Read Online Hostage by Geoffrey Household - Free Book Online Page B

what heat! – out of action. That’s a job on which one would hesitate to use explosives.
    The Action Committee has briefed Shallope most ingeniously. My guess is that he was in actual fact known to be working on a revolutionary engine and that he may have been backed by some endorsement from the Ministry of Defence. Forged? Or do we have a civil servant of the necessary standing?
    I had a meal of sorts at a safe distance and then slept a few hours under the stars and out of the wind. Before dawn I was in position on the open hillside with a perfect view of the road. My camouflage is worth remembering. These dry-stone walls all over the uplands can stand for years without repair, but once storm or the horses of an enthusiastic hunt have loosened the cap stones it does not take long for sheep to do the rest. When looking for Clotilde I had noticed such a gap. In the half light I scooped out a hollow for my body and reached out for earth and the lighter stones to cover me. It was a deal less comfortable than a similar job with brushwood or bamboo but even more effective. Anyone patrolling the bare country could see at a glance that not another soul was there.
    I watched the Groads’ Construction Company truck that we had driven to Blackmoor Gate going down to Roke’s Tining. It returned in an hour with an unremarkable load which can be seen on any highway. It carried two short lengths of drainpipe lightly cased in wood and straw, with innocent ends blocked by wooden plugs just visible. The pipes might be unloaded in a builder’s yard or on any site where drains were being laid. Alternatively, would anyone take special notice if a party of workmen had access to a main sewer, lowered a length of pipe and pushed it into a disused outlet?
    When the truck had driven away towards Northleach and London, Herbert Johnson shook out his clothes in the breeze, picked up his car, paid his bill at Witney and returned home. Enough of this action in the field. I have now to think of action within the bleak uplands and tangled undergrowth of my own mind.
August 9th
    I am about to kill a man. My conscience is uneasy. It now belongs to me, not to an ideal, and has become a dialogue with the self. I use this diary to reveal to me whether one side or the other is lying.
    How curious that I, trained to show no mercy for the sake of man’s future happiness, should be hesitant when I decide to wipe out an individual! I would not have shrunk from killing, for example, in the course of hijacking a plane to rescue a comrade.
    The explosion of this bomb would infallibly bring established society to its knees, spreading such panic and horror followed by the suppression of all civil liberties that the New Revolution becomes acceptable as an alternative. Terrorism is like a painful operation to bring society back to health. Is that why I shrink from assassinating Shallope?
    But the health of society is not of universal value. What is? As I try to answer that, the switchboard of the brain at once connects me to Paxos. From youth on I have experienced similar unforgettable communions when I have known a passing ecstasy which has nothing to do with human society and is, I think, common to all animals. I am only able to describe it as surrender to a purpose though I do not know what purpose there can be except to force me to surrender. What I receive from the switchboard is only a vivid memory of shape and colour, containing neither prohibition nor encouragement nor any undertone of morality. All it conveys is: you are a part of this. There’s a deduction to be drawn, I suppose, from that simple axiom. If I am a part, then what I carry with me into the whole affects the whole.
    To hell with religion, if that can be called religion! Neutrons are what I ought to be thinking about. I am a traitor. I have made up my mind that there must be a limit to terrorism. Therefore I am bound to question whether any terrorism at all is justifiable. I shrink from killing