the Dark Light Years

by Brian W Aldiss

  "Good luck in your work, Melmoth," said the adjutant. "We'll be seeing you in a year's time.”

  "Adios, Sam, and I'm sorry about that black eye 1 gave you," Quilter said, clapping Ainson on the back.

  "Are you sure there's nothing else you need?" asked Mrs. Warhoon.

  Responding as adequately as possible to their words, Aylmer turned and hobbled into his new home.

  They had rigged him ingenious crutches to combat the gravity, but he had yet to get accustomed to them.

  He went and lay down on his bed, put his hands behind his head, and listened to them departing.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Gansas, or the various men working in teams on it. found many marvelous things. Science had rarely had such a spread.

  Before the ship blasted off, the team that worked with Navigator Marcel Gleet finished computations that revealed the extraordinary eccentricity of Pestalozzi's orbit Night was a gay affair on Pestalozzi at this period. When the saffron-colored sun sank towards the western horizon, the lengthening shadows split in twain and a bright yellow star was revealed to the south.

  This star, though it showed no perceptible disc to the naked eye, shone almost as brightly as a full moon on Earth. And before it in its turn could be carried by the ride of the world below the horizon, another star rose to champion the cause of light This was a welcome white star that burnt till morning, fading from view only when the saffron sun was again strong enough to take over its recurrent duties.

  What Gleet, his comrades, and his computers found was this: that the white, yellow, and saffron suns formed a triple system, and revolved about one another. And once in every so many years, they came close enough to interfere with the orbit of Pestalozzi. Attracted by the mass of the other two suns, the planet would break loose from its sun's attraction and take up an orbit around one of the rivals. When the same juxtaposition occurred again, many years later, the planet would pass to the third sun, and so eventually back to its first partner. like a flirt in an "Excuse me" dance.

  The discovery gave cause for wonder as well as mathematics. Among other things, it explained the hardihood of the aliens, for the range of temperatures they would have to withstand, to say nothing of the cataclysmic nature of the upheaval of changing suns, was something that a man could only contemplate with awe.

  As Lattimore remarked, this astronomic fact by itself went a long way towards explaining the stolidity of temperament and the imperviousness to pain of the aliens. They had developed under conditions that would have put a check to terrestrial life almost at its inception.

  The Gansas, continuing its reconnaissance, touched down on fourteen other planets in the six-sun cluster. On four of them, man could live comfortably, and on three of those four ideal conditions were found. These were plainly planets of the greatest potential value to man; they were named (the padre finally swung it on the captain) Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers (since it was con-ceded that nobody would tolerate a planet called Leviticus).

  On these planets, and on four others where the climate or the atmosphere was intolerable to man, the aliens were found. Though their numbers were comparatively few, their toughness was effectively established.

  Unhappily, there were incidents. On Genesis, a group of wrinkled-hided aliens were allowed aboard the Gansas. At Mrs., Warhoon's insistence, they were taken to the communications deck, and there she attempted to speak to them, partly with sounds and signs, partly with visipictures which Lattimore and Quilter showed upon a screen. She imitated alien sounds, and they imitated her voice. The omens were promising, when by ill luck the aliens captive on the deck below made themselves heard.

  What was said could only be imagined, but at once the aliens began determinedly to escape. Quilter bravely tried to get in their way. He was knocked down and received a broken arm for his trouble.

  The aliens stuck in the elevator and had to be exterminated. The disappointment at this misadventure was general.

  On one of the rougher planets, where it was generally conceded that man would have a thin time surviving, something worse happened.

  This planet was named Gansas. It was the last to be visited, and one might have fancied that word of man's coming had preceded him.

  In the remote and rocky plateau of the northern hemi-sphere lived a savage lifeform informally christened a chitin bear. It resembled a small polar bear, but was clad in a pelt of alternating bands of chitin and long white hair. It was fleet of foot, sharp of fang, and ill-natured. Though its natural prey was the small horned whale of the temperate Gansas seas, it was partial to the sexiped aliens that had invaded its home.

  No doubt this opposition, not encountered elsewhere in the family of planets, had encouraged a little pugnacity in the aliens. At all events, the first group of terrestrials to fire on a band of investigating aliens was met with answering fire. The Gansas, all unprepared, found itself under bombardment from a fortified position set in a cliff.

  A direct hit was sustained in one of the open personnel hatches before the enemy was obliterated.

  It took five days of all-watch shift work on the part of Engineering to repair the obvious damage, and then a further week of patient and laborious inspection and patching to ensure that all the plates of the hull were un-harmed by the shock.

  By the end of that time. Mrs. Warhoon had cheered enormously.

  "Whatever it was I thought I saw when I ran into that statue must have been a kind of brainstorm." she said, cuddling against Bryant Lattimore's knees. "You know, I was all overwrought that day. I really felt - oh, I had the queerest feeling that man had taken the wrong turning somewhere along the evolutionary line or something.”

  "Never disregard your first impressions." Lattimore advised her. He could afford a joke, now that she bad adjusted.

  "Once we get these aliens back to Earth and teach them English. I won't feel so bad. I take my profession too seriously; it's a sign of immaturity, I suppose. But we shall have so much knowledge to exchange.... Oh, Bryant... I talk too much, don't I?”

  "I love to hear you.”

  "It's so cozy here on this rug." Luxuriously she felt the rug, luxuriously let her finger-tips trail over the alternating bands of fur and chitin.

  Lattimore watched her with a detached greed. She had pretty and dexterous fingers. He said, "We hit vacuum to-morrow for Earth. I don't wish to lose sight of you when we get back, Hilary. Do you mind telling me just how emotionally involved you are with Sir Mihaly Pasztor?'“

  She looked uncomfortable; perhaps she was just trying to blush; but before she could reply, there was a rap on Lattimore's door and Quilter entered, carrying Lattimore's 0.5 rifle. He nodded in friendly fashion as Mrs. Warhoon rose from the chitin rug and adjusted her shoulder strap.

  "She's all cleaned and ready for the next spot of action." he said, laying the rifle on the table, though his gaze rested on Mrs. Warhoon. "Talking of action, there's going to be trouble down on the men's decks unless something's done soon.”

  "What sort of trouble?" Lattimore asked lazily, putting on his spectacles and offering them both mescahales.

  "Same sort of trouble we had on the Mariestopes" Quilter said. "All these rhinomen we got aboard, they make quite a lot of droppings. The men are refusing to clear it away without dirty pay. Guess what really annoyed them is that the food synthesizer on Deck H broke down this morning and they were given real old-fashioned meat-of-animal instead. The slobs of cooks thought nobody would notice, but several of the guys are in Sick Bay right now with cholesterol poisoning.”

  "What a way to run a ship!" Lattimore exclaimed, not displeased, for the more he heard of other people's deficiencies, the more highly he valued his own efficiency. Mrs. Warhoon. on the other hand, was displeased, chiefly because she resented the easy comradeship that had sprung up between Bryant and Quilter.

  "Meat-of-animal is not poisonous," she said. "In the backward parts of Earth it is still eaten regularly.”

  She had not quite enough courage
to say how much she had enjoyed it herself, dining in seclusion with Pasztor at his flat.

  "Yeah, only we happen to be civilized, not backward," Quilter said, drawing the mescahale dust into his lungs. "That's why the guys are going on strike against having to swab up these droppings.”

  Mrs. Warhoon saw the sardonic grins on their faces; the same expression sat with some regularity on Mr. War-boon's face. Like a revelation, she saw how much she hated this simian male superiority; and the memory of that gentle and superb statue on Pestalozzl helped her to hate it.

  "You're all the same, you men!" she cried. "You're all cut off from the basic realities of life in a way a woman could never be. For good or ill, we're a species of flesh-eaters, and always have been, Meat-of-animal is not poisonous - if you're sick after eating it, it's your mind that has poisoned you. And all this fear of excreta - can't you see that to these poor unfortunate beings we have captured, their waste products are a sign of fertility, that they ceremonially offer their rejected mineral salts back to their earth when they have done with them? My God, what's so repulsive about that? Is it any more repulsive than the terrestrial religions where living human sacrifices are offered up to various supposed deities? The trouble with our culture is that it is based on a fear of dirt, of poison, of excreta. You think excreta's bad, but it's the fear of it that's bad!”

  She threw her mescahale down and ground it under-foot, as if to reject all artificiality. Lattimore raised an eyebrow at her.

  "What's got into you. Hilary? Nobody's afraid of the stuff. We're just bored with it. Like you say. it's a waste product. Okay, so waste it; don't go down on your knees to it No wonder these goddam rhinomen have gotten no-where if they've oriented their lives round the stuff.”

  "Besides." Quilter said reasonably, for he was used to the unreasonable outbursts of women, "our guys don't actually object to shoveling the stuff. They just object to shoveling it without dirty pay.”

  "But you are both of you missing my point entirely," Mrs. Warhoon began with heat, running her pretty and dexterous fingers into her hair.

  "That'll do, Hilary," Lattimore said sharply. "Come off this coprophilous kick and pull yourself together.”

  Next day, the repaired Gansas blasted off from this forbidding planet, carrying safely inside it its cargo of living organisms, their hopes, their phobias, their grandeurs and their failings, transpontentially and transcendentally towards the planet Earth.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Old Aylmer was partial to his sleep. He strongly resisted Snok Snok Kam's efforts to rouse him until the young utod lifted him up with four legs and shook him gently.

  "You must bring yourself to full wakefulness. my dear Manlegs." Snok Snok said. "Fit your crutches on and come to the door.”

  "My old bones are stiff, Snok Snok. I quite enjoy their stiffness, as long as I'm left horizontal to do so.”

  "You prepare yourself for the carrion stage of life," the utod said. He had over the years trained himself to talk only through his casspu and oral orifices; in that way, he and Ainson could converse after a fashion. "When you change to carrion. Mother and I will plant you under the ammps, and in your next cycle you shall become an utod.”

  "Thank you very much, but I'm certain that that wasn't what you woke me for. What's the matter?

  What's worrying you?1' That was a phrase that in forty years' association with Ainson Snok Snok had never understood. He passed it over.

  "Some menlegs are coming here. I saw them bumping on a round-legged four-legs towards our middenstead.”

  Ainson was buckling on his leg supports.

  "Men? I don't believe it, after all these years.”

  Picking up his crutches, he made his way down the corridor to the front door. On either side of him were doors he had not opened for a long while, doors sealing off rooms containing weapons and ammunition, recording apparatus, and rotted supplies; he heeded this material no more than he did the automatic observation post which had long since wilted, together with its aerial, under the majesty of Dapdrofs storms and gravitational pull.

  The grorgs scuttled ahead of Snok Snok and Ainson and plunged on into the middenstead where Quequo gently reclined. Snok Snok and Ainson halted in the doorway, looking out through the wire. A four-wheeled overlander had just drawn up at the gate.

  Forty years, Ainson thought, forty years peace and quiet - not all of it so damn welcome either - and they have to come and disturb me now! They might have let me die in peace. I reckon I could have managed that before the next esod, and I've no objection to being buried under the ammp trees.

  He whistled his grorg back to him, and stood waiting where he was. Three men jumped from the truck.

  As an after-thought, Ainson went back down the corridor, pushed his way into the little armory, and stood there adjusting his eyes to the light. Dust lay thickly everywhere. He opened a metal box, took a dull-shining rifle from within. But the ammunition, where was that? He looked round at the muddle in disgust, dropped the weapon on to the dirty floor and shuffled back into the corridor. He had picked up too much peace on Dapdrof to go shooting at his age.

  One of the men from the four-wheeler was almost at the front door. He had left his two companions at the entrance to the stockade.

  Ainson quailed. How did you address your own kind? This particular fellow did not look easy to address. Although he might well be slightly older than Ainson, he had not spent forty years under 3G's. He wore uniform; no doubt service life kept his body healthy, whatever it did "to his mind. He wore the well-fed but sanctimonious expression of one who has dined at a bishop's table.

  "You axe Samuel Melmoth. of the Gansas?" the soldier asked. He stood in a neutral pose, legs braced against the gravity blocking the door with his bulk. Ainson gaped at the sight of him; bipeds La clothes looked odd when you were unused to the phenomenon.

  "Melmoth?" the soldier repeated.

  Ainson had no idea what the fellow meant. Nor could he think of anything that might be regarded as a suitable answer.

  "Come, come, you are Melmoth of the Gansas, aren't you?”

  Again the words just baffled.

  "He has made a mistake," Snok Snok suggested, regarding the newcomer closely.

  "Can't you keep your specimens in their wallows? You are Melmoth; I begin to recognize you now.

  Why don't you answer me?”

  A tatter of an ancient formula stirred in Ainson's mind. Ammps, but this was agony!

  "Looks like rain." he said.

  "You do talk! I'm afraid that you've had rather a wait for your relief. How are you. Melmoth? You don't remember me, do you?”

  Hopelessly, Ainson peered at the military figure before him. He recollected nobody from his life on Earth except his father.

  "I'm afraid.... It's been so long I've been alone.”

  "Forty-one years, by my reckoning. My name's Quilter.

  Hank Quilter, Captain of the starraider Hightail Quilter. You don't remember me?”

  "It's been so long....”

  "I gave you a black eye once. It's been on my conscience all these years. When I was directed to this battle sector, I took the chance to come and see you. I'm happy to find you haven't been harboring a grudge against me, though it's a blow to a fellow's pride to find they just are for-gotten. How's tricks been on Pestalozzi?”

  He wanted to be genial to this fellow who seemed to bear him goodwill, but somehow he couldn't get the line of talk sorted out "Eh Pesta.... Pesta.... I've been stuck here on Dapdrof all these years." Then he thought of something he wanted to say, something that must have worried him for - oh, maybe for ten years, but that was a long way back. He leant against the doorpost, cleared his throat, and asked, "Why didn't they come for me, Captain ... er. Captain?”

  "Captain Quilter. Hank. I really wonder you don't remember me. I remember you clearly, and I've done a helluva lot of things these last ... Oh well, that's past history, and what you ask me demands an answer. Mind if I come in?”


  "Come in? Oh, you can come in.”

  Captain Quilter looked over the old cripple's shoulders, sniffed, and shook his head. Plainly the old boy had gone native and had the hogs in with him.

  "Perhaps you'd better come on out to the truck. I’ve got a shot of bourbon there you could probably use.”

  "Eh, okay. Can Snok Snok and Quequo come along too?”

  "For crying sakes! These two boys? They stink- You may be used to it, Melmoth. but I'm not Let me give you a hand.”

  Angrily, Ainson brushed the offered arm away. He hobbled forward on his crutches.

  "Won't be long, Snok Snok," he said, in the language they had contrived between them. "I've just got to get a little matter sorted out.”

  With pleasure, he noticed that he was puffing far less than the captain. At the truck they both rested, while the two rankers looked on with furtive interest Almost apologetically, the captain offered a bottle; when Ainson refused it, the other drank deep. Ainson spent the interval trying to think of something friendly to say.

  All he could think of was, "They never came for me, Captain.”

  "It wasn't anyone's fault, Melmoth. You've been well away from trouble here, believe me. On Earth, there has been a whole packet of woes. I'd better tell you about it.

  "Remember the old-type Contained Conflicts they used to have on Charon? Well, there was an Anglo-Brazilian conflict that got out of hand. The Britishers started contravening the laws of warfare as they then were; it was proved that they had smuggled in a Master Explorer, which was a social rank not allowed in the conflicts - in case they took advantage of their expert knowledge to exploit the local terrain, you know - I studied the whole incident in Mil Hist school, but you forget the finer details.

  Anyhow, this explorer fellow, Ainson, was brought back from Charon to Earth for trial, and he was shot, and the Brazilians said he committed suicide, and the Britishers said the Brazilians shot him. and well, the States got involved - turned out an American revolver was found out-side the prison, and in no time a war blew up, just like old times.”