The Fetch Read online

  THE FETCH

  ROBERT HOLDSTOCK

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

  Welcome to the SF Gateway.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One. Resurrection

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two. The Mocking Cross

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Three. Quest for the Grail

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Four. The Wasteland

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Part Five. The Totem Field

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Website

  Also By Robert Holdstock

  Dedication

  Author Biography

  Copyright

  FETCH: — to go after and bring back

  — the ghost or apparition of a living person

  — a fetish (Kentish dialect)

  PROLOGUE

  In the early evening, with the light going, the boy moved away from the white wall of the chalk quarry, slipping slowly into the green shadows of the scrub wood that filled the centre of this ancient pit. Above him, the rim of the quarry was a dark, broken line of trees, stark against the deepening sky. He could hear a voice up there, his mother coming towards that edge to find him. He knew he had to hide.

  He slipped deeper into the bushes, crawling between tall, tangling blackthorn and crowding gorse, merging with the green, his chalk-covered body swallowed by the leaves and bark, so that he was lost within the undergrowth, creeping along the twisting tracks he had marked out over the years.

  His name was called again. His mother was very close to the deep quarry. She sounded agitated, her voice distant but clear in the calm evening air.

  He froze and watched the spiky line of the pit-edge wood against the sky. Then he moved on, touching the heart-shaped fossils he had carefully laid down on the trails. He picked up a chalk block and used it to whiten his body further, rubbing hard against his skin, his face, then crumbling the skin of the chalk and smearing it through his hair.

  His name … the voice quite anxious now.

  The breeze from the silent farmland beyond the quarry curled in through the ‘gate’ to this place, his castle, the open end where men had once approached to work the chalk. It stirred the gnarled branches of the alders and thorns, whipped the bright gorse, eddied in the pit.

  A new shadow appeared above him, against the sky, a figure that peered down and crouched low.

  He froze and closed his eyes, knowing that the gleam of light would reveal him.

  He sensed the shadow move. Earth and chalk rattled from the edge, tumbling down, to crash and spread within the quarry.

  ‘Michael?’

  It’s coming back. I saw it again. Leave me alone. It’s coming back …

  He turned his head, denying the name. The figure prowled above him, searching the greenery below, scanning the white chalk of the pit.

  ‘Come on, Michael. It’s time for supper. Come on …’

  He tried to draw more deeply into the white shells that covered him, into the ancient sea, into the dry dust of the creatures that had formed this place; hide me, hide me. It’s so close again. I saw it. Hide me.

  He imagined the sounds of earth movements, the dull, deep echoes that would have passed through the heaving chalk waters. The feeling soothed him. The shadow called again:

  ‘It’s time for supper, Michael. Come on. Come home, now.’

  The sea in his mind caught him. The trees in the pit shifted in the current. He floated through the chalk sea, grasped the branches of the gorse and thorn that waved in the gentle evening light.

  It was coming closer. He couldn’t go home now. He had to wait. The shadow on the rim of the pit would have to wait. It was coming back. And that was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

  And from above, his mother’s voice, harsh and angry:

  ‘Can you hear me, Michael? Michael! It’s time to go home!’

  The words struck him like a hand.

  Old memory surfaced to hurt him. He stood up from his hiding place and listened to the sudden shout of outrage, the woman’s voice, shocked by his appearance:

  ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  With a sad glance backwards, Michael began to walk out of the pit …

  PART ONE

  Resurrection

  ONE

  She reached for the silent infant, gathered him up, bent to enfold him as she whispered to him.

  ‘Can you hear me, Michael?’ She smoothed a hand gently across the baby’s sparse, ginger hair, loving the touch. ‘Michael? It’s time to go home …’

  She blinked back tears of delight, tears of relief. The man next to her shuffled slightly and flipped a page of his clipboard. It was enough to break the moment and she looked up at him. He smiled warmly.

  ‘May I be the first to wish you a happy and not too boisterous life with this fine young man?’

  ‘Thank you, doctor. Thank you for everything.’

  He looked uncomfortable, peering down at his clipboard through half-frame spectacles. He was an indulgent-looking man, smooth, pink-faced and plump, packaged in a double-breasted suit from Savile Row and smelling sweetly of
eau-de-Cologne. His hands shook a great deal when he talked business.

  ‘There are a few formalities, Susan. Some paperwork …’

  You mean you want your cheque …

  She passed the infant back to the nurse, hating the feeling of letting Michael go. The child began to murmur, becoming restless.

  Dr Wilson led her to a chair in the waiting room of the clinic. ‘Again, Susan, I’m sorry about the unfortunate delay. But the child’s health did give some cause for concern …’

  ‘I know. I understand. We don’t have to talk about it.’

  He looked at her carefully, watching her eyes, then her lips. He said, ‘I’d like to repeat … Susan … I sincerely believe that it was the only way to save his life.’

  ‘I do accept that.’

  ‘And I would like to ask again …’

  She waited for him to finish, irritated with him, aware that he was hoping she would take the initiative. When she said nothing, he prompted her:

  ‘About your discretion?’

  She controlled the feeling of insult and smiled, nodding. ‘I gave you my word, Dr Wilson. I’ll keep my word. As I said, I do understand that there were difficulties.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He passed papers to her for her signature. She scrawled her name gladly, if distractedly. Michael had started to cry and she wanted it to be her, now, who soothed him, who rocked him. She watched the nurse through the clear window of the small nursery. A tap on her arm signalled that there was still another form to witness.

  ‘And when did you say your husband would be here?’

  ‘In about an hour …’

  ‘I need his signature too.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I called him three hours ago. He’s driving down from York.’

  Alone for a while, as Michael was prepared for the journey to his new parents’ home, Susan Whitlock paced the corridors of the clinic as she waited for Richard.

  From an upstairs window she peered down on to the London street below. What she saw there made her swear loudly, unable to keep the concern and distress from her voice and her face.

  She stared down for a long time at the pale, red-haired woman who stood across the road, watching the building. Only when she felt that their eyes had met, fleetingly across the distance, did Susan move away, angry and disturbed that the woman was still there, and that the clinic had done nothing about it!

  Michael had been born two weeks early, an event which had taken Susan by surprise. But a complication during the birth itself had meant a period of several weeks in intensive care, and the Whitlocks’ plans had been frustrated completely. For reasons not given to the parents, the clinic did not allow them to see the infant.

  Even on the day of Michael’s ‘liberation’, a slight infection caused concern at the clinic, and Susan was required to spend a night in London. Only when she was sure that Michael would be released to her did she call her husband in York.

  When the call came through that he was about to become a father, Richard Whitlock was ankle-deep in mud, splashed, soaked and miserable, photographing the timbers of a Viking harbour as they emerged from an excavation site near the Coppergate. He struggled out of the pit to take the call, not really expecting the news that he was about to receive.

  Susan was at the clinic already, and her voice sounded strangely subdued as she described what was needed, and how much she needed him, and soon. She had gone up to Harley Street yesterday, by train from Maidstone, and she wanted to get home now.

  ‘How does he look?’

  ‘He’s beautiful. He’s very quiet. He’s wrinkled. He has a tiny birthmark on the back of his neck. And he has a gorgeous spray of fine, downy, ginger hair.’

  ‘What? All over?’

  ‘No, you fool.’

  ‘Ginger! Ginger?’ Richard ran a hand through his black hair and thought of Susan’s own dark brown curls. ‘Oh well … A bit of a giveaway, but …’

  ‘What the hell does it matter?’ she said sharply, and Richard frowned. He would have expected her to sound fraught, but she sounded angry, which was out of character.

  Gently, he said, ‘That’s just what I was about to say.’

  ‘Can you get away?’ she asked. ‘I really need you.’

  ‘Within half an hour. I’ll be with you by four.’

  ‘Hurry! But drive carefully. But hurry …’

  He arranged for one of the students to complete the photographic record on his behalf, and earned a spontaneous and warm round of applause when he announced the reason for his abrupt departure from the excavation. The motorway to the south was almost empty and he crossed London’s North Circular Road at three in the afternoon, but then crawled in traffic for an hour to Harley Street. He couldn’t park legally and so resigned himself to getting a ticket.

  Inside the clinic, Susan was waiting for him with the infant. After a few minutes’ fuss and hugging, he signed the appropriate papers for the consultant, who wished all three of them a long and happy life together.

  Susan had taken care of the financial arrangement.

  Again, a crawl out of London, this time to the east, into Kent (the car had not been booked for parking on a double yellow line, which Richard took as a good omen). When at last they picked up the motorway they made excellent time to the village of Ruckinghurst, where they had their house, Eastwell, on the hills that dropped sharply to the wide expanse of the Romney Marsh.

  For much of the journey Susan was very subdued, although she responded positively to Richard’s conversation and questions. But she didn’t want to talk about Michael’s natural mother, and Richard imagined well enough why that should be.

  When he asked, ‘Was everything all right? No difficulties?’ Susan was silent for a long while. He prompted her. She sat in the back, Michael asleep in her arms, and stared blankly at the Kent countryside.

  Eventually she said, ‘There was a problem.’

  ‘With the boy?’

  ‘With the mother.’

  ‘She wasn’t there! Surely …!’

  ‘She was there earlier. The look in her eyes … when she looked at me … that look. It …’ She shuddered and stared through the window. ‘It frightened me.’

  ‘Had she changed her mind?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. Of course not. She would have kept the child if she had. But there was something horrible about her look.’

  ‘Try not to let it upset you …’

  It was a pointless thing to say. He winced as the words were articulated. Susan glared at him in the mirror.

  ‘I’m working on it, Rick. I’m working on it.’

  He smiled, feeling grim. Susan had swept her hair back into a loose ponytail, and she wore no make-up; her eyes looked hollow. But she sang quietly and rocked the infant, and after an hour or so the gloom in her mood had passed considerably.

  The rain of earlier had passed over the Channel, and the evening sun was warm and glowing. The woods between their house and the chalk escarpment glistened with green and orange colour. A fresh breeze brought the smells of late summer into the house when they opened the French windows.

  Michael was restless and Susan fed him as she had been shown. Richard tried to familiarize himself with the sterilizing tank, the bottles, the nappies, the instructions, everything taught to Susan in the local ante-natal clinic, everything he had managed to avoid learning himself.

  It was such an odd feeling: to be a father, but not to have been through nine months of supporting: through morning sickness, helping a hugely pregnant spouse up out of chairs, preparing odd concoctions for meals – everything he imagined was the labour of gestation. One hour he had been wading around in mud and Viking timbers, while Susan was teaching art at Maidstone College; four hours later they had a child. And he was theirs until death did them part. They were parents. Suddenly. Incredibly. (And expensively!)

  His head started to spin as he opened the champagne. He had eaten very little since breakfast, nothing more than a sandwich and a cho
colate bar. So when he raised the glass, and clinked Susan’s, and drank to Michael’s health, the wine went quickly to his head. ‘Let’s welcome him properly …’

  Susan sighed, knowing what was coming. ‘All right. Just so long as you don’t get embarrassing.’

  He lifted Michael from her arms and carried him outside. They walked down the long garden, past the ramshackle greenhouses.

  ‘My grandfather built those,’ he said, turning to show the staring infant the whitewashed glasshouses, where tomatoes and spaghetti squash were about the only growing things. ‘Forty years ago …’

  They moved on through the hedges that separated flower from vegetable patches. These made a crude but effective maze system, which his nephews and nieces loved, and the trio walked solemnly through the winding path and down to the fence. The gate here opened on to farmland, a cornfield, now harvested and part-blackened from the burning of the stubble. A few yards away a rough, grassy hump marked the site of a Bronze Age barrow, a flattened tumulus, its identity marked by a rusting iron notice leaning aslant from its summit. The barrow had a catalogue number and was one of several that scattered this high ground, looking out over the marsh to the distant sea. There were three further tumuli in the thin woods across the field, one of them partially cut away by the disused chalk quarry.

  Nothing was buried in the mound, now (or indeed, in any of them). The bones of the single burial were in Dover Museum, the bronze implements and horse trappings that had been excavated were on display in the British Museum in London. Locally, the mound was known as ‘the scar’, although in the Whitlock family they called it ‘the tump’.

  They stood on the mound and Richard said, ‘Make a wish.’

  ‘You make yours first,’ Susan said. ‘I’ll make mine later.’

  She seemed edgy, but the wine had blunted Richard’s perception, so that although he noticed her unease, he did not respond to it.

  He looked down at Michael. The child watched the sky through eyes so translucent Richard felt he could dip in a finger and feel the cool water of the infant’s soul. Michael was so calm. There was something almost knowing in his gaze. Sometimes he stared heavenwards, sometimes at his parents, and at times he turned slightly away, as if he could see something from the corner of his water-blue eyes.