Edmund Cooper - The Overman Culture

“Because,” added Michael with unexpected intensity, “I will not have anyone stupidly endangering the Family or the rest of the fragiles. So, if you try any more freelance operations, I might just kill you, Horatio. I mean it. Now don’t say a damn thing.”

Horatio was too surprised to offer comment. For the next few days life went on normally. Or abnormally. Michael’s parents had not required an explanation for his lateness in returning home. Indeed, when he got home, they were already in bed—an unusual occurrence. Father usually stayed up on such occasions to scold, make threats and demand an accounting. The following day, Michael learned that Horatio’s parents and Ernest’s parents had also been in bed when they returned. That, too, was curious. Part of the nightmare game, thought Michael. Part of the deadly game the drybones were playing in their disguise as teachers and parents. He concluded that very soon the fragiles would be forced to devise a game of their own—if they were to survive and remain sane. He had a dreadful feeling that time was running out.

He could not think of any safe place to hide the Winston Churchill books he had brought home; so in the end he hid them in the bathroom once more, behind the end panel of the bath. If his theory of the unexpected were true, the books would not be removed.

They were not removed. Indeed they were never removed until Michael himself took them back to the library. It confirmed his belief that he had learned something about drybone psychology.

Meanwhile, there was no hue and cry about Aldous Huxley—which, also, was unexpected and now, therefore, to be expected. Whoever had taken his body and dumped it on the rocks by the sea seemed just as determined to conceal the operation as Michael was to conceal the fact of Aldous Huxley’s destruction.

Sometimes, Michael felt that all the drybones in London must be quietly laughing at the ineptitude of the fragiles, at the childish attempts at exploration, at the furtive and futile concealments and plottings. Sometimes, in a fit of depression, he thought how much simpler it would be if only he could cauterize his curiosity, somehow close down the terrible need to understand. He had security, he lived in comfort, he could not be touched by the fake war the drybones had invented for reasons of their own.

Did it matter that London was a cardboard city? Did it matter that the Thames was a circle of water and that all roads doubled back? Did it matter that outside this enclosed world there was a greater world where lizards roamed and the sea battered endlessly against the rocks? Surely what mattered most was security. Even an animal in a zoo had security.

And that gave Michael his answer. He did not want the security of being an animal in a zoo. He wanted freedom in a real and natural world, however terrible or dangerous it might be. He knew then that he would risk anything to obtain that. Including his life.

It was a warm, dark evening. Michael had obtained Mr. and Mrs. Bronte’s permission to take Emily to an early showing of The Man in the Iron Mask at the Odeon, Leicester Square. And now, afterward, they were walking hand in hand, deliciously alone in Green Park.

Emily had grown tall and beautiful. Her breasts were full and firm. She had more natural grace than any other fragile Michael knew. He was proud of her, he loved her, he desired her. Recently his need for her had become almost obsessional—perhaps because he was aware that the long years of innocence had gone; and that soon, people who had been conditioned to an endless childhood would suddenly have to begin acting like and taking the decisions of men and women.

Michael had no secrets from Emily, partly because she was a member of the Family, but chiefly because he loved her. He never wanted to have thoughts in his head that he could not share with her. It would be a kind of cutting off.

“I want to kiss you,” said Michael, loud enough to surprise himself.

“Then kiss me.”

They held close together for a few moments, running heir hands lightly over each other’s body, kissing, fondling, caressing.

“The grass is dry,” ventured Michael.

Emily laughed. “I didn’t want to be the first to suggest sitting down.”

They sat. Then, presently, they lay—not seeing each other, but hearing and touching.

“Darling Emily. I want to make love to you…. I suppose I always want to. But tonight I want it more than ever…. Do you mind? Is it—is it inconvenient?”

Again she laughed, softly. “Inconvenient! I love you, Michael. Is that inconvenient?”

“Yes, dreadfully. We are pets in a box, animals in a zoo, my dearest We can’t afford to love. It makes us vulnerable.”

“Hush! It’s dark, but I know there are wrinkles on your forehead, and a sad look in your eyes and your lips are tight…. We can’t afford not to love, Michael. That’s the truth.”

“Perhaps you are right.”

She shivered. “Then love me! Love me as if it were the first time and the last time.”

Michael struggled with buttons and hooks. Artlessly, Emily helped him. Clothes rustled in the darkness. Then there was silence.

“You can’t see me,” whispered Emily. “But I’m wearing nothing at all. It’s so warm, but I’m shivering and shaking—only because you touch me.”

Michael put out a hand, and found the curve of her neck. “I can see you,” he murmured. “Oh, my darling, I can see you!”

He lay on her, and Emily’s legs slowly, luxuriously opened.

Like petals, thought Michael crazily, like petals. A beautiful white flower in the darkness. And there is nectar between the petals, and I wish one could love like this and then die. And I wish….

Emily sighed and groaned, and the petals yielded more than nectar. They yielded fire.

The lovemaking surged inexorably to a mutual climax, while both of them said and did things they did not know they were saying and doing. Afterward, they lay close, still trying to touch each other with hands, arms, legs, breasts, faces, hair. Desire had abated, but passion had not.

Suddenly, Michael felt immensely sad; and because they were so close, the sadness instantly communicated.

“What is it, my love?” Her voice was deep now, rich with fulfillment.

And that changed his sadness into physical pain.

“Soon,” said Michael, “I think you may learn to hate me.”

She sat up. “What for? Whatever for? I love you, that’s all.”

“Darling,” he said harshly, “believe that I love you, too. Dearly, lastingly. Perhaps it would be possible to leave it like this…. But, I’m going to blow up the world. I’m going to pull down the decorations, tear away the back cloth, walk through the mirror. I’m going to get to the other side, find the real world, face it, take it for what it is…. Oh, darling, don’t you see? I love you, and yet I’m a bomb. I am going to blow us all to glory.”

She began to stroke his hair, cradling bis head against her breast. “You will do what is best. That’s all. I know you will. Just let us be together—even if we have to exchange The Man in the Iron Mask and Sunday afternoon walks in the park for a world where there are lizards and rocks and oceans and strange horizons. Just let us be together. That is enough.”

Michael’s face was wet. “Maybe I am not a bomb,” he whispered. “Maybe I only have a talent for inspiring mass suicide.”

It was Ernest who arranged for Michael to meet the self-styled leader of the students of North London High School, a drybone called Arthur Wellesley. The meeting had tragic consequences which ultimately forced Michael into a course of action he had not intended.

Ernest and Jane, though their relationship was not as intense as that of Michael and Emily, had become fond of each other and had begun to spend a considerable amount of their free time together. One fine Saturday, they decided to picnic on Hampstead Heath. It was not entirely a leisure project, because Ernest was still working on his map of London and intended to draw in the more important roads in the Hampstead district.