Plan for Chaos by John Wyndham

Author:John Wyndham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

11

Not Nature

Once one had left behind the sprightly scenes of carnage among thunderclouds, the passage outside wore an even more bleakly hygienic aspect than before. But the contrast helped to steady me. Indeed, it promptly gave to everything that had taken place beyond the heavy doors a comforting quality of unreality. I felt that noticeable lift which I usually ascribe to the third or fourth glass. What I had heard would no doubt return to disturb me later, but for the moment I pushed it aside. I was aware of feeling fatigued and hungry, and ceased for the moment to care whether my doubles had occurred naturally, parthenogenetically, or out of a stamping mill.

On leaving The Mother’s suite we turned not by the way we had come, but to the left. In that maze of a place I was unsurprised: I simply hoped we were on our way to the lunch-room.

In the first passage there was no one to be seen. At the end of the next, however, stood two young men in the usual black. They had an air of waiting, and as we came round the corner they started towards us. We met halfway, where they stopped, barring our progress. One of them said, curtly:

“We are taking over this man. Orders from Ulrich.”

In a voice no less short the man on my right replied:

“We are in charge of him. On orders from 451.”

The two pairs stood quite still, facing one another. 451, I recalled, was Emil. Who Ulrich might be I had no idea.

“You had better let us pass,” added the man beside me. The other looked back at him steadily.

“Ulrich requires this man,” he said.

My neighbour put out his arm to press me back. He did not take his eyes off the other. As far as I was aware, it wasn’t my quarrel – or maybe it was, but as I didn’t know which side I was on, I stepped back out of the way.

The hand of the Ulrich partisan was already at the hilt of his dagger. My escorts reached for theirs, crouching a little. But nobody drew.

“Ulrich is the senior. It is his order,” repeated the man who bad spoken first.

“His authority does not run. Come with us to Emil, and tell him what Ulrich’s orders are.”

It was queer to watch them, almost as if the two with their back to me were acting into a mirror. The watchful, tense expressions on the faces of the further pair were identical, and, I had no doubt, reduplicated in front of them. By the look of it they should have started simultaneously, done all the same things, and ended up even.

But in fact, it was the man who had spoken first who acted first. His knife flicked out of its sheath and flew at the man opposite almost in a single movement. And as a part of the same action he jumped. But the man with his back to me was quick too: he must have known the move.

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