To The Stars

“Will they, Engineer Kulozik?” Radcliffe sat up straight and there was a timbre in his voice that Jan had never detected before. “Do you have to tell them? Simmons is dead, isn’t that enough? His brother is looking after the wife and kiddies. All on the dole. For all of their lives. Do you wonder he was angry? I’m not excusing him; he had no business doing what he did. If you would forget it there would be some grateful people around here. He hasn’t been the same since he found his brother dead.”

“I have a duty…”

“Do you, sir? To do what? To stay with your own kind and leave us alone. If you hadn’t come nosing around here tonight, pushing in where you’re not wanted, none of this would have happened. Leave well enough alone, I say. Get in your car and get out of here. Leave things as they are.

“Not wanted… ?” Jan tried to accept the thought, that these men could feel that way about him.

“Not wanted here. I’ve said enough, your honor. Maybe too much. Do whatever you want. What’s done is done. Someone will be by the car until you’re ready to go.”

He left Jan alone. Feeling more alone than he had at any other time in his life.

Five

Jan drove slowly back to his hotel in Wisbech in a poisonous frame of mind. There was a crowd in the bar at the White Lion which he passed by swiftly and on up the creaking stairs to his room. The bruise on the side of his face felt far worse than it looked. He bathed it again in cold water, holding the damp cloth to his face and staring at himself in the mirror. He felt an absolute fool.

After pouring himself a large drink from the room bar, he stared unseeingly out of the window and tried to understand why he had not yet called the police. With every passing minute it was becoming more and more impossible, since they would want to know why he had delayed. Why was he delaying? He had been brutally attacked, his car broken into, damaged. He had every right to report the man.

Had he been responsible for Simmons’s death?

He couldn’t be, it was not possible. If a man did not do his job well, he did not deserve to have it. When one man in ten had employment he had better be good or he was out. And Simmons had been no good. So he was out. And dead.

“I did not do it,” Jan said aloud, firmly. Then went to pack his bag. The hell with the Walsoken Plant and all the people who worked there. His responsibility had ended when the control installation had been completed and come on line. Maintenance was not his job. Someone else could worry about that. He would send in his report in the morning and let engineerconcent worry about what to do next. There was plenty of work waiting for him; with his seniority he could pick and choose. And he did not choose to stay on at the leaking spirit works among the frozen fields.

His face hurt and he drank more than he should on the trip back. When the car reached the London exit of the highway he switched onto manual control with no result. The computer had been monitoring his blood alcohol level and he was over the legal minimum. It did not relinquish control. The drive was slow, dull, and infuriating since the computer had only a few routes through London and all were out of the way for him. No short cuts. And hesitancy at all crossings, with priority given to any manually operated vehicle no matter how slow. The computer only cut out at the garage door and he exacted a small amount of pleasure from speeding headlong down the ramp and slamming into his space with a fender-scratching crunch. More whiskey followed and he woke at three in the morning to find the light still on and the TV talking to itself in the corner. After that he slept late and was just finishing his first cup of coffee when the door annunciator signaled. He squinted at the screen and pressed the release. It was his brother-in-law.

“You look a little on the ragged side this morning,” Thurgood-Smythe said, laying his coat and gloves neatly on the couch.

“Coffee?”

“Please.”

“I feel like I look,” Jan said, having already fixed on the lie when he awoke. “Slipped on the ice, think I loosened a tooth. Came home and drank too much to numb the pain. Damn car wouldn’t even let me drive.”

“The curse of automation. Have it looked at yet?”

“No. No need. Just a bruise. I feel the fool.”

“Happens to the best of us. Elizabeth wants you over to dinner tonight, can you come?”

“Anytime. Best cook in London. As long as it is not one of her matchmaking sessions.” He looked suspiciously at Thurgood-Smythe who pointed a finger and smiled.

“Just what I told her and although she protested that the girl was one in a million, she finally agreed not to have her. Three for dinner.”

“Thanks, Smitty. Liz won’t face the fact that I’m not the marrying kind.”

“I told her that you will probably be sowing wild oats on your deathbed and she thought I was being vulgar.”

“I only hope that it will be true. But you didn’t come all the way across the city when a call would have done as well.”