Jane. Perhaps the worst thing of all was that when the door had closed, no one made a single word of comment. Yet Jane felt like screaming, out of a dreadful fear that she would never see Paul Taylor again.

  2: Woman Alone

  Jane Wylie went to her section of the long bench set against a window which stretched along one side of the room. The glass let in the daylight but was itself obscured so that she could not see out, could not be distracted when at work. Beyond, she knew, were peaceful green fields and colourful flowerbeds and, on rising land, a thick wood of oak and beech and birch, fresh with the new green of spring. Had she been able to look out, it would have brought balm; but the frosted glass window did nothing to ease the fear, the anger and the resentment she felt.

  In front of her were dozens of small glass-ceramic tubes in varying sizes, some openings half an inch across, some barely an eighth. In each were packed crystals from the superheated ovens which filled one narrow end of the room. Every kind of base ore, every kind of metal, every variety of glass was used to make the crystals, which came out of the ovens feather-light. Over in a glass case opposite the bench and at right angles with the ovens, were specimens of the crystals which had been made during the experiments. She, Janey, could remember the fierce surge of excitement when one crucible had seemed to be full not of ordinary crystals, or quartz, or coloured crystalline pieces, but of diamonds.

  “We are not looking for diamonds,” Arthur Leadbetter – the Chief Chemist – had told her coldly.

  He moved towards her as she picked up one of the tubes, and the shadow of his tall figure fell upon her bench. Her heart began to thump, she knew she must look up and see him but could not make herself, until he said: “Janey.”

  She looked round, and up at him. He was six foot three or four, with a very lean body and a long thin face with a pointed chin. He gave the impression of having been squeezed before he set into his present shape. His eyes were heavy lidded and had dark patches, as if he were desperately in need of sleep.

  “Yes, Arthur,” she responded at last.

  “I shall need those batches in an hour’s time.”

  “I’ll be ready,” she promised.

  “Make sure you are,” he said severely.

  Had the small man spoken like that, he would have sounded sinister. Leadbetter didn’t; instead, he sounded rather sad. He was trying to speak to her with his eyes, too, as if pleading. She knew what he meant; he was begging her not to lose her temper, not to show sympathy for Paul. He was frightened, too; he always had been. He wanted ‘them’ to believe he was being severe, for this whole place was bugged; but his severity was unconvincing and even pathetic, being born out of fear.

  All of them were frightened.

  Freddie Ferris, over at the glass-doored ovens, looking in, was checking the temperature. Those ovens could be taken up to 4,000° Fahrenheit; far beyond fusion point for the hardest of metals. Freddie was sandy-skinned and red-haired, freckled and chubby; even after being here so long he retained his pink colour and his fat, and his white smock was a shade too tight for him. When he had first come here he had been full of fun, the life and soul of the party, as it were, but never wearisome.

  It must be a week since Janey had seen him smile.

  Philip Carr, at the radiation unit at the other end of the laboratory, was normally a solemn and earnest individual, and Jane was not sure whether he had changed inwardly or not. Outwardly he was the same: precise, rather overformal, speaking in a pleasing ‘Oxford’ accent, very courteous and conscientious. He was remarkably adept in manoeuvring the mechanical arms which clawed the radioactive material inside the lead and porcelain ‘ovens’. He had developed the use of these until it was almost as if he were using his own fingers, placing pieces of crystal-filled glass-ceramic in a dozen different places. Carr was a man of medium height and medium build. His dark hair, always cut short, always seemed exactly the same; the hair showed up his tan, and he looked as if he had just come from the ski slopes or the sun lamp. Even in his smock he appeared immaculate; certainly he was the best groomed of all the research chemists here.

  Janey went on with her work, which was simple yet very exacting. She had to pack crystals from each batch manufactured in the ovens into the glass-ceramic tubes, with a piece of leadfoil between each two batches; and she had to tag the leadfoil with an identification number. The tubes would then be lowered one after another into one of the testing chambers, and submitted to a full charge of radioactivity which would melt the lead if the crystals did not insulate the paper-thin foil.

  Some crystals did give a kind of protection; a built-in timing device told how long it was before the leadfoil actually melted. One set of crystals had resisted the radioactivity for over an hour, but eventually the foil had melted. The crystals were cheap to manufacture and very light; once a batch could be used as insulators against radioactivity then significant progress would have been made in protecting people and instruments from the effects of radioactive contamination.

  There had been a great deal of experimental work in crystallography in this search for an insulator in industrial as well as State-controlled research, not only in Great Britain but throughout the world. There was no way of being sure which country or which industrial unit was nearest a breakthrough. The certain thing was that once a breakthrough was made, then the industrial as well as the military use of nuclear energy would be vastly cheaper and easier. If the first breakthrough was made by a commercial company or group then it would be able to quote ridiculously low prices for nuclear reactors and nuclear powering of all kinds of machines, from aeroplanes to submarines and trains to merchant ships.

  Janey, at the time intensely interested in the practical aspects of crystallography, had answered an advertisement for a research physicist with some knowledge of the subject. She had been told at the third interview, before being offered the job, that it would be done under conditions of the most stringent secrecy; that she herself would have to be screened with infinite care to make sure that she was not a spy for some other group engaged in the same research.

  “You will have to devote yourself exclusively to The Project,” she had been told by a man not unlike the small one in charge here, but bigger and more aggressive in his manner. “You will have to live in the restricted area of The Project, and will have no physical contact with the outside world during the year you are on The Project. But there are excellent facilities at the Company’s headquarters . . .”

  She had been shown a short film in colour, of the grounds in which the research buildings were set, and it was explained that a model industrial city had been planned here, and partly constructed, before a change of government had diverted the funds, and a group of research organisations, it was said, had taken over.

  They saw pictures of the sweeping lawns sloping down to a small river, where there were boats and jetties and places on the banks for fishing; there was a lido for swimming and sunbathing and deck or beach games, a big indoor swimming pool and gymnasium. There was a small cinema, a theatre with seats for five hundred people, an auditorium for orchestras. Everything for pleasure as well as cultural facilities was there; a library, bookshop, record shop – a small shopping centre for those who preferred to cook for themselves. Many of the married couples preferred this.

  “What you do in your personal life is no concern of ours,” Parsons had said, and with almost startling frankness he had added: “If you wish to sleep with one of your fellow workers, whether you prefer promiscuity to a settled sexual relationship will be entirely a matter for you to decide.”

  He had meant that: in fact events had proved that he had meant everything he had said.

  There were faithful married couples and also there were community groups which changed partners whenever the mood took them. There were groups of male homosexuals and, as she had discovered with surprisingly little sense of revulsion, there were lesbians in one of t
he little apartment communities. It was as if those who controlled The Project knew that the unnatural segregation from the outside world meant that some degree of perversion was inevitable, and knew also that if a man or a woman’s sexual proclivities were released the discipline necessary for the work could be more easily imposed.

  Most of the workers, once they had served for a year signed on for another. Others simply disappeared, presumably going back to the outside world.

  She had now been here for six months, half of her contract period. There were times when she was quite content but other times when she felt that she was being suffocated, that this was a prison and she would never sign on for another year.

  Paul Taylor had begun contentedly enough, until the noise had become too much for him. One either got used to the noise or eventually succumbed to it. She got used to the constant roaring, and no longer used the earplugs which were standard equipment.

  She was not sure why so much noise was necessary. No real attempt was made to muffle it; there were times when she felt that it was deliberately imposed, so as to deaden feeling.

  She thought all these things as she prepared the crystal containers and placed them in neat piles by her right hand. There were only a few left to do, and she would be finished in good time.

  Freddie Ferris came across and shot her a quick sideways glance as he said: “Have you enough crystals?”

  “Plenty, Freddie,” she answered.

  “I can easily bring you more.”

  “No, I’ve plenty,” she insisted.

  He moved a little closer to her and took a handful of the crystals from a transparent bowl on her left. He peered at these as if he were examining them, and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Do you think Paul will ever come back?” The whisper was barely audible above the roar from the generating room.

  “Of course he will!” she answered sharply.

  “Don’t raise your voice!” Freddie urged, and when she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, he went on: “I don’t think he will.” He looked expressionless except for what might be dread in his eyes.

  She did not think Paul would come back but she said quickly: “Nonsense!”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever get out of here alive,” Freddie mouthed. “No one does and no one ever will.”

  “Nonsense,” she repeated. “Of course we shall.”

  “I don’t believe it. I believe they’ll keep us here as long as we’re useful to them, and then kill us.”

  She felt a rising, choking dread, yet replied with a calm which surprised her. “What on earth makes you feel that?”

  “I just feel it,” he said. “I’m terrified out of my wits.”

  “I think the noise is getting on your nerves,” she retorted. “Try to forget it, Freddie.”

  “Forget it!” he exclaimed, and let the crystals fall back into the bowl. As they fell he looked up at her with impassioned appeal, his very heart seemed to show in his eyes: “Janey! Don’t tell anyone I said this.”

  “Of course I won’t, you oaf,” Janey assured him.

  Then she was aware of Leadbetter approaching, betrayed by a pale shadow on the translucent glass of the window. She placed the last of her batch of little containers on the bench, and then turned away from Freddie and looked up into Leadbetter’s face. There was nothing to suggest disapproval, or that the Chief Chemist had heard what they had been discussing.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Yes – all done,” she answered. “One hundred and twenty.”

  “Good. Philip is ready,” Leadbetter told her. “Freddie and I will take them over. You go and rest, Janey. You look tired.”

  She wasn’t tired; she was very frightened, and tense with trying to hide it, and her fear grew worse when she realised that he had noticed something was wrong. She did not want to be questioned or scrutinised, so she turned quickly away as Philip came up with some containers for the little tubes. He looked at her without expression; it was easy to believe that he was disapproving.

  She went out by the door through which Paul Taylor had gone. There were doors at either end of the tunnel-like passage, and also some in the wall, like this one. Opposite was another, leading to a passage with a common room for relaxation, with a bar and coffee stand, so one could have whatever one felt like. The big, pleasant room usually had half a dozen people in it, sometimes from the other departments and from the laboratory, and there was usually a lot of gossip – about one another and the staff, but never about ‘The Project’.

  This afternoon, the room was empty, thank God!

  She went across to the coffee stand, where there was always fresh coffee and found herself a cup, added cream but no sugar, and went across to the window and looked out on lawns and the river, a few people walking, a few even sitting and talking. The sun was bright in a pale but cloudless sky. This was why the room was deserted; it was warm enough, for once, to go outside.

  If she went out she would have to talk, which was the last thing she wanted to do. She pulled up a comfortable chair and sat, drank coffee and tried to calm her nerves. The awful thing was her fear that Freddie was right, that Paul Taylor would be killed. And yet how could such a fear be justified? The place was getting on her nerves.

  But there was the other underlying fear: that they would all be killed whenever their period of usefulness was over; that this was the last era of their lives – of her life. Nothing actually gave her cause to believe this, but it was a feeling which came like a lightning flash, and it was never possible to reject it absolutely. Now she knew that Freddie shared the fear; as if the idea was not in her mind but in the very atmosphere of the place.

  If Paul came back to the laboratory, they would all be reassured, they could laugh at themselves! But if he didn’t, then her fears and Freddie’s would be taken to a pitch of almost intolerable tension.

  She found herself wondering whether Leadbetter had overheard Freddie; whether he was already under suspicion and being closely watched; and then she told herself what was obviously true; they were all watched, all the time.

  She had another cup of coffee, freshened up in the powder room, then went back to the tunnel passage. As she stepped into it and closed the door, something happened, something utterly unbelievable, something which had never happened here before.

  Silence fell.

  One moment there had been the thudding roar which seemed to take her body, and vibrate throughout the tunnel as well as the common room and the laboratory, the next, there was silence.

  The strangest thing of all was that it seemed loud.

  Nearly as strange, the vibration was still as great as ever.

  Her ears began to ache. She went dizzy. She felt herself swaying, and straightened up with an effort. She listened but could hear nothing. She held herself very still and was suddenly aware of a faint sound: of her own breathing.

  She made herself move forward.

  Something had happened to destroy her equilibrium. She staggered, and stretched out her hand to the wall, for support. Leaning against the wall, she edged towards the laboratory door. It was closed; of course it was closed! She reached it and, with great care, took the handle in her fingers, turned and pushed. The door opened and she stepped inside.

  The three men were all near the radioactive units, Leadbetter in the middle, the other two on either side, Philip’s body swivelled round so that he could stare at his chief, and Freddie’s lips actually parted, as if he had been struck dumb in the middle of a sentence.

  No one spoke.

  There was no sound except the one which came slowly into Janey’s consciousness: the whisper of their own breathing. Slowly, the men looked at one another and then turned to look at Janey, utterly amazed at what had fallen upon them.

  And the vibration went on and on.

  Leadbetter’s lips moved and he made a faint croaking sound. Freddie mouthed two simple words: “Oh, God.” Philip raised a hand in front of his face and snapped thu
mb and forefinger and the snap seemed very loud.

  Then as suddenly as the noise had stopped it began again; this time it was like thunder, roaring and reverberating in their ears.

  Something had cut out the sound; had insulated the building against the sound. That was the most astounding thing of all. For the machines had gone on working or there would have been no vibration.

  By some miracle, the sound had been eliminated; had gone completely.

  3: The Fears

  All four of the group stood still as statues for perhaps two minutes, and then began to relax very slowly. It was Philip Carr who spoke first, with much more animation than usual.

  “What the devil was that?”

  “It was uncanny,” gasped Ferris.

  “As if the noise was switched off,” put in Janey.

  “It couldn’t have been switched—” began Philip, only to stop as Freddie burst out: “You mean the machines couldn’t have been switched off and then on again so swiftly; there would have been a phasing of the noise?”

  “Could it have been a deliberate experiment?” asked Janey, fighting down her excitement. “Aren’t we looking for new forms of insulation? Why not of noise?”

  “It could have been a breakdown,” Freddie almost screeched. “The Project generates its own electricity, it doesn’t feed from the grid or the Electricity Board’s supply.”

  “There’s never been anything like it, we do know that,” Philip declared, looking at Leadbetter. “What do you think, Arthur?”

  Leadbetter was standing back from them all, cheeks pale, the patches under his eyes very black, the heavy lids half-covering the eyes themselves. He looked shocked, and moistened his lips several times before he spoke. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down. “It must have been an electrical failure,” he stated.