(1979) Whip Hand by Francis Dick

Author:Francis, Dick [Dick, Francis,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-06-30T14:53:15.312000+00:00

'Why not?'

'I'm not used to the right hand.'

'Tell me what you see,' I said. She shook her head slightly and raised the calm dark eyes.

'You will live a long time.' I glanced out through the plastic curtain. The trackers had moved off out of sight.

'How much do I owe you?' I said. She told me, and I paid her, and went quietly over to the doorway.

'Take care, dear,' she said. 'Be careful.'

I looked back. Her face was still calm, but her voice had been urgent. I didn't want to believe in the conviction that looked out of her eyes. She might have felt the disturbance of my present problem with the trackers, but no more than that. I pushed the curtain gently aside and stepped from the dim world of hovering horrors into the bright May sunlight, where they might in truth lie in wait.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was no longer any need to ask where the balloons were. No one could miss them. They were beginning to rise like gaudy monstrous mushrooms, humped on the ground, spread all over an enormous area of grassland beyond the actual showground. I had thought vaguely that there would be two or three balloons, or at most six, but there must have been twenty.

Among a whole stream of people going the same way, I went down to the gate and through into the far field, and realised that I had absolutely underestimated the task of finding John Viking.

There was a rope, for a start, and marshals telling the crowd to stand behind it. I ducked those obstacles at least, but found myself in a forest of half inflated balloons, which billowed immensely all around and cut off any length of sight.

The first clump of people I came to were busy with a pink and purple monster into whose mouth they were blowing air by means of a large engine-driven fan. The balloon was attached by four fine nylon ropes to the basket, which lay on its side, with a young man in a red crash helmet peering anxiously into its depths.

'Excuse me,' I said to a girl on the edge of the group. 'Do you know where I can find John Viking?'

'Sorry.'

The red crash helmet raised itself to reveal a pair of very blue eyes. 'He's here somewhere,' he said politely. 'Flies a Stormcloud balloon. Now would you mind getting the hell out, we're busy.'

I walked along the edge of things, trying to keep out of their way. Balloon races, it seemed, were a serious business and no occasion for light laughter and social chat. The intent faces leant over ropes and equipment, testing, checking, worriedly frowning. No balloons looked much like stormclouds. I risked another question.

'John Viking? That bloody idiot. Yes, he's here. Flies a Stormcloud.' He turned away, busy and anxious.

'What colour is it?' I said.

'Yellow and green. Look, go away, will you?'

There were balloons advertising whisky and marmalade and towns, and even insurance companies. Balloons in brilliant primary colours and pink-and-white pastels, balloons in the sunshine rising from the green grass in glorious jumbled rainbows.

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