The Best of Science Fiction 12

I yawned. Not much to do but go to sleep and try for that erotic dream where I was sinking my fork into a plate of steak and kidney pudding. Or perhaps, if I couldn't get to sleep, I'd try a nice stroll round the crater where St. Paul's had been — my favourite way of turning my usual depression into a really fruity attack of melancholia.

Then there was a knock.

I went rigid.

Late night callers were usually cops. In a flash I saw my face with blood streaming from the mouth and a lot of black bruises. Then the knock came again. I relaxed. Cops never knocked twice — just a formal rap and then in and all over you.

The door opened and Frenchy stepped in. She closed the door behind her.

I was off the bed in a hurry.

I shook my head. "Sorry, Frenchy. It's no go."

She didn't move. She stared at me out of her dark blue eyes. The shadows underneath looked as though someone had put inky thumbs under them.

"Look, Frenchy," I said. "I've told you there's nothing doing." She ought to have gone before. It was the code. If someone wanted by the cops asked for help you had the right to tell them to go. No one thought any the worse of you. If you were a breadwinner it was expected.

She went on standing there. I took her by the shoulders, about faced her, wrenched the door open with one hand and ran her out on to the landing.

She turned to look at me. "I only came to borrow a fag," she said sadly, like a kid wrongfully accused of drawing on the wallpaper.

The code said I had to warn her, so I shoved her back into my room again.

She sat on my rumpled bed in the guttering candlelight with her beautiful, mud-streaked legs dangling over the side. I passed her a cigarette and lit it.

"There were two cops in the Merrie asking about you," I said. "CID!"

"Oh," she said blankly. "I wonder why? I haven't done anything."

"Passing on coupons, trying to buy things with money, leaving London without a pass — " I suggested. Oh, how I wanted to get her off the premises.

"No. I haven't done anything. Anyhow, they must know I've got a full passport."

I gaped at her. I knew she was a kraut — but why should she have a full passport? Owning one of those was like being invisible — people ignored what you did. You could take what you wanted from who you wanted. You could, if you felt like it, turn a dying old lady out of a hospital wagon so you could have a joy-ride, pinch food — anything. A sensible man who saw a full passport holder coming towards him turned round and ran like hell in the other direction. He could shoot you and never be called to account. But how Frenchy had come by one beat me.

"You're not in the government," I said. "How is it you've got an FP?"

"My father's Willi Steiner."

I looked at her horrible hat, her draggled blonde hair, her filthy mac and scuffed shoes. My mouth tightened.

"You don't say?"

"My father's the Mayor of Berlin," she said flatly. "There are eight of us and mother's dead so no one cares much. But of course we've all got full passports."

"Well, what the hell are you shambling around starving in London for?"

"I don't know."

Suspicious, I said: "Let's have a look at it, then."

She opened her raincoat and reached down into whatever it was she had on underneath. She produced the passport. I knew what they looked like because brother Godfrey was a proud owner. They were unforgettable. Frenchy had one.

I sat down on the floor, feeling expansive. If Frenchy had an FP I was safer than I'd ever been. An FP reflected its warm light over everybody near it. I reached under the mattress and pulled out a packet of Woodies. There were two left.

Frenchy grinned, accepting the fag. "I ought to flash it about more often."

We smoked gratefully. The allowance was ten a month. As stated, the penalty for buying on the black market, presuming you could get hold of some money, was shooting. For the seller it was something worse. No one knew what, but they hung the bodies up from time to time and you got some idea of the end result.

"About this police business," I said.

"You don't mind if I kip here tonight," she said. "I'm beat."

"I don't mind," I said. "Want to hop in now? We can talk in bed."

She took off the mac, kicked away her shoes and hopped in.

I took off my trousers, shoes and socks, pulled down my sweater and blew out the candles. I got into bed. There was nothing more to it than that. Those days you either did or you didn't. Most didn't. What with the long hours, short rations and general struggle to keep half clean and slightly below par, few people had the will for sex. Also sex meant kids and the kids mostly died, so that took all the joy out of it. Also I've got the impression us English don't breed in captivity. The Welsh and Irish did, but then they've been doing it for hundreds of years.

The Highlanders didn't produce either. Increasing the population was something people like Godfrey worried about in the odd moments when they weren't eliminating it, but a declining birthrate is something you can't legislate about. What with the slave labour in the factories, cops round every corner, the jolly lads of the British Wehrmacht in every street, and being paid out in food and clothing coupons so you wouldn't do anything rash with the cash, like buying a razor blade and cutting your throat, you couldn't blame people for losing interest in propagating themselves. There'd been a resistance movement up until three or four years before, but they'd made a mistake and taken to the classic methods — blowing up bridges, the few operating railway lines and what factories had started up. It wasn't only the reprisals — on the current scale it was 20 men for every German killed, or 10 schoolkids or 5 women — but when people found out they were blowing up boot factories and stopping food trains, a loyal population, as the krauts put it, stamped out the anti-social Judaeo-Bolshevik element in their midst.

The birthrate might have gone up if they'd raised the rations after that, but that might cause a population explosion in more ways than one.

Anyhow, it was warmer in there with Frenchy beside me.

"Would you mind," I said, "removing your hat?"

I couldn't see her, but I could tell she was smiling. She reached up and pulled the old hat off and threw it on the floor.

"What about these cops, then?" I asked.

"Oh — I really don't know. Honestly, I haven't done anything. I don't even know anybody who's doing anything."

"Could they be after your full passport?"

"No. They never withdraw them. If they did the passports wouldn't mean anything. People wouldn't know if they were deferring to a man with a withdrawn passport. If you do something like spying for Russia, they just eliminate you . That gets rid of your FP automatically."

"Maybe that's why they're after you ... ?"

"No. They don't involve the police. It's just a quick bullet."

I couldn't help feeling awed that Frenchy, who'd shared my last crusts, knew all this about the inner workings of the regime. I checked the thought instantly. Once you started being interested in them, or hating them or being emotionally involved with them in any way at all — they'd got you. It was something I'd sworn never to forget — only indifference was safe, indifference was the only weapon which kept you free, for what your freedom was worth. They say you get hardened to anything. Well, I'd had nearly ten years of it — disgusting, obscene cruelty carried out by stupid men who, from top to bottom, thought they were masters of the Earth — and I wasn't hardened. That was why I cultivated indifference. And the Leader — Our Führer — was no mad genius either. Mad and stupid. That was even worse. I couldn't understand, then, how he'd managed to do what he'd done. Not then.