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THE WIND FROM NOWHERE

by J.G. Ballard

Published by arrangement with the author's agent.

BERKLEY MEDALLION EDITION, JUNE 1962

CONTENTS

1 The Coming of the Dust

2 From the Submarine Pens

3 Vortex over London

4 The Corridors of Pain

5 The Scavengers

6 Death in a Bunker

7 The Gateways of the Whirlwind

8 The Tower of Hardoon

The Coming of the Dust

The dust came first.

Donald Maitland noticed it as he rode back in the taxi from London Airport, after waiting

a fruitless 48 hours for his PanAmerican flight to Montreal. For three days not a single aircraft

bad got off the ground. Weather conditions were freak and persistent--ten-tenths cloud and a

ceiling of 700 feet, coupled with unusual surface turbulence, savage crosswinds of almost

hurricane force that whipped across the runways and had already groundlooped two 707's on their

take-off runs. The great passenger terminus building and the clutter of steel huts behind it were

clogged with thousands of prospective passengers, slumped on their baggage in long straggling

queues, trying to make sense of the continuous crossfire of announcements and counter-

announcements.

Something about the build-up of confusion at the airport warned Maitland that it might be

another two or three days before he actually took his seat in an aircraft. He was well back in a

queue of about 300 people, and many of these were husbands standing in for their wives as well.

Finally, fed up and longing for a bath and a soft bed, he had picked up his two suitcases,

shouldered his way-through the melee of passengers and airport police to the car foyer, and

climbed into a taxi.

The ride back to London depressed him. It took half an hour to get out of the airport, and

then the Great West Road was a chain of jams. His departure from England, long pondered and

planned, culmination of endless heart-searching (not to speak of the professional difficulties

involved in switching his research fellowship at the Middlesex to the State Hospital at Vancouver)

had come to a dismal anticlimax, all the more irritating as he had given in to the rather

adolescent whim of walking out without telling Susan.

Not that she would have been particularly upset. At the beach house down at Worthing where

she was spending the summer, the news would probably have been nothing more than an excuse for

another party or another sports coupé, whichever seemed the most interesting. Still, Maitland

_had_ hoped that the final quiet letter of resignation with its Vancouver postmark might have

prompted at least a momentary feeling of pique, a few seconds of annoyance, on Susan's part. He

had hoped that even the most obtuse of her boy friends would detect it, and it would make them

realize that he was something more than her private joke figure.

Now, however, the pleasure of such a letter would have to be deferred. Anyway, Maitland

reflected, it was only a small part of the great feeling of release he had experienced since his

final decision to leave England. As the taxi edged through the Hounslow traffic, he looked out at

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the drab shopfronts and grimy areaways, the congested skyline against the dark low cloud like a

silhouette of hell. It was only 4 o'clock but already dusk was coming in, and most of the cars had

their lights on. The people on the pavements had turned up their collars against the hard gritty

wind which made the late June day seem more like early autumn.

Chin in one hand, Maitland leaned against the window, reading the flapping headlines on

the newspaper stands.

QUEEN MARY AGROUND NEAR CHERBOURG

High Winds Hamper Rescue Launches

A good number of would-be passengers who should have picked up the liner at Southampton

had been at the airport, Maitland remembered, but she had been over a week late on her live-day

crossing of the Atlantic, having met tremendous seas headwinds like a wall of steel. If they were

actually trying to take off passengers, it looked as if the great ship was in serious trouble.

The taxi window was slightly open at the top. In the angle between the pillar and the

ledge Maitland noticed that a pile of fine brown dust had collected, almost a quarter of an inch

thick at its deepest point. Idly, he picked up a few grains and rubbed them between his fingers.

Unlike the usual gray detritus of metropolitan London, the grains were sharp and crystalline, with

a distinctive red-brown coloring.

They reached Notting Hill, where the traffic stream slowed to move around a gang of

workmen dismembering a large elm that had come down in the wind. The dust lay thickly against the

curb stones, silting into the crevices in the low walls in front of the houses, so that the street

resembled the sandy bed of some dried-up mountain torrent.

At Lancaster Gate they turned into Hyde Park and drove siowly through the windswept trees

toward Knightsbridge. As they crossed the Serpentine he noticed that breakwaters had been erected

at the far end of the lake; white-topped waves a foot high broke against the wooden palisades,

throwing up the wreckage of one or two smashed rowing boats torn from the boathouse moorings on

the northside.

Maitland slid back the partition between himself and the driver when they passed through

the Duke of Edinburgh Gate. The wind rammed into his face, forcing him to shout.

"29 Lowndes Square! Looks as if you've been having some pretty rough weather here."

"Rough, I'll say!" the driver yelled back. "Just heard ITV's gone off the air. Crystal

Palace tower came down this morning. Supposed to be good for two hundred miles an hour."

Frowning sympathetically, Maitland paid him off when they stopped, and hurried across the

deserted pavement into the foyer of the apartment block.

The apartment had been Susan's before their marriage seven years earlier, and she still

paid the rent, finding it useful as a pied a terre whenever she came up to London on a surprise

visit. To Maitland it was a godsend; his fellowship would have provided him with little more than

a cheap hotel room. (Research on petroleum distillates or a new insecticide would have brought

him, at 35, a senior executive's salary, but research into virus genetics--the basic mechanisms of

life itself--apparently merited little more than an undergraduate grant.) Sometimes, indeed, he

counted himself lucky that he was married to a rich neurotic--in a way, he had the best of both

worlds. Indirectly she and her circle of pleasure seekers made a bigger contribution to the

advancement of pure science than they realized.

"Good trip, Dr. Maitland?" the hall porter asked as he walked in. He was working away with

a long-handled broom, sweeping together the drifts of red dust that had blown in from the street

and clung to the walls below the radiator grilles.

"Fine, thanks," Maitland told him. He slid his suitcases into the elevator and dialed the

tenth floor, hoping that the porter would fail to notice the discrepancy on the indicator panel

over the arch. His apartment was on the ninth, but on his way to the airport he had optimistically

assumed that he would never see it again. He had sealed his two keys into an envelope and slipped

it through the mail slot for the weekly cleaner to find.

At the tenth floor he stepped out, and carried his suitcases along the narrow corridor

around the elevator shaft to a small service unit by the rear stairway. A window let out onto the

fire escape which crisscrossed down the rear wall of the building, at each angle giving access to

the kitchen door of one of the apartments.

Swinging out, Maitland pulled himself through the railings and made his way down to his

own landing. Like all fire escapes, this one was principally designed to prevent burglars from

gaining access up it, and only secondarily to facilitate occupants from escaping down it. Heavy

gates six feet high had been erected at each landing and by now had rusted solidly into their

casings. Maitland hunched himself against the harsh wind driving across the dark face of the

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block, watching the lights in the apartments above him, wrestling with the ancient spring bolt.

Nine floors below, the mews in the cobbled yard behind the block was deserted. Gusts of dustladen

air were billowing past the single lamp.

Finally dislodging the bolt, he stepped through and closed the gate behind him. A narrow

concrete balcony ringed the rear section of his apartment, and he walked past the darkened windows

to the lounge doors at its far end. A light coating of dust grated on the tiles below his feet,

and his face smarted from the impact of the countless minute crystals.

He had closed everything up before he left, but one of the French windows had never locked

securely since Bobby de Vet, an enormous South African footbalier who had doggedly trailed after

Susan during a tour live years earlier, had collapsed against it after a party.

Blessing de Vet for his foresight, Maitland bent down and slowly levered the bottom end of

the window off its broken hinge, then swung the whole frame out sufficiently to withdraw the catch

from its socket.

Opening the window, he stepped through into the lounge.

Before he had moved three paces, someone seized him tightly by the collar and pulled him

backward off balance. He dropped to his knees, and at the same time the lights went on, revealing

Susan with her hand on the wall switch by the door.

He tried to pull himself away from the figure behind him, craned up to see a broadly built

young man in a dinner jacket, with a wide grin on his face, squeezing his collar for all he was

worth.

Grunting painfully, Maitland sat down on the carpet. Susan came over to him, her black off-

the-shoulder dress rustling as she moved.

"Boo," she said loudly, her mouth forming a vivid red bud.

Annoyed for appearing so foolish, Maitland knocked away the hand still on his collar and

climbed to his feet.

"Why, if it isn't the prof!" the young man exclaimed. Maitland recognized him as Peter

Sylvester, a would-be racing driver. "Hope I didn't hurt you, Don."

Maitland straightened his jacket and tried to loosen his tie. The knot had shrunk

immovably to the size of a pea.

"Sorry to break my way in, Susan," he said. "Must have startled you. Lost my keys, I'm

afraid."

Susan smiled, then reached over to the phonograph and picked up the envelope that Maitland

had dropped through the mail slot.

"Oh, we found them for you, darling. When you started rattling the window we wondered who

it was, and you looked so huge and dangerous that Peter thought we'd better take no chances."

Sylvester sauntered past them and lay down in an armchair, chuckling to himself. Maitland

noticed a half-full decanter on the bar, half a dozen dirty glasses distributed around the room.

It looked as if Susan had been here only that day, at the most.

He had last seen her three weeks ago, when she had left her car to be cleaned in the

basement garage and had come up to the apartment to use the phone. As always she looked bright and

happy, undeterred by the monotony of the life she had chosen for herself. The only child of the

closing years of a wealthy shipping magnate, she had remained a schoolgirl until her middle

twenties.

Maitland had met her in the zone of transit between then and her present phase. At least,

he always complimented himself, he had lasted longer than any other of her beaux. Most of them

were tossed aside after a few weeks. For two or three years they had been reasonably happy, Susan

doing her best to understand something of Maitland's work. But gradually she discovered that the

trust fund provided by her father supplied her with a more interesting alternative, an unending

succession of parties, and Riviera week ends. Gradually he had seen less and less of her, and by

the time she went down to Worthing the rift had been complete.

Now she was thirty-two, and he had recently noticed a less pleasant note intruding into

her personality. Dark-haired and petite, her skin was still as clear and white as it had been ten

years earlier, but the angles of her face had begun to show, her eyes were now more sombre. She

was less confident, a little sharper, the boy friend of the moment was kept more on his toes,

thrown out just those few days sooner. What Maitland really feared was that she might suddenly

decide to return to him and set up again the ghastly ménage of the months before she had finally

left him--a period of endless bickering and pain.

"Good to see you again, Susan," he said, kissing her on the cheek. "I thought you were

staying down at Worthing."

"We were," Susan said, "but it's getting so windy. The sea's coming in right over the

beach and it's a bore listening to that din all the time." She wandered around the lounge, looking

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at the bookshelves. Uneasily, Maitland realized that she might notice the gaps in the shelves

where he had pulled down his reference books and packed them away. The phonograph was Susan's and

he had left that, but most of his own records he had sent on by sea. Luckily, these she never

played.

"Tremendous seas along the front," Sylvester chimed in. "All the big hotels are shut.

Sandbags in the windows. Reminds me of the Dieppe raid."

Maitland nodded, thinking to himself: I bet you were never at Dieppe. Then again, maybe

you were. I suppose it takes nerve of some sort even to be a bad racing driver.

He was wondering how to make his exit when Susan turned around, a sheet of typewritten

paper in her hand. He had just identified the familiar red-printed heading when she said:

"What about you, Donald? Where have you been?"

Maitland gestured lightly with one hand. "Nothing very interesting. Short conference I

read a paper to."

Susan nodded. "In Canada?" she asked quietly.

Sylvester stood up and ambled over to the door, picking the decanter off the bar on his

way. "I'll leave you two to get to know each other better." He winked broadly at Maitland.

Susan waited until he had gone. "I found this in the kitchen. It appears to be from

Canadian Pacific. Seven pieces of unaccompanied baggage en route to Vancouver." She glanced at

Maitland. "Followed, presumably, by an unaccompanied husband?"

She sat down on an arm of the sofa. "I gather this is a one-way trip, Donald."

"Do you really mind?" Maitland asked.

"No, I'm just curious. I suppose all this was planned with a great deal of care? You

didn't just resign from the Middlesex and go and buy yourself a ticket. There's a job for you in

Vancouver?"

Maitland nodded. "At the State Hospital. I've transferred my fellowship. Believe me,

Susan, I've thought it over pretty carefully. Anyway, forgive my saying so, but the decision

doesn't affect you very much, does it?"

"Not an iota. Don't worry, I'm not trying to stop you. I couldn't give a damn, frankly.

It's you I'm thinking about, Donald, not me. I feel responsible for you, crazy as that sounds. I'm

wondering whether I should let you go. You see, Donald, you're letting me get in the way of your

work, aren't you?"

Maitland shrugged. "In a sense, yes. What of it, though?"

Suddenly there was a slam of smashing glass and the French window burst open. A violent

gust of wind ballooned the curtains back to the ceiling, knocking over a standard lamp and

throwing a brilliant whirl of light along the walls. The force drove Maitland across the carpet.

Outside there was the clatter and rattle of a score of dustbins, the banging of windows and doors.

Maitland stepped forward, pushed back the curtains, and wrested the window shut. The wind leaned

on it heavily, apparently coming from due east with almost gale force, bending the lower half of

the frame clear of the hinges. He moved the sideboard across the doors, then set the standard lamp

back on its base.

Susan was standing near the alcove by the bookcase, her face tense, anxiously fingering

one of the empty glasses.

"It was like this at Worthing," she said quietly. "Some of the panes in the sun deck over

the beach blew in and the wind just exploded. What do you think it means?"

"Nothing. It's the sort 0f freak weather you find in mid-Atlantic six months of the year."

He remembered the sun lounge over the beach, a bubble of glass panes that formed one end of the

large twin-leveled room that was virtually the entire villa. "You're lucky you weren't hit by

flying glass. What did you do about the broken panes?"

Susan shrugged. "We didn't do anything. That was the trouble. Two blew out, and then

suddenly about ten more. Before we could move the wind was blowing straight through like a

tornado."

"What about Sylvester?" Maitland asked sardonically. "Couldn't he pump up his broad

shoulders and shield you from the tempest?"

"Donald, you don't understand." Susan walked over to him. She seemed to have forgotten

their previous dialogue. "It was absolutely terrifying. It's not as bad up here in town, but along

the coast-- the seas are coming right over the front, the beach road out to the villa isn't there

any more. That's why we couldn't get anyone to come and help us. There are pieces of concrete the

size of this room moving in and out on the tide. Peter had to get one of the farmers to tow us

across, the field with his tractor."

Maitland looked at his watch. It was 6 o'clock, time for him to be on his way if he were

to find a hotel for the night--though it looked as if most London hotels would be filled up.

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"Strange," he commented. He started to move for the door but Susan intercepted him, her

face strained and flat, her long dark hair pushed back off her forehead, showing her narrow temple

bones. "Donald, please. Don't go yet. I'm worried about it. And there's all this dust."

Maitland watched it settling toward the carpet, filtering through the yellow light like

mist in a cloud chamber. "I wouldn't worry, Susan," he said. "It'll blow over." He gave her a weak

smile and walked to the door. She followed him for a moment and then stopped, watching him

silently. As he turned the handle he realized that be bad already begun to forget her, his mind

withdrawing all contact with hers, erasing all memories.

"See you some time," he managed to say. Then he waved and stepped into the corridor,

closing the door on a last glimpse of her stroking back her long hair, her eyes turning to the

bar.

Collecting his suitcases from the service room on the floor above, be took the elevator

down to the foyer and asked the porter to order a taxi. The streets outside were empty, the red

dust lying thickly on the grass in the square, a foot deep against the walls at the far end. The

trees switched and quivered under the impact of the wind, and small twigs and branches littered

the roadway. While the taxi was coming he phoned London Airport, and after a long wait was told

that all flights had been indefinitely suspended. Tickets were being refunded at booking offices

and new bookings could only be made from a date to be announced later.

Maitland had changed all but a few pound notes into Canadian dollars. Rather than go to

the trouble of changing it back again, he arranged to spend the next day or two until he could

book a passage on one of the transatlantic liners with a close friend called Andrew Symington, an

electronics engineer who worked for the Air Ministry.

Symington and his wife lived in a small house in Swiss Cottage. As the taxi made its way

slowly through the traffic in Park Lane-- the east wind had turned the side streets into corridors

of highpressure air that rammed against the stream of cars, forcing them down to a cautious

fifteen or twenty miles an hour--Maitland pictured the siy ribbing the Symingtons would give him

when they discovered that his long-expected departure for Canada had been abruptly postponed.

Andrew had warned him not to abandon his years of work at the Middlesex simply to escape

from Susan and his sense of failure in having become involved with her. Maitland lay back in his

seat, looking at the reflection of himself in the plate glass behind the driver, trying to decide

how far Andrew had been right. Physiognomically he certainly appeared to be the exact opposite of

the emotionally-motivated cycloid personality. Tall, and slightly stooped, his face was thin and

firm, with steady eyes and a strong jaw. If anything he was probably overresolute, too inflexible,

a victim of his own rational temperament, viewing himself with the logic he applied in his own

laboratory. How far this had made him happy was hard to decide. . . .

Horns sounded ahead of them and cars were slowing down in both traffic lanes. A moment

later a brilliant catherine wheel of ffickering light fell directly out of the air into the

roadway in front of them.

Braking sharply, the driver pulled up without warning, and Maitland pitched forward

against the glass pane, bruising his jaw viciously. As he stumbled back into the seat, face

clasped in his hands, a vivid cascade of sparks played over the hood of the taxi. A line of power

cables had come down in the wind and were arcing onto the vehicle, the gusts venting from one of

the side streets tossing them into the air and then flinging them back onto the hood.

Panicking, the driver opened his door. Before he could steady himself the wind caught the

door and wrenched it back, dragging him out onto the road. He stumbled to his feet by the front

wheel, tripping over the long flaps of his overcoat. The sparking cables whipped down onto the

hood and flailed across him like an enormous phosphorescent lash.

Still holding his face, Maitland leaped out of the cabin and jumped back onto the

pavement, watching the cables flick backward and forward across the vehicle. The traffic had

stopped, and a small crowd gathered among the stalled cars, watching at a safe distance as the

thousands of sparks cataracted across the roadway and showered down over the twitching body of the

driver.

An hour later, when he reached the Symingtons', the bruise on Maitland's jaw had

completely stiffened the left side of his face. Soothing it with an icebag, he sat in an armchair

in the lounge, sipping whiskey and listening to the steady drumming of the wind on the wooden

shutters across the windows.

"Poor devil. God knows if I'm supposed to attend the inquest. I should be on a boat within

a couple of days."

"Doubt if you will," Symington said. "There's nothing on the Atlantic at present. The

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