by Brian Aldiss
‘Does that make me crazy, you nincompoop? Let me give you a good hard fact-reason why I loathe what’s happening on Earth! I loathe mankind’s insatiable locust-activities, which it has the impertinence to call “assuming mastery over nature”. It has over-eaten and over-populated itself until the only other animals left are in the sea, in zoos, or in food-factories. Now it is exhausting the fossil fuels on which its much-vaunted technology relies. The final collapse is due! So much for mastery of nature! Why, it can’t even master its own mind!’
‘The situation may be desperate, but World Government is slowly introducing economies which –’
‘World Government! You dare mention World Government? A pack of computers and automata? Isn’t it an admission that man is a locust without self-discipline that he has to hand over control piecemeal to robots?
‘And what does it all signify? Why, that civilisation is afraid of itself, because it always tries to destroy itself.
‘Why should it try to do that? Every wise man in history has asked himself why. None of them found the answer until your pal Arlblaster tumbled on it, because they were all looking in the wrong direction. So the answer lies hidden here where nobody on Earth can get at it, because no one who arrives here goes back. I could go back, but I don’t because I prefer to think of them stewing in their own juice, in the mess they created.’
‘I’m going back,’ Anderson said. ‘I’m going to collect Arlblaster and I’m going back right away – when your speech is finished.’
Menderstone laughed.
‘Like to bet on it? But don’t interrupt when I’m talking, K. D. Anderson! Listen to the truth while you have the chance, before it dies for ever.’
‘Stop bellowing, Stanley!’ Alice exclaimed.
‘Silence, female! Attend! Do you need proof that fear-ridden autocrats rule Earth? They have a star-drive on their hands, they discover a dozen habitable planets within reach: what do they do? They keep them uninhabited. Having read just enough history to frighten them, they figure that if they establish colonies those colonies will rebel against them.
‘Swettenham was an exceptional man. How he pulled enough strings to get us established here, I’ll never know. But this little settlement – far too small to make a real colony – was an exception to point to a rule: that the ruling régime is pathologically anti-life – and must be increasingly so as robots take over.’
Anderson stood up, steadying himself against the bunk.
‘Why don’t you shut up, you lonely man? I’m getting out of here.’
Menderstone’s reaction was unexpected. Smiling, he produced Anderson’s gun.
‘Suit yourself, lad! Here’s your revolver. Pick it up and go.’
He dropped the revolver at his feet. Anderson stooped to pick it up. The short barrel gleamed dully. Suddenly it looked – alien, terrifying. He straightened, baffled, leaving the weapon on the floor. He moved a step away from it, his backbone tingling.
Sympathy and pain crossed Alice’s face as she saw his expression. Even Menderstone relaxed.
‘You won’t need a gun where you’re going,’ he said. ‘Sorry it turned out this way, Anderson! The long and tedious powers of evolution force us to be antagonists. I felt it the moment I saw you.’
‘Get lost!’
Relief surged through Anderson as he emerged into the shabby sunshine. The house had seemed like a trap. He stood relaxedly in the middle of the square, sagging slightly at the knees, letting the warmth soak into him. Other people passed in ones or twos. A couple of strangely adult-looking children stared at him.
Anderson felt none of the hostility he had imagined yesterday. After all, he told himself, these folk never saw a stranger from one year to the next; to crowd round him was natural. No one had offered him harm – even Ell had a right to act to protect himself when a stranger charged round a rock carrying a gun. And when his presence had been divined on the hillside last night, they had offered him nothing more painful than revelation: ‘You have no sister called Kay.’
He started walking. He knew he needed a lot of explanations; he even grasped that he was in the middle of an obscure process which had still to be worked out. But at present he was content just to exist, to be and not to think.
Vaguely, the idea that he must see Arlblaster stayed with him.
But new – or very ancient? – parts of his brain seemed to be in bud. The landscape about him grew in vividness, showering him with sensory data. Even the dust had a novel sweet scent.
He crossed the tree-trunk bridge without effort, and walked along the other bank of the river, enjoying the flow of the water. A few women picked idly at vegetable plots. Anderson stopped to question one of them.
‘Can you tell me where I’ll find Frank Arlblaster?’
‘That man sleeps now. Sun go, he wakes. Then you meet him.’
‘Thanks.’ It was simple, wasn’t it?
He walked on. There was time enough for everything. He walked a long way, steadily uphill. There was a secret about time – he had it somewhere at the back of his head – something about not chopping it into minutes and seconds. He was all alone by the meandering river now, beyond people; what did the river know of time?
Anderson noticed the watch strapped on his wrist. What did it want with him, or he with it? A watch was the badge of servitude of a time-serving culture. With sudden revulsion for it, he unbuckled it and tossed it into the river.
The shattered reflection in the water was of piled cloud. It would rain. He stood rooted, as if casting away his watch left him naked and defenceless. It grew cold. Something had altered. … Fear came in like a distant flute.
He looked round, bewildered. A curious double noise filled the air, a low and grating rumble punctuated by high-pitched cracking sounds. Uncertain where this growing uproar came from, Anderson ran forward, then paused again.
Peering back, he could see the women still stooped over their plots. They looked tiny and crystal-clear, figures glimpsed through the wrong end of a telescope. From their indifference, they might not have heard the sound. Anderson turned round again.
Something was coming down the valley!
Whatever it was, its solid front scooped up the river and ran with it high up the hills skirting the valley. It came fast, squealing and rumbling.
It glittered like water. Yet it was not water – its bow was too sharp, too unyielding. It was a glacier.
Anderson fell to the ground.
‘I’m mad, still mad!’ he cried, hiding his eyes, fighting with himself to hold the conviction that this was merely a delusion. He told himself no glacier ever moved at that crazy rate – yet even as he tried to reassure himself the ground shook under him.
Groaning, he heaved himself up. The wall of ice was bearing down on him fast. It splintered and fell as it came, sending up a shower of ice particles as it was ground down, but always there was more behind it. It stretched right up the valley, grey and uncompromising, scouring out the hills’ sides as it came.
Now its noise was tremendous. Cracks played over its towering face like lightning. Thunder was on its brow.
Impelled by panic, Anderson turned to run, his furs flapping against his legs.
The glacier moved too fast. It came with such force that he felt his body vibrate. He was being overtaken.
He cried aloud to the god of the glacier, remembering the old words.
There was a cave up the valley slope. He ran like mad for it, driving himself, while the ice seemed to crash and scream at his heels. With a final desperate burst of strength, he flung himself gasping through the low, dark opening, and clawed his way hand-over-fist towards the back of the cave.
He just made it. The express glacier ground on, flinging earth into the opening. For a moment the cave lit with a green-blue light. Then it was sealed up with reverberating blackness.
Sounds of rain and of his own sobbing. These were the first things he knew. Then he became aware that someone was soothing his hair and w
hispering comfort to him. Propping himself on one elbow, Anderson opened his eyes.
The cave entrance was unblocked. He could see grass and a strip of river outside. Rain fell heavily. His head had been resting in Alice’s lap; she it was who stroked his hair. He recalled her distasteful remark about Jocasta, but this was drowned in a welter of other recollections.
‘The glacier. … Has it gone? Where is it?’
‘You’re all right, Keith. There’s no glacier round here. Take it easy!’
‘It came bursting down the valley towards me. … Alice, how did you get here?’
She put out a hand to pull his head down again, but he evaded it.
‘When Stanley turned you out, I couldn’t bear to let you go like that, friendless, so I followed you. Stanley was furious, of course, but I knew you were in danger. Look, I’ve brought your revolver.’
‘I don’t want it! – It’s haunted. …’
‘Don’t say that, Keith. Don’t turn into a Neanderthal!’
‘What?’ He sat fully upright, glaring at her through the gloom. ‘What the hell do you mean?’
‘You know. You understand, don’t you?’
‘I don’t understand one bit of what’s going on here. You’d better start explaining – and first of all, I want to know what it looked as if I was doing when I ran into this cave.’
‘Don’t get excited, Keith. I’ll tell you what I can.’ She put her hand over his before continuing. ‘After you’d thrown your watch into the river, you twisted and ran about a bit – as if you were dodging something – and then rushed into here.’
‘You didn’t hear anything odd? See anything?’
‘No.’
‘And no glaciers?’
‘Not on Nehru, no!’
‘And was I – dressed in skins?’
‘Of course you weren’t!’
‘My mind. … I’d have sworn there was a glacier. … Moving too fast …’
Alice’s face was pale as she shook her head.
‘Oh, Keith, you are in danger. You must get back to Earth at once. Can’t you see this means you have a Neanderthal layer in your brain? Obviously you were experiencing a race memory from that newly opened layer. It was so strong it took you over entirely for a while. You must get away.’
He stood up, his shoulders stooped to keep his skull from scraping the rock overhead. Rain drummed down outside. He shook with impatience.
‘Alice, Alice, begin at the beginning, will you? I don’t know a thing except that I’m no longer in control of my own brain.’
‘Were you ever in control? Is the average person? Aren’t all the sciences of the mind attempts to bring the uncontrollable under control? Even when you’re asleep, it’s only the neo-cortex switched off. The older limbic layers – they never sleep. There’s no day or night, that deep.’
‘So what? What has the unconscious to do with this particular set-up?’
‘“The unconscious” is a pseudo-scientific term to cover a lack of knowledge. You have a moron in your skull who never sleeps, sweetie! He gives you a nudge from time to time; it’s crazy thoughts you overhear when you think you’re dreaming.’
‘Look, Alice –’
She stood up too. Anxiety twisted her face.
‘You wanted an explanation, Keith. Have the grace to listen to it. Let me start from the other end of the tale, and see if you like it any better.
‘Neanderthal was a species of man living in Europe some eighty thousand and more years ago, before homo sap came along. They were gentle creatures, close to nature, needing few artefacts, brain cases bigger even than homo sap. They were peaceful, unscientific in a special sense you’ll understand later.
‘Then along came a different species, the Crows – Cro-Magnons, you’d call them – Western man’s true precursors. Being warlike, they defeated the Neanderthals at every encounter. They killed off the men and mated with the Neanderthal women, which they kept captive. We, modern man, sprang from the bastard race so formed. This is where Arlblaster’s theory comes in.
‘The mixture never quite mixed. That’s why we still have different, often antagonistic, blood groups today – and why there are inadequate neural linkages in the brain. Crow and Neanderthal brains never established full contact. Crow was dominant, but a power-deprived lode of Neanderthal lingered on, as apparently vestigial as an appendix.’
‘My God, I’d like a mescahale,’ Anderson said. They had both sat down again, ignoring the occasional beads of moisture which dripped down their necks from the roof of the cave. Alice was close to him, her eyes bright in the shadow.
‘Do you begin to see it historically, Keith? Western man with this clashing double heritage in him has always been restless. Freud’s theory of the id comes near to labelling the Neanderthal survivor in us. Arthur Koestler also came close. All civilisation can be interpreted as a Crow attempt to vanquish that survivor, and to escape from the irrational it represents – yet at the same time the alien layer is a rich source for all artists, dreamers, and creators: because it is the very well of magic.
‘The Neanderthal had magic powers. He lived in a dawn age, the dawn of rationality, when it’s no paradox to say that supernatural and natural are one. The Crows, our ancestors, were scientific, or potentially scientific – spear-makers, rather than fruit-gatherers. They had a belief, fluctuating at first maybe, in cause and effect. As you know, all Western science represents a structure built on our acceptance of unalterable cause and effect.
‘Such belief is entirely alien to the Neanderthal. He knows only happening, and from this stems his structure of magic. I use the present tense because the Neanderthal is still strong in man – and, on Nehru II, he is not only strong but free, liberated at last from his captor, the Crow.’
Anderson stirred, rubbing his wet skull.
‘I suppose you’re right ‘
‘There’s proof enough here,’ she said bitterly.
‘I suppose it does explain why the civilisation of old Europe – the ancient battle-ground of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal – and the civilisations that arose from it in North America are the most diverse and most turbulent ever known. But this brings us back to Arlblaster, doesn’t it? I can see that what has happened in Swettenham connects logically with his theory. The Brittany skull he found back in the eighties was pure Neanderthal, yet only a few hundred years old. Obviously it belonged to a rare throwback.’
‘But how rare? You could pass a properly dressed Neanderthal in the streets of New York and never give him a second glance. Stanley says you often do.’
‘Let’s forget Stanley! Arlblaster followed up his theory. … Yes, I can see it myself. The proportion of Neanderthal would presumably vary from person to person. I can run over my friends mentally now and guess in which of them the proportion is highest.’
‘Exactly.’ She smiled at him, reassured and calmer now, even as he was, as she nursed his hand and his revolver. ‘And because the political economic situation on Earth is as it is, Arlblaster found a way here to develop his theory and turn it into practice – that is, to release the prisoner in the brain. Earth would allow Swettenham’s group little in the way of machinery or resources in its determination to keep them harmless, so they were thrust close to nature. That an intellectual recognition brought the Neanderthal to the surface, freed it.’
‘Everyone turned Neanderthal, you mean?’
‘Here on Nehru, which resembles prehistoric Earth in some respects, the Neanderthal represents better survival value than Crow. Yet not everyone transformed, no. Stanley Menderstone did not. Nor Swettenham. Nor several others of the intellectuals. Their N-factor, as Stanley calls it, was either too low or non-existent.’
‘What happened to Swettenham?’
‘He was killed. So were the other pure Crows, all but Stanley, who’s tough – as you saw. There was a heap of trouble at first, until they fully understood the problem and sorted themselves out.’
‘And these two patrol ships World G
overnment sent?’
‘I saw what happened to the one that brought me. About seventy-five per cent of the crew had a high enough N-factor to make the change; a willingness to desert helped them. The others … died out. Got killed, to be honest. All but me. Stanley took care of me.’
She laughed harshly. ‘If you can call it care.
‘I’ve had my belly full of Stanley and Nehru II, Keith. I want you to take me back with you to Earth.’
Anderson looked at her, still full of doubt.
‘What about my N-factor? Obviously I’ve got it in me. Hence the glacier, which was a much stronger danger signal from my brain than the earlier illusion about having a sister. Hence, I suppose, my new fears of manufactured Crow objects like watches, revolvers and … model railroads. Am I Crow or not, for heaven’s sake?’
‘By the struggle you’ve been through with yourself, I’d say that you’re equally balanced. Perhaps you can even decide. Which do you want to be?’
He looked at her in amazement.
‘Crow, of course: my normal self – who’d become a shambling, low-browed, shaggy tramp by choice?’
‘The adjectives you use are subjective and not really terms of abuse – in fact, they’re Crow propaganda. Or so a Neanderthal would say. The two points of view are irreconcilable.’
‘Are you seriously suggesting … Alice, they’re sub-men!’
‘To us they appear so. Yet they have contentment, and communion with the forces of Earth, and their magic. Nor are their brains inferior to Crow brains.’
‘Much good it did them! The Cro-Magnons still beat them.’
‘In a sense they have not yet been beaten. But their magic needs preparation, incantation – it’s something they can’t do while fending off a fusillade of arrows. But left to themselves they can become spirits, animals –’
‘Wooly rhinoceroses for instance?’
‘Yes.’
‘To lure me from my wheeled machine, which they would fear! My God, Alice, can it be true. … ‘He clutched his head and groaned, then looked up to enquire, ‘Why are you forcing their point of view on me, when you’re a Crow?’
