Edmund Cooper: Seahorse in the Sky

“All roads lead to Rome,” he observed grimly. “It seems, friend Norstedt, that we are about to have a rather interesting session.”

IT WAS, INDEED, an interesting session. Also a baffling and bewildering one.

Russell Grahame elected to remain behind the bar. He made a very efficient bartender. Certainly, he reflected bitterly, he was better at mixing drinks than politics. Perhaps he should have taken a vocational aptitude test a quarter of a century ago. Then, perhaps, he might have wound up as a first-class barman in a five-star hotel instead of a third-rate politician, ground to a fine smoothness between the stones of a moribund two-party system. He had resigned from the Parliamentary Labour Party just before they were about to boot him out. With the same excellent sense of timing, he had decided while on holiday in Sweden to resign his seat when he got back.

If he got back… For factors were emerging that seemed to make the prospect somewhat remote…

Still, for a while he did not have much time for thinking, He was too busy attending to the needs of his companions in adversity. Nobody questioned his right to control the bar. In fact, the general consensus seemed to be that he was a damn fine barman. Which was something. And, with his own consumption of whisky, his regret at never having taken an aptitude test increased.

Practically everyone was drinking spirits of one kind or another. Somehow, spirits seemed to be appropriate to the occasion.

All sixteen people were now in the bar, having left their crazy coffins in the middle of the crazy road in the crazy ghost town that was the centre of the crazy non-cosmos into which they had been thrust.

Introductions had been made, chaotically, spasmodically and whenever people managed to remember their own names. The last person to rediscover identity was a slender, decorative West Indian girl, improbably named Selene Bergere. Her deliriously chocolate-coloured limbs fell in a graceful heap as she remembered this interesting fact while disposing of a pretty powerful rum Coke.

She looked to be the youngest of the party, and she had been the last to remember. Russell, glancing at the others, judged that he was probably the oldest in the group. And he had evidently been the first to remember. He wondered if these facts were significant.

Certainly, it was a time for speculation.

Wild speculation…

However, before he lost himself entirely in a welter of fantasy, or got drunk, or both, he decided to review the facts that had so far emerged.

Fact one: there were sixteen people in the same predicament. Eight males and eight females. The sex balance was probably no accident.

Fact two: nobody knew why, how, where or when. Everyone’s watch had stopped, including a battery-powered model that was supposed—so its Russian owner said in perfect English, Swedish or what-have-you—to keep going for a year.

Fact three: everybody had bumps and scar tissue on the backs of their heads. And, bearing in mind the international composition of the party, everyone was able to speak perfect English, Swedish, French, Hindu and Russian while still apparently talking in their own native tongues.

Fact four: everyone had been on the same jet from Arlanda, Stockholm, to Heathrow, London.

Although it had taken some time and some assistance before the younger members of the group were able to recollect this.

Fact five: everybody’s luggage was piled in the hotel foyer—something which Russell Grahame himself had failed to notice—being too intent, he supposed, on finding the bar. He had noticed the pile of luggage, certainly, but he had not connected it with himself or his fellow displaced persons.

Fact six: the town was not a town. Not even a village. It was just a hotel, a supermarket and a few small buildings on either side of a strip of road that ran from nowhere to nowhere. It was more like a film set. And that presented a whole range of possibilities—from joke TV spectaculars up and down.

Fact seven: there were no people. Apart from sixteen prepackaged untouched-by-human-hand humans, there were no people. Significant in the extreme, and a bit anxiety-making.

Fact eight: it was all real. None of your solipsistic finessing. It was all bloody horribly real.

“I have eight facts,” announced Grahame to a man who had just stepped up to the bar with a trayful of glasses.

“I’m jolly happy for you, old boy,” said Mohan das Gupta, age twenty-eight, Indian oil company executive. “How about sticking them in the ice-box for a moment while you supply one lager and lime, one gin and lemon, one large brandy and a Bloody Mary?”

“Furthermore, there are various conclusions to be drawn.”

“Draw them by all means. But don’t be too miserly with the brandy.”

Obediently, Grahame supplied the drinks—but with an immense feeling of frustration. Everybody seemed to be talking their heads off—doubtless propounding all kinds of weird theories about what had happened and why. But the activity, the inquest, was uncoordinated. It lacked discipline and cohesion. In short, it wasn’t going to get any bloody place.

Enter Russell Grahame, M.P., whose constituency meetings had been models of mediocrity and examples of ineffectuality that had constantly astounded the party workers of Middleport North. But, hell, somebody had to do something.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a loud voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention for a few minutes?”

“Why?” Somebody was already fairly drunk. “Don’t you have enough with your own?”

“Because,” explained Grahame patiently, “I dislike being part of a dream that is not a dream, because it’s giving me a headache, and because I would like to get back to London some time—if it is at all possible.”

“Seconded,” said a male, very British voice.

Faces turned towards Grahame expectantly, and he launched into his little speech. “I do not have to dwell on our method of arrival. We will all, I think, carry that little memory with us for some time. Nor do I have to labour the point—and humorous remarks will be appreciated later—that something decidedly peculiar has been done to all our heads. We have no time reference, none of us has any recollection of what happened on the flight from Stockholm to London, and I believe that none of us has the slightest idea where we are.”

“South America,” suggested somebody.

“Hollywood,” countered somebody else.

“Please.” Grahame held up his hand. “What I mean is that we do not have any evidence of where we are. There will probably be an embarrassment of theories, and we can discuss these at our leisure. But the only real evidence we have is evidence of the absurd. We came in what I can only describe as coffins, we find ourselves in a town that is demonstrably not a town, we are taking drinks in a deserted hotel and we all appear to have received the gift of tongues. Now it seems to me that whoever—or whatever—has arranged this interesting situation has done so for a serious purpose. Further, since our luggage has been brought also, I do not think we can assume that our stay is intended to be a brief one.”

“Come to the point, old sport,” called the easily identifiable Mohan das Gupta.

“The point is,” returned Grahame emphatically, “that we bloody well have to organize. Otherwise we may find that we are spending valuable time wringing our hands and crying into our gin and tonics.”

“Excuse, please. What are you suggesting?” The speaker was a striking rather than beautiful dark-haired woman of perhaps thirty-five.

Grahame looked at her appreciatively. “Before we go any further, it may be a good idea if we identify ourselves so that afterwards we shall know who has been advocating what. I am Russell Grahame, Member of Parliament… British, of course… And you, madam?”