The Complete Short Stories

‘Neill… Neill,’ he whispered. The sounds, thin and strangled, seemed to be coming from the bottom of a well. ‘Neill… Neill… Neill..

Neill stroked his forehead with a small, neat hand.

‘Yes, Bobby,’ he said gently. His voice was feather-soft, caressing. ‘I’m here, Bobby. You can come out now.’

1957

Track 12

‘Guess again,’ Sheringham said.

Maxted clipped on the headphones, carefully settled them over his ears. He concentrated as the disc began to spin, trying to catch some echo of identity.

The sound was a rapid metallic rustling, like iron filings splashing through a funnel. It ran for ten seconds, repeated itself a dozen times, then ended abruptly in a string of blips.

‘Well?’ Sheringham asked. ‘What is it?’

Maxted pulled off his headphones, rubbed one of his ears. He had been listening to the records for hours and his ears felt bruised and numb.

‘Could be anything. An ice-cube melting?’

Sheringham shook his head, his little beard wagging.

Maxted shrugged. ‘A couple of galaxies colliding?’

‘No. Sound waves don’t travel through space. I’ll give you a clue. It’s one of those proverbial sounds.’ He seemed to be enjoying the catechism.

Maxted lit a cigarette, threw the match onto the laboratory bench. The head melted a tiny pool of wax, froze and left a shallow black scar. He watched it pleasurably, conscious of Sheringham fidgeting beside him.

He pumped his brains for an obscene simile. ‘What about a fly—’

‘Time’s up,’ Sheringham cut in. ‘A pin dropping.’ He took the 3-inch disc off the player, angled it into its sleeve.

‘In actual fall, that is, not impact. We used a fifty-foot shaft and eight microphones. I thought you’d get that one.’

He reached for the last record, a 12-inch LP, but Maxted stood up before he got it to the turntable. Through the french windows he could see the patio, a table, glasses and decanter gleaming in the darkness. Sheringham and his infantile games suddenly irritated him; he felt impatient with himself for tolerating the man so long.

‘Let’s get some air,’ he said brusquely, shouldering past one of the amplifier rigs. ‘My ears feel like gongs.’

‘By all means,’ Sheringham agreed promptly. He placed the record carefully on the turntable and switched off the player. ‘I want to save this one until later anyway.’

They went out into the warm evening air. Sheringham turned on the Japanese lanterns and they stretched back in the wicker chairs under the open sky.

‘I hope you weren’t too bored,’ Sheringham said as he handled the decanter. ‘Microsonics is a fascinating hobby, but I’m afraid I may have let it become an obsession.’

Maxted grunted non-committally. ‘Some of the records are interesting,’ he admitted. ‘They have a sort of crazy novelty value, like blown-up photographs of moths’ faces and razor blades. Despite what you claim, though, I can’t believe microsonics will ever become a scientific tool. It’s just an elaborate laboratory toy.’

Sheringham shook his head. ‘You’re completely wrong, of course. Remember the cell division series I played first of all? Amplified 100,000 times animal cell division sounds like a lot of girders and steel sheets being ripped apart — how did you put it? — a car smash in slow motion. On the other hand, plant cell division is an electronic poem, all soft chords and bubbling tones. Now there you have a perfect illustration of how microsonics can reveal the distinction between the animal and plant kingdoms.’

‘Seems a damned roundabout way of doing it,’ Maxted commented, helping himself to soda. ‘You might as well calculate the speed of your car from the apparent motion of the stars. Possible, but it’s easier to look at the speedometer.’

Sheringham nodded, watching Maxted closely across the table. His interest in the conversation appeared to have exhausted itself, and the two men sat silently with their glasses. Strangely, the hostility between them, of so many years’ standing, now became less veiled, the contrast of personality, manner and physique more pronounced. Maxted, a tall fleshy man with a coarse handsome face, lounged back almost horizontally in his chair, thinking about Susan Sheringham. She was at the Turnbulls’ party, and but for the fact that it was no longer discreet of him to be seen at the Turnbulls’ — for the all-toofamiliar reason — he would have passed the evening with her, rather than with her grotesque little husband.

He surveyed Sheringham with as much detachment as he could muster, wondering whether this prim unattractive man, with his pedantry and in-bred academic humour, had any redeeming qualities whatever. None, certainly, at a casual glance, though it required some courage and pride to have invited him round that evening. His motives, however, would be typically eccentric.