HARM

by Brian W Aldiss

  “There’s news for you,” said the younger of the two guards.

  He made no answer. He was full of fear. His throat was dry and almost choked him.

  He was dragged into one of the interrogation rooms. It had undergone some redecoration since he was last in there. On one wall hung a blown-up photograph of a man suspended by a hook through his back. His head, though not actually severed from his body, hung by a strip of skin against his chest. He was naked. His genitals had been severed.

  Underneath the picture, someone had scrawled “Love will find a way.”

  The room was dark, except for a bright spot which shone into Paul’s eyes as he was secured to the chair.

  He sat there, unmoving, eyes closed, waiting. After a long wait, a man in heavy shoes or boots entered the room by a rear door. He scraped a chair about and then was sitting, invisible behind the glare of the light, facing Paul across the table.

  “You again,” he said. Then, with sarcasm in his reedy voice, “Nice to see you again.”

  Paul made no response. This was not Abraham Ramson. Abraham Ramson was long gone. This was a minion, an English minion. Possibly a youngish man out to make his mark in this vile profession.

  “Bit cold today, ain’t it?” Spoken in a jeering fashion.

  Again, no response from Paul.

  “I got a bit of news for you, Ali. What you think it is?” A Cockney or Essex accent.

  He managed to say, “Don’t know.”

  “Speak up!”

  “I said, ‘Don’t know.’”

  “Slap ’im abart a bit.”

  A guard duly did the slapping, knocking Paul’s head first to one side, then the other.

  “Awright. Now wake up. It’s a lovely morning outside.” He gave a laugh like a bark.

  Paul heard the bark, saw nothing behind it, no human form. Only the light blinding him.

  “I was up at sparrow fart. How about you, Ali?” More humor. “So, like, what was the name of this book you writ?”

  “Pied Piper of Hament.”

  “How long was you sat there writing it?”

  “About a year.”

  “What was the story about?”

  “Life in England. And in a fantasy world. Comedy.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t no comedy. You’re lying. It was about this black bloke married to a white girl. These here guards don’t like fucking liars, do you, guards?”

  He was hit and kicked. Being strapped in the chair, he was unable to evade the blows.

  “So you made a scad of dosh out of this lousy book of yours.”

  “Not much.”

  “What nationality would you say you was?”

  “I’m English. You have my passport. It says there I’m English.”

  “So how come you got this weird Islamic name, then?”

  “I—it’s my father’s name. I can have a Muslim name and still be English.”

  “Then how come you Muslims are trying to destroy our culture?”

  He wanted to ask what culture exactly this loathsome minion possessed, but did not dare, for fear of the beating that would surely follow such a remark.

  “Muslims, no. Only a few terrorists…”

  Yet he thought to himself, as the minion started to rant about this and that, that many Muslims had made the mistake of living apart, emphasizing their difference by insisting on dressing differently, on living tribally, on remaining woefully ill-educated, as many had lived for generations in dusty distant villages. Little had changed in two thousand years. Unlike the Hindus, who slipped successfully into British life, many men he knew kept their wives imprisoned in their houses, unable to speak a word of English. He had integrated, had naïvely thought himself English; now he was being disabused.

  AND YET…ALL PREJUDICE ASIDE, Muslims were right, surely, to disapprove of the behavior of many young English, the binge-drinkers of both sexes, the young women dressed as if ready for immediate promiscuous sex. The display of female navels. The disrespect shown to their seniors.

  The minion was saying, “Here’s another bit of goo’ news for you. Guess what?”

  He made no answer. He just wished to die. It was the tiny red ant again.

  “I said guess fucking what?”

  “Oh god, I don’t know. My release has come through?”

  “You getting impatient or summing? No, even better than that. This bird what you married, this Doris…”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, she had a bit of a heart attack in here, didn’t she?”

  “Is she all right?”

  “All right? All right! I s’pose you could say that, ’cos she had a lot of convulsions and she pegged out.”

  “Oh, you wicked wicked bastards…”

  “It was awful to watch. Her shitting herself. Red in the face, writhing about on th’ floor. We couldn’t stop laughing…”

  “Oh. Oh. Oh. Damn you all to bloody fucking hell…”

  “Take this bugger away, guards. Maybe he’ll see the funny side in a bit.”

  Chuckling at this remark, the guards unstrapped Prisoner B and dragged him away.

  Back in his black room, he lay motionless, too choked with sorrow even to cry. The ghastly barbarous injustice of the world…

  Time passed like the creak of a floorboard under a slow tread. A man called “the Doctor” entered the chamber and stirred him with his foot.

  “Ali?”

  No response.

  “You’ll go catatonic, man, if you don’t move yourself…” He produced a syringe.

  A VOICE WAS SAYING, over and over, “It’s a psychotic hallucination, it’s a psychotic hallucination, it’s a psychotic hallucination, it’s a psychotic hallucination,” on and on.

  He could not tell where the voice was coming from.

  “Oh, he’s coming round at last, I reckon…” It was a woman speaking.

  She forced a bitter medicine between his lips. He gagged on it.

  “There, now, that’s better, isn’t it, dear?”

  “I thought you were dead, Doris, my precious love.”

  “Who’s this Doris you’re on about? It’s Bellamia. I’m Bellamia. Why don’t you rember me?”

  “Bellamia…”

  Later, he sat up. She supported him against her soft body. Breathing was a labor for him. He welcomed her warmth.

  “I’ll take the bandage off.”

  “Oh, Bellamia…thank you…It’s Stygia, isn’t it? I’m back on Stygia. It’s my mind…”

  He broke into a storm of weeping. He drew his knees up to his face as his whole body shook with his tears, which were extruded with force.

  “There, there, you’re better now.”

  “Oh, how can I ever be better?”

  She made motherly comforting noises while smoothing the back of his head. “That was some hit you got. Those iggerant swines…Now we have to set you on your feet again. There’s someone wants to see you.”

  She helped him to stand and led him to the window. His eyelids retreated into their hiding places of flesh, yet he saw nothing. Only gradually there dawned to his sight a misty view. He could not tell what he was gazing on. He seemed to discern a series of rounded teeth, stacked somewhere among bones, wrapped in a loathsome mist which coiled up from the ground. Where this dreadful vision was located he knew not.

  He stared at it in fear, his body still wracked with sobs.

  Only gradually did the mist clear, the prospect resolve itself. The rounded teeth became the helmets of soldiers, the bones the staves they carried. And these men stood in the old simple square of Haven, evidently awaiting orders.

  He propped himself against the lintel of the low window, panting with relief.

  “Oh, dear Bellamia…,” he said. “Deformity…How did it all happen? Why?”

  “There, there, my love!”

  Immense gratitude filled him for her tender care of him. He put an arm about her and kissed her cheek.

  It took half a day for him t
o pull himself together again, and then he was led into the presence of Essanits.

  Essanits was sitting at a rough-hewn table, concentrating on a small insect-animal. The small creature was balancing on its folded back legs. It was sharp-faced, its upper body covered in a chitinous armor. When Fremant entered, it seemed to take fright and half-curled into a ball, so that the plates of its armor showed clearly. Essanits whispered softly to it and it resumed its normal shape.

  Without taking his eyes from the creature, which Fremant recognized as a dacoim, Essanits slowly brought a cage from one side and set it over the dacoim, which scuttled about from one side to another, trying to escape from its imprisonment.

  Only then did Essanits look up. “I love this creature, as God loves us,” he said sternly, fixing Fremant with his dark regard. “It is intelligent. I do not want it to escape.”

  “If it loved you back, it would not wish to escape,” said Fremant.

  Essanits’s large, hard face performed a kind of smile, as his large, pale lips spread across his lower cheeks. “You have some authority to say that, Fremant?”

  “I know what it is like to be in captivity and to be tortured.”

  The voice of the other sank by an octave. “I wish only to tame this poor wild thing. Imagine if we could teach dacoims to believe in God…We should then have a better world.”

  He hesitated, wide, pale lips slightly open, before saying, “We have a chance for that better world. You may have considered that since we were reconstituted, we have no nationalities such as caused such trouble on Earth. We are all one nationality, so to speak. That is certainly a positive thing.”

  Dismissing the subject, he gestured to Fremant to be seated.

  “Much has changed since you came to live out your life in Haven, Fremant. The arrogant extremist Astaroth is no more. Reason and science have replaced him and his regime of extreme austerity.”

  Fremant stared hard at the man sitting opposite him.

  “You mean Safelkty? He’s the science man, isn’t he? You aren’t so keen. Is that why you lost the leadership? Is that why you are here?”

  Essanits looked down at the table and sighed. Then he lifted his head and said evasively, “I have a mission, in which I trust you will be involved.” He rose and went to the door, to summon in Chankey and two other men. These others he introduced as Tragonn and Klarnort, both short, stocky men, clad in leather. They gave Essanits a salute, smiling uneasily.

  Rising to his feet, Essanits said, directing his words as much to the two newcomers as to Fremant, “To us is given an honorable task. We have to trek to the land called Incessible, where we understand a small body of Dogovers still survives. We must bring these little Dogovers back to Stygia City, to reinstate them, nourish them, and do everything in our command to make amends for the genocide perpetrated by the previous regime of Astaroth—in which, to my regret, I—I was also involved.”

  “The journey will cause harmship,” said Chankey. “It’s your chance to make you feel better—make amens.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. Hardship.” Essanits’s lips closed tightly over the word.

  “Why can’t you go on your lone?”

  “Only a small company can get through to Incessible.”

  He spoke sharply. He turned to Fremant. “Since you have some experience crossing alien territory, we want you to accompany us. You have an obligation to me. I shall be glad to have you with us on the trek—despite the psychotic interludes to which you are subject. We also expect that your friend, Utrersin, the gunmaker, will come with us.”

  “NO, I AIN’T GOING on this mad trek,” said Utrersin when approached by Essanits and Fremant. “Why should I? I never killed none of these Dogovers, not like you. ’Sides, Incessible Land, that’s far away. You’ll never make it there and back. You’ll die on the way. You can go, but I ain’t going with you.”

  Essanits wrinkled his brow, but said in his most civil manner, “You must surely feel you have a moral obligation to make restitution to the Dogovers.”

  “No, I don’t feel no moral obligaten at all,” said Utrersin, shaking his heavy locks. “I were told not so long ago I had one of these moral obligatens to kill ’em all orf. So much for all such talk. No, boss, I ain’t leaving home for any idea of the sort.”

  He concluded with a snort of contempt, much like a horse neighing—like an image of the prospect he was denying.

  “But I will go with you, hardshit or not.” The words came from the shadowy rear of the shop, where stood Bellamia. She came forward. “Essanits, you need a woman with you. Women have good sense and instinct—better than men. Your expition is stupid because it has no one to nurse these poor little Dogovers. Who can do that better than a woman—a good tough gal like me?”

  Frowning, Essanits asked her if she could ride a horse.

  “As good as you can!”

  Essanits glanced at Fremant, sighed, nodded.

  “We get on our way tomorrow.”

  THE MORNING WAS GRAY, with small scudding shreds of cloud traversing a more general cloud cover. Men and horses cast no shadows. Early though it was, a number of Haven denizens had turned out to watch the small expedition depart.

  Essanits was seated on his old black stallion, Hengriss, waiting in silence as the others assembled. Chankey, Tragonn, and Klarnort were armed and each had rolls of bedding strapped to their backs, thus appearing like victims of some strange deformity. Fremant had provided himself with one of Utrersin’s guns, but was otherwise unencumbered. Bellamia had lashed a box of kitchen utensils to the rear of her saddle.

  As well as these six horses, there were three more, two being packhorses, loaded with canvas shelter, food, fodder, and other necessaries, while the third horse was ridden by the person in charge of the packhorses—Wellmod, now of the age of puberty and defying Utrersin. All these horses were humped, the humps containing their air-tubes. Behind the packhorses came a string of young goats, one tied behind the next, to provide meat on the long journey.

  The goats could produce milk and cheese of a low order, and in this way had acquired the name “goat,” though in appearance they more resembled something between a beetle and a spider on a large scale. Each creature was long enough to accommodate ten dainty legs. Six of these goats had been rounded up and tethered.

  Several people gave advice to Essanits, which he acknowledged loftily. His response was to curl his ample lip, his large face unlit. Liddley came up, to try to persuade Fremant and Bellamia not to leave Haven. Fremant sadly shook his head. He reached down from the saddle to shake her hand in a gesture of farewell.

  Elder Deselden looked on from a distance, content to see Essanits leave, but saying nothing.

  When Essanits gave the signal, the group moved off in single file. A pale beam of sun penetrated over the hill to encourage them on their way.

  For the first kilometer or two, they followed a trail and moved among fields of rydall and peppy dirdist and other vegetables. Solitary men or women stood like scarecrows along the way, armed with sticks to ward off marauding dacoims.

  They had almost reached the top of the incline when one of these human scarecrows approached the group. It was a woman, raggedly dressed. It proved to be Aster, who pulled away her customary hood as she seized the bridle of Fremant’s horse. She shook it as if in a nervous attack, but spoke in a low voice.

  “Fremant, I ask nothing of you. I know you to be a callous brute. I know you care nothing for me. I know you to be a murderer and a rapist. Nevertheless, I ask you, I beg you, to take me with you wherever you go. I must escape this bondage.”

  He did not dismount. He asked her what she meant by bondage.

  “Bluggeration! Did you not hear? Do you know nothing? I was sold in the market to this farmer, son of Citrane—all thanks to you! Take me! I will abase myself. I will be no trouble, make no trouble, not even speak to this wench of yours you seem so keen on. All I ask—”

  At these words, Bellamia kicked her horse forward
and struck out at Aster with a stick. “Get out of our way, you little troublemaker! You can die here better than ’flict yourself on us!”

  Aster took the blow on her raised forearm. She screamed and waved her arms about over her head. Fremant restrained Bellamia, saying to Aster, “You have no claim on me. I regret the wrong I did you, but this is a military expedition. You can’t come with us.”

  As if to reinforce his words, Essanits shouted to them not to fall behind.

  When Fremant put spur to flank, Aster seized his leg and began screaming as she ran, half-dragged, beside him. He tried to shake her off, eventually striking her on the side of her head. She fell away. Staggering backward, she fell and lay on the ground, crying and calling. Bellamia, departing from the scene, raised a finger at her.

  The cortege reached the brow of the incline, then crossed over it, out of Aster’s sight.

  They rode through the day, stopping only once to eat unleavened bread and a sliver of insect meat. They were now in wilder country, where the endeavors of mankind did not prevail. At sunset they made camp. They sat around a small fire to eat, but had little to say—except, of course, for Essanits, who spoke gravely of God’s plan, which had surely conveyed them across light-years of space to spread his word on Stygia. Nobody agreed with him, nobody disagreed.

  Fremant and Bellamia slept together that night nearby the others, although he had not forgotten his earlier habit of climbing a tree for safety during the hours of darkness. He lay against her generous sleeping body, staring up at the sky, where the six Brothers hastened by, one chasing the other. Shadows faintly followed them on the ground. In his mind were other shadows, as he reflected on his treatment of Aster.

  As if disturbed in her sleep by his troubled thoughts, Bellamia awoke and sighed voluptuously.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Just thinking things over.”

  Snuggling against him, she gazed up at the great canopy of stars glistening in impressive disorder overhead.

  “Where’s Earth?” she asked. “The solar system?”