The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s (Part 1) (The Brian Aldiss Collection)

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘I’m borrowing Bes’s tractor to go back and switch on the juice, so that the autos can start herding as soon as possible,’ I finished.

  He fell to cursing, saying he was going to lose all his livestock, that they could never be driven under cover before the FTL arrived. I tried to reassure him before going over to the other vehicle.

  As I climbed in he said, ‘When you get there, tell Tes to come back here with the tractor. She can drive well enough, and we’ll need her help. The more hands here the better. And tell her to bring the signal pistols. They’ll get the sheep moving.’

  ‘And Fay?’

  ‘She’d only be in the way.’

  Giving him a wave, I stood on the acceleration and rattled back to the farm. By now the sun was bright and the sky free of cloud, which did not stop my boots from squelching or my clothes from clinging to me like wet wallpaper.

  The moment I reached the farm buildings I marched into the control shed, crossed to the appropriate board, and pushed the rheostat over. Power began its ancient song, the hum of content that sounds perpetually as if it is ascending the scale. Up on the pastures, the electronic dogs would be leaping into activity.

  Everything appeared in order, though Col Dourt was not a man to keep his equipment spotless – and I reflected, not for the first time that day, that if he had cared to lay out an extra twenty parapounds or so he could have had switchboard-to-flock communication, which would have saved him valuable time on a day like this.

  Well, it was not my concern.

  In the living complex, Tes was alone. She stood in her slip, cutting out a dress for Droxy wear, and I surveyed her; she was developing well.

  As usual, she seemed displeased to see me – baffling creatures, adolescent girls; you never know whether they are acting or not. I gave her her father’s orders and told her to get out to Pike’s Brow as soon as she could.

  ‘And where’s Fay?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s none of your business, Captain Roge.’

  As if she felt this was a bit too sharp, she added, ‘And anyhow I don’t know. This is one of my great not-knowing days.’

  I sniffed. I was in a hurry, and it was, as she said, none of my business now, although I would have liked a farewell word with her younger sister. Nodding to Tes, I squelched out of the building, got into the maintenance truck, and began speeding back to my unit around the other side of the mountains. To perdition with all Dourts!

  Murrag used to say that there wasn’t a more interesting job than mine on all Tandy. Though he was prepared to talk for hours about his feelings – ‘my Tandian tenebrosities’, he sometimes called them – he was equally prepared to listen for hours while I explained in minute detail the working of the Flange and the problems of repair it posed. He learned from me any facts he filtered on to Fay.

  Maintaining the Flange is a costly and complicated business, and would be even more so had we not costly and complicated machines with which to operate. Between FTL arrivals, my unit works ceaselessly over the strip – testing, checking, replacing, making good.

  The complex nature of the Flange necessitates this.

  To start with, there is the BGL – the Bonfiglioli Geogravitic Layer – marked by tall pylons, along the north of the Flange, which maintains all of Tandy Two’s atmosphere within its stress; were this to contract more than a minimum leakage, the lives of everyone on the planet would be in jeopardy.

  Before the BGL comes the ‘fence’, which prevents any creature from entering the Flange zone; after it come our equipment stores, bunkers, etc., before you get to the actual twelve-mile-wide Flange itself.

  The Flange is a huge shock absorber, three storeys deep, girdling the planet. It has to absorb the biggest man-made shock of all time, though it is a delicate instrument with an upper surface of free-grooved pyr-glass needles. Its functioning depends first and foremost on the taubesi thermocouple, of which there is one to every square millimetre of surface; these detect an FTL ship before it re-enters normal space and activate the rest of the system immediately. The rest of the system is, briefly, an inertia vacuum. The FTL ship never actually makes contact with the Flange surface, of course, but its detectors mesh with the inertials and transfer velocities, stopping it in milliseconds – the figure varies according to planetary and ship’s mass, but for Tandy Two it is generally in the order of 201·5 milliseconds.

  The whole Flange is activated – switched on section by section of its entire twenty-five thousand miles length – two hours before an FTL ship arrives (only the computers beneath the strip know precisely when the starship will materialise from phase space). At that time, the various maintenance units give the whole system a final check, and the needlelike surface of the Flange looks first one way and then another, like stroked fur, as it searches for the breakthrough point I should have been back for that event.

  I had come down to the valleys by now. Over to my left ran the graceful BGL pylons, with the Flange itself behind, already stretching itself like a self-activated rubber sheet; beyond it burned the dead half of Tandy, sealed off in vacuum, bleached dust-white in the sun. Less than a mile remained between me and the unit post. Then I saw Fay.

  Her blue dress showed clearly against a tawny ground. She was several hundred yards ahead of me, not looking in my direction and running directly towards an electrified ‘fence’ that guards the BGL and the Flange itself.

  ‘Fay!’ I yelled. ‘Come back!’

  Instinctive stuff; I was enclosed in the truck; had she heard my cry it would only have speeded her on her way.

  This was her last chance to see an FTL ship enter before she went back to Droxy. The absence of her father and mother had given her the chance to slip out, so she had taken it

  ‘Fay!’ I yelled as I drove, letting my lungs shout, because in my fear I could not stop them.

  The fence was built of two components, an ordinary strand fence with a mild shock to keep sheep away, and then, some yards beyond, a trellis of high voltage designed simply and crudely to kill. Warning notices ran all the way between the two fences, one every three hundred and fifty yards – 125,714 of them right around the planet.

  She dived through the strand fence without touching it.

  Now I was level with her. Seeing me, she began running parallel between the two fences. Beyond her the eyes of the needles of the Flange turned first this way then that, restless and expectant.

  I jumped from the truck before it stopped moving.

  ‘You’ll get killed, Fay!’ I bellowed.

  She turned then, her face half mischievous, half scared. She was running off-course towards the second fence as she turned. She called something to me – I could not make out, still cannot make out, what.

  As I ducked under the sheep strand after her, she hit the other fence.

  Fay! Ah, my Fay, my own sweet freeborn daughter! She was outlined in bright light, she was black as a cinder, the universe screamed and yapped like a dying dog. My face hit the dust shrieking as I fell. Noise, death, heat, slapped me down.

  Then there was mind-devouring silence.

  Peace rolled down like a steamroller, flattening everything, the eternal hush of damnation into which I wept as if the universe were a pocket handkerchief for my grief.

  Fay, oh Fay, my own child!

  Beyond the BGL, safe in vacuum, the Flange peered towards the heavens, twisting its spiked eyes. I rolled in the blistered dust without comprehension.

  How long I lay there I have no idea.

  Eventually the alarms roused me. They washed around me and through me until they, too, were gone, and the silence came back. When my hearing returned, I heard a throbbing in the silence. At first I could not place it, had no wish to place it, but at last I sat up and realised that the motor of my truck was still patiently turning over. I stood up shakily. The ill-coordinated action brought a measure of intelligence back to my system.

  All I knew was that I had to return to the farm and tell Bes what had happened. Everything
else was forgotten, even that the FTL ship was due at any time.

  I got back somehow under the sheep fence, and into the cab. Somehow I kicked in the gears, and we lurched into action. Fay, Fay, Fay, my blood kept saying.

  As I steered away from the Flange, from the burned ground to grass again, a figure presented itself before me. Blankly I stopped and climbed out to meet it, hardly knowing what I did.

  It was Murrag, waving his arms like one possessed.

  ‘Thanks to your aid we got the flocks under cover in time,’ he said. ‘So I came down here to see the FTL entry. You know, for me to see an entry – well, it’s like watching creation.’

  He stopped, eyeing me, his face full of a private emotion.

  ‘It’s like the creation, is it?’ I said dumbly. My mouth felt puffy. Fay, Fay, Fay.

  ‘Vasko, we’ve always been friends, so I don’t have to mind what I say to you. You know that this event once a fortnight – it’s ultimate excitement for me. I mean … well, even something like sex palls beside watching an FTL entry.’

  In the state I was in I could not grasp what he was saying. It came back to me long after, like finding a private letter behind the wainscoting of an empty house.

  ‘And I’ve got the image of Tandy Two I was after, Vasko.’ His eyes were alight, full of some inner fire. ‘Tandy’s a woman –’

  There was no warning.

  The FTL ship entered.

  Cerenkov radiations belched outward, distorting our vision. For a second Murrag and I were embedded in amber. Tandy was girdled in a noose of flame, most of which expanded south safely into vacuum. The giant fist of impetus reaction struck us.

  The sun plunged across the sky like a frightened horse.

  As we fell, day turned to night.

  For one of those long minutes that seemed a small eternity, I lay on the ground with Murrag face-down near by.

  He moved before I did. When it penetrated my mind that he was slipping a fume mask on, I automatically did the same; without thinking, I had carried my mask from the vehicle with me.

  He had switched on a flashlight. It lay on the ground as we sprouted bug-eyed jumbo faces, and splashed a great caricature of us up the mountainside. In the sky, the planet Tandy appeared, near full and bright, a phantom. As ever, it was impossible to believe it was not our moon rather than vice versa; facts have no power against the imagination.

  Sitting there stupidly, I heard the words of an old poet scatter through my head, half of his verse missing.

  O, moon of my delight who know’st no wane,

  Something something once again.

  How oft hereafter rising shall she look

  Through this same garden after me – in vain!

  But I had no time to connect up the missing words; if I had thought of it, I preferred it that way, thus emphasising my sense of loss. But no rational thought came.

  All that came was the clash of two nightmares, Murrag’s and mine. It seemed that I kept crying ‘Fay is dead!’ and that he kept crying ‘Tandy Two’s a woman!’ We were fighting, struggling together while the ground steamed, I hating him because he did not care where I had expected him to care, he hating me because I had spoiled his vigil, ruined his climax.

  My mind ran in shapes, not thoughts, until I realised that I had begun the fight. When I went limp, Murrag’s fist caught me between the eyes.

  I do not have to say what I felt then, slumped on the ground – the place I hated and Murrag loved – for this is supposed to be his story, not mine, although I have become entangled in it in the same directionless way I became entangled in Bes’s life.

  Murrag – you have to say it – could not feel like ordinary people. When I heard from him again, he did not even mention Fay; he had only used her to talk to about his obsession.

  When, a week later, the STL ship Monteith departed for Droxy from Tandy, Col, Bes, and Tes Dourt travelled in it. So did I. I lay in the bunk in the medical bay, classified under some obscure technical label that meant I was dull of mind and unfit for further service.

  The Dourts came to see me.

  They were surprisingly cheerful. After all, they had made their money and were about to begin life anew. Even Bes never referred to Fay; I always said she was hard.

  They brought me a letter from Murrag. It was elaborate, overwritten. Wrapped in his own discoveries, he clearly mourned as little for Fay as did the Dourts. His letter, in fact, displayed his usual sensitivity, and his blindness where other humans were concerned. I had no patience with it, though I later reread the final passages (which he has since used in his successful book, To My Undeniable Tandy).

  ‘… Yilmoff’s fifty-fourth era classic, Theory of Images, reveals how settings can hold deep psychic significances for men; we acquire early an Experience of place. When a planet exists with as distinct a personality – for the term in context is no exaggeration – as Tandy Two’s, the significance is increased, the effect on the psyche deepened.

  ‘I declare myself to be in love, in the true psychological sense of the word, with Tandy. She is my needful feminine, dwelling in my mind, filling it to the exclusion of others.

  ‘So I give you my true portrait image of her: the planet-head of a girl, all sweet, rich hair north, but the south face a skull, and bound round her brow a ribbon of flame. This the portrait of my terrible lover.’

  Make of this what you will. Crazy? I think not.

  Only Murrag of all mankind has his mistress perpetually beneath him.

  A Pleasure Shared

  At seven thirty I rose and went over to the window and drew back the curtains. Outside lay another wintry London day – not nice.

  Miss Colgrave was still in the chair where I had left her. I pulled her skirt down. Female flesh looks very unappetising before breakfast. I went through into the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea and poached an egg on the gas ring. While I did so I smoked a cigarette. I always enjoy a cigarette first thing in the morning.

  I ate my breakfast in the bedroom, watching Miss Colgrave closely as I did so. At one point I rose to adjust the scarf round her neck, which looked unsightly. Miss Colgrave had not been a very respectable woman; she had paid the price of sin. But it would be a nuisance disposing of her.

  First I would have to wrap her in a blanket, as I had done with Miss Robbins. This was also a nuisance, since I was rather short of blankets, and the worst of the winter was yet to come. I thought what a pity it was that the disposal of useless females like Miss Colgrave and Miss Robbins could not be made legal. After all, they were a blot on the community with their dirty habits.

  For some while I thought about the blanket, enjoying another smoke as I did so. Then I decided I would go for a walk before doing anything. Miss Colgrave would not run away.

  I went out on to the landing, locked my flat door, and proceeded downstairs. On the landing of the first floor, I met Mrs Meacher, dressed to go out. Mrs Meacher was a very proper little woman, and she liked me. Although she was young, I must say she was not as nosey as some.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Cream,’ she said. ‘Not a very nice morning, is it?’

  ‘At least it’s not raining, Mrs Meacher.’

  ‘No, well, there is that to be thankful for. And how’s the sciatica this morning?’

  I had sprained my back carrying Miss Robbins down to the coal cellar, and it had bothered me.

  ‘Not too troublesome this morning, Mrs Meacher. We all have our crosses to bear, as Father used to say. And how’s your rheumatism?’

  ‘These stairs don’t do it any good you know. I lay awake with it half the night. Still we mustn’t grumble, must we?’

  ‘Grumbling doesn’t do any good, does it?’

  ‘You didn’t sleep too well, either, did you, Mr Cream? I mean I heard you walking about in the early part of the night, and several bumps. I got quite worried.’

  Mrs Meacher was a very respectable young widow, but all women are curious. They do not keep themselves to themselves as men do. I
t is a fault that ought to be eradicated. However, I was very polite as usual; I explained I had been exercising my sciatica. Something made me add, ‘You don’t have a spare blanket, Mrs Meacher, that you could lend me?’

  She looked a bit doubtful, and fiddled with her hat in the irritating way some women have.

  ‘I might have one in the bottom of my wardrobe,’ she said. ‘I could spare you that. I’m in a bit of a hurry now. Perhaps you’d care to come in this afternoon for it. We could have a cup of tea together, if you like.’

  ‘That would be nice, Mrs Meacher.’

  ‘Yes, it would. I believe in people minding their own business, but it’s nice to be neighbourly, isn’t it, when your neighbours are the right sort.’

  ‘Those are my sentiments, Mrs Meacher.’

  She adjusted her hat. ‘Half past four, then. I respect a man who doesn’t drink, Mr Cream – not like that awful Mr Lawrence just moved in on the ground floor.’

  ‘Public houses are the inventions of the devil, Mrs Meacher. Mother told me that, and I’ve never forgotten it. There’s a lot of truth in it.’

  She went downstairs, and I followed. I thought perhaps it would be a nice idea to ask her to have a cup of tea with me one afternoon – when I had my room clear, of course.

  Mrs Meacher had bustled out of the front door before I got down into the dark hall. You could only see down there when the electric light was on. The bulb had fused, and our landlord had failed to replace it. He was a hard man who cared only about money – just the kind of man I despise.

  ‘Cream!’

  A door opened, and Lawrence appeared. He was a little fat man who walked about in slippers and shirt sleeves. I never let anybody see me without my jacket on. Careless in dress, careless in morals.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Lawrence,’ I said, trying to make him keep his distance.

  ‘Here, Cream, I want a word with you. That was Flossie Meacher just went out, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No other women live in this establishment to my knowledge.’

  ‘What about that pusher you had up in your room last night? I saw yer!’