Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

Ahead of him, a notice on a door said “Flat 26.” The door was locked. Tosher brought out a bunch of skeleton keys, undid it, and went in.

He was in a living room. Everything was perfectly intact. It was the usual sort of middle-class flat; we deal with them by the dozen. Tosher made a rapid inventory of the salable items: stove, TV, tape player, carpet, newish suite, clock, nice little china figure. The rest of the stuff, the paperbacks, yesterday’s newspaper, the pictures on the wall, a big golliwog slumped over the arm of a chair, would tumble with the jigsaw when the demolition men took over. Later, maybe, kids would crawl over the rubble and pull a comic or a little toy out of it.

“Something like twenty-five thousand credits here,” Tosher estimated, jotting the figure down and opening the next door.

He was in the bathroom. It was a nice, roomy bathroom with green tiles all round it and a deep ebony bath and pink and yellow towels on towel rails and a great big airing cupboard. You know. A bit Ritzy. The sort of place that makes you hanker after a bath yourself. One wall had entirely fallen away. Tosher walked to the edge of the precipice and looked down. The bathroom protruded over space, with only the breezes for support. Obviously, he need not waste much time there.

And then, the way I see it, something came over Tosher. Perhaps he suddenly saw in that bathroom the complete futility of war. He thought of everyone who had been killed, from Vic Shepherd, the great comedian, to the lowliest unknown; he thought even of Norton Sykes, the minister they called The Man Who Started It All, whose hideout had ironically been the first to be destroyed in the war he began —perhaps even of my sister Kate, who at one time set out in a practical way to get Judy out of Tosher’s mind and later was killed by a Winged Wallaby, so-called.

Tosher must have seen it all in that bathroom: the way in war you’re busy doing something ordinary one minute and the next—bingo!—you’re in Kingdom Come. Norton Sykes crouching over his battle plans or my sister Kate hanging out her smalls—when the time comes, they all go like that. That’s how it had been in the bathroom too. A nice place and a nice life spoilt forever.

The little glass shelf over the wash basin was cluttered with powder tins, shaving tackle, tooth brushes, and other paraphernalia. On the stool next to the black bath were a child’s pajamas. There was water in the bath; on the water floated a becalmed yacht and two rubber ducks.

It all told its own story. Death comes at bedtime—it sounds like the title of a cheap novel. Everything there looked perfectly in order, except that the big airing-cup-board door was partly open and a woolly bath towel had fallen out; and a tooth glass had teetered off the shelf and shattered in the wash basin. But with the outer wall gone, all those indoor objects looked unreal in the outdoor lighting, as if they were something on a tele or a movie set.

Then Tosher saw another detail. On the edge of the lino, by the sheer drop, was a bloody hand print. The fingers pointed into the room. The print was smudged where the hand had slid over the edge and into the gulf. It had been just a small hand. “My God!” Tosher said.

You could picture it all. Mother about to bath son. Water in the bath and everything. “I think I’d better wash your hair tonight, dear.” Then the Depressors pulling out of their two-hundred-mile dive and screeching off, leaving their suitcases behind. The detonation, and the wall whipped away like a curtain. Blast probably sucked mother out with the wall. Son was bowled to the brink of the ninety-foot drop. He was injured. For a minute he clung there, body dangling in air, perhaps not even struggling to get back to safety.

He hung there and looked at the old order, the soft, warm towels, his little pajamas, the steam rising from the tub. Then he had to let go.

Tosher turned wildly. He began cursing aloud. He cursed the war that killed the kid and blotted out Judy and his own past; he cursed Norton Sykes, who started the war; he cursed the generals who continued the war; he even cursed me, who made a profit out of the war. Then he cursed himself most of all.

He wrenched a crowbar out of his kit and smashed the mirror on the wall so that he could no longer see his own distorted face. He flicked the plug out of the bath; the water gurgled out, splashing over a piano standing forlornly on a ledge which had once been the floor below. Then he hurled the crowbar away.

He watched the metal glint as it fell lazily over and over, finally to strike the pavement far below; and when he turned back, the towel by the cupboard door was moving.

For a minute Tosher did not understand. Then the towel was dragged aside. A woman was there on the floor, on her hands and knees. Clutching the door, she stood up. She was in her early forties, disheveled, still with a waterproof apron tied round her middle. It was the boy’s mother. The blast, flinging her into the airing cupboard, had knocked her senseless, and there she had lain till the row Tosher made had roused her.

The sight of her petrified Tosher for a minute.

“I thought you were a ghost!” he said hoarsely.

The woman brushed a hand over her forehead.

“Why aren’t you in the bath yet, Mickie?” she asked in a puzzled fashion.

“It’s all right now, you’re safe now,” he said, recovering from his first fright. “We’ll soon have you out of here.”

Her gaze went right through him.

“The bath water’s getting cold while you just stand there,” she said.

“You’re a bit dazed, my dear,” said Tosher, in a gentle voice. “Here, look, let me—”

“I asked you to get undressed, didn’t I?” she said. She sounded rational enough, but her eyes—they were as black as prunes and stared unseeingly through Tosher. “Hurry up and get your clothes off, Mickie, or the water will be stone cold.”

“I’m not your little boy,” Tosher said. “Something— something’s happened. Try and understand. Let me take care of you.”

“Don’t argue, Mickie,” she said sharply. “Get undressed quickly. It’s nearly time for Daddy to come home.”

“Mickie isn’t here!” Tosher explained desperately. “I’ve come to get you out of this, old pet.”

“You must have your bath first,” she shouted. There was a bruise on her temple like mud under the skin where she had clouted herself against the airing-cupboard door. “It’s getting late,” she said.

“Can’t you see —” Tosher began, gesturing to the little yacht lying on its side in the bath. But he knew she could not understand; the poor creature was not rational.

If he could get her upstairs, the helicart would take her to hospital for treatment. Advancing he laid a hand on the woman’s wrist. With unexpected force, she flung herself onto him. She pounced like a wild cat and began to rip the clothes off his back.

“Get undressed! Get undressed!” she yelled. “You must have your bath, you dirty little scamp!”

Tosher staggered back, putting his hand up to her throat to push her off him. With a quick movement, she bit his fingers till the blood came.

“Into the bath!” she screamed. “Quick! Quickly! Your ducks and boats are waiting for you!”

Under the prod of pain, Tosher acted instinctively. He chopped her under the nose with the edge of his palm and then, when her head was still jerked backward, pushed hard against her chest. She came away from him.

“Your bath . . .” she began surprisedly.

Just for a moment she was balanced on the brink of the drop. Tosher stepped forward to grab her. Their fingers touched. Then she was falling backward, outward, her mouth fixed in an astonished, silent, “Oh!”