Mandrake by Susan Cooper Page A

a large book. ‘The name, sir?’
    ‘Stewart. John Stewart.’
    The man paused, with his hand on the book. ‘The Reverend?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Ah well, sir, I can tell you that without looking.’ His eyes twinkled. Combined with the twitch, the effect was startling. ‘He went home, a fair time ago now.’
    ‘Home?’
    ‘To Scotland. Edinburgh, I think it was.’
    Queston stood still. ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘O yes, sir, quite sure. A lot of people have gone home, of course. But Scotland, yes, it was Scotland.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘No place like home,’ the man said, like a chanting child, still smiling at him. ‘You’ll be wanting to get back too, I dare say, time’s getting on. From London, are you?’
    ‘No,’ Queston said, and knew, looking at the bright eyes that were keen beneath the cosiness, that he would have to localize himself. He made up his mind quickly. ‘I’m off to Bath.’
    As he uttered the word, incredulity, concern, warning flickered over the man’s face; and Queston gave himself no time to find why the smile suddenly died, but went hastily out. As he swung the Lagonda round towards the Bath road, and Anderson, he was brooding over the first shock of what the man had said. The proof, the innocent proof, of an absurdity that masked the sinister persistence of the thing that the Ministry was doing. Stewart had gone home to Scotland… but Stewart had never lived in Scotland. His father had been a pleasant bank manager in Pinner, with a genteel English voice. The only Scottish thing about the family had been its name: and once, long ago, its roots.
     
    The light was beginning to fade as he came out again into the street. He got into the car, and switched on the ignition. The fuel tank showed two-thirds full. He switched the key back, thought of trying to telephone Anderson in Bath, and then decided against it. He could always spend the night in a hotel when he arrived. Across Salisbury Plain how long a drive was it? Well, time enough.
    He sat in the car, staring out. Farther down the street, groups of youths and girls were pushing and giggling into the thirsty-bright doors of a cinema; content, accustomed to living their lives in their own town, unaffected by change. He looked up, at the dour black building and the neat sign ‘Ministry of Planning’. It was all clever, and ridiculously simple. Exploiting the sense of security that a man had in his own home; glorifying the old atavistic homing instinct until he really believed himself better off where his roots were—even if, in Stewart’s case, the roots had to be dug up by the Ministry themselves. In a country long overshadowed now by greater powers, and fearing all the time the war those powers might bring on them, they had everything on their side: given the chance to duck out from the shadow of disaster, ninety-nine men out of a hundred would be only too willing to do what they were told.
    He sat staring blankly at the steering-wheel. Suppose, after all, that his own ideas were fantasy—or, as Brunner had claimed, half-fantasy. Suppose that the Ministry had managed to harness, by some mysterious means, this new strange force that operated from both inside and outside men’s minds. Then, why ? Mandrake was exploiting the primeval attachment to place, and the desperate longing for peace—but to what end?
    The light died above him as he sat there, and the sky faded to a deep grey-blue. The cinema swallowed its crowds, and stood quiet. He jerked at the starter, and drove out westward to the faint-glowing horizon of the Bath road.
    On all the clear main road to Amesbury he passed no other car. The Ministry needed no rules; their advice was enough. ‘Is your journey really necessary? ’ Well no, it isn’t when you come to think of it, let’s stay at home. Sheep. But remember yourself, remember the hours you stood fiddling with the engine, docile as the rest of them, when you had meant to leave the cottage for London—
    He accelerated