All Fool’s Day by Edmund Cooper

Author:Edmund Cooper [COOPER, EDMUND]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

It was the night of the first really heavy autumn fog, as Greville later recorded in his diary. It was a night for sitting by a log fire, reading, talking, listening to music, mending clothes, making impossible plans and finally dissolving the said plans in a deep and luxuriously warm sea of sleep. During the course of the night Liz and Greville managed to do all these things with a quiet satisfaction that might almost have amounted to happiness. And during the same night what was left of the village of Ambergreave began to die – violently and in a fashion bizarre even for the world of transnormality.

Greville had three clocks and no means of knowing the time. The second clock was always an hour ahead of the first clock, and the third clock was always an hour ahead of the second clock. When one stopped it could be reset by the others, when one gained or lost it could also be reset by the others. Thus, he argued, it was possible to maintain an arbitrary standard – and it was also possible to adjust the concept of time to one’s personal convenience. If he got up late, he could look at the first clock and cherish the illusion that he had risen early. If he felt like going to bed early, he could look at the third clock and demonstrate that it was late. Actually he had long ago lost interest in clock time; though he still liked to feel it was available if he needed it. That was why he took care to wind the clocks regularly. It was a private joke that Liz could never understand.

Clock number three (Greville was in a going-to-bed early mood) struck midnight just as the shooting started. Greville stared at Liz; Liz stared at Greville. They were not particularly worried – merely interested, for the shooting sounded quite far away. And anyway they were separated from it by more than a hundred yards of water. Anyone who wanted to attack them would first of all have to find himself a boat.

‘What the hell?’ said Liz unconcernedly, as she endeavoured to thread a needle in order to sew a button on her shirt.

‘Dogs,’ said Greville. ‘Just possibly rats, but dogs most likely. The fog has probably drawn them into the village. They’ll be looking for easy pickings. They don’t need vision as much as human beings do.’

Liz shuddered, remembering her own encounter with dogs on Chelsea Bridge. ‘I hope they are in for a nasty surprise. To be eaten by dogs is bad enough, but to be eaten by dogs in a pea-soup – that’s the absolute end.’

Greville laughed. ‘The female mind never ceases to surprise me. If you’re going to die, what does it matter whether you die in summer or winter, in sunlight or in fog?’

‘A hell of a lot,’ retorted Liz. ‘When I die I want to be able to have a last look at something worth seeing … We’ll have to go scrounging again pretty soon.

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