The Concrete Jungle | Page 6

Mehtar stood, and mopped his brow. "Summon your men, Francis," he said, "they must build a cairn here."
?????"A cairn?" I echoed blankly.
?????"For my brother." He gestured impatiently at the fire into which the unfortunate woman had tumbled. "Who else do you think this could have been?"
?????A cairn was built, and we camped overnight in the village. I must confess that both the Mehtar and I have been awfully sick since then, with an abnormal rapidity that came on since the confrontation. Our men carried us back home, and that is where you find me now, lying abed as I write this account of one of the most horrible incidents I have ever witnessed on the frontier.
?????I remain your obedient and loving servant,
?????Capt. Francis Younghusband
?????As I finish reading the typescript of Captain Younghusband's report, my headset buzzes nastily and crackles. "Coming up on Milton Keynes in a couple minutes, Mr Howard. Any idea where you want to be put down? If you don't have anywhere specific in mind we'll ask for a slot at the police pad."
Somewhere specific . . . ? I shove the unaccountably top-secret papers down into one side of my bag and rummage around for one of the gadgets I took from the armoury. "The concrete cows," I say. "I need to take a look at them as soon as possible. They're in Bancroft Park, according to this map. Just off Monk's Way, follow the A422 in until it turns into the H3 near the city centre. Any chance we can fly over them?"
"Hold on a moment."
The helicopter banks alarmingly and the landscape tilts around us. We're shooting over a dark landscape, trees and neat, orderly fields, and the occasional clump of suburban paradise whisking past beneath us -- then we're over a dual carriageway, almost empty at this time of night, and we bank again and turn to follow it. From an altitude of about a thousand feet it looks like an incredibly detailed toy, right down to the finger-sized trucks crawling along it.
"Right, that's it," says the copilot. "Anything else we can do for you?"
"Yeah," I say. "You've got infrared gear, haven't you? I'm looking for an extra cow. A hot one. I mean, hot like it's been cooked, not hot as in body temperature."
"Gotcha, we're looking for a barbecue." He leans sideways and fiddles with the controls below a fun-looking monitor. "Here. Ever used one of these before?"
"What is it, FLIR?"
"Got it in one. That joystick's the pan, this knob is zoom, you use this one to control the gain, it's on a stabilized platform; give us a yell if you see anything. Clear?"
"I think so." The joystick works as promised and I zoom in on a trail of ghostly hot spots, pan behind them to pick up the brilliant glare of a predawn jogger, lit up like a light bulb -- the dots are fading footprints on the cold ground. "Yeah." We're making about forty miles per hour along the road, sneaking in like a thief in the night, and I zoom out to take in as much of the side view as possible. After a minute or so I see the park ahead, off the side of a roundabout. "Eyes up, front: Can you hover over that roundabout?"
"Sure. Hold on." The engine note changes and my stomach lurches, but the FLIR pod stays locked on target. I can see the cows now, grey shapes against the cold ground -- a herd of concrete animals created in 1978 by a visiting artist. There should be eight of them, life-sized Friesians peacefully grazing in a field attached to the park. But something's wrong, and it's not hard to see what.
"Barbecue at six o'clock low," says the copilot. "You want to go down and bring us back a take-away, or what?"
"Stay up," I say edgily, slewing the camera pod around. "I want to make sure it's safe first . . . "

REPORT 2: Wednesday March 4th, 1914
CLASSIFIED MOST SECRET, Imperial War Ministry, September 11th, 1914 RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES, Ministry of War, July 2nd, 1940 RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT, Ministry of Defense, August 13th, 1988
Dear Albert,
?????Today we performed Young's double-slit experiment upon Subject C, our medusa. The results are unequivocal; the Medusa effect is both a particle and a wave. If de Broglie is right . . .
?????But I am getting ahead of myself.
?????Ernest has been pushing for results with characteristic vim and vigor and Mathiesson, our analytical chemist, has been driven to his wits' end by the New Zealander's questions. He nearly came to blows with Dr Jamieson who insisted that the welfare of his patient -- as he calls Subject C -- comes before any question of getting to the bottom of this infuriating and perplexing anomaly.
?????Subject C is an unmarried woman,