by Brian Aldiss
Obediently, Tim climbed up into the cabin and punched the external switchboard. Barney and Craig were watching the pseudo-chelonia scamper heavily for the darkness as he returned.
‘It’s all clear enough,’ Tim said, ‘except for one thing. God, I know it’s impressive, this tideless sea broadcasting its message for millennia, and every creature on the planet picking it up. But – what does it say ?’
Craig spread his hands wide.
‘What does the sea still say in your blood, Tim? Something simple in its origin, infinitely complex in its working out; in a word: Survive! The turtles are our brothers in that they are doubtless getting the same message.’
For a minute they were silent, each occupied with his own reflections. Craig was the first to speak again.
‘There’s one further point, Tim,’ he said. ‘Just now you mentioned that the pseudo-chelonia were controlled by radio. I don’t think that is any more accurate than saying that humans are controlled by thought. They seem more to be guided, as we are guided; it may sound a subtle difference, but it’s a big one. Their movements show primitive signs of individuality: hesitation, for instance.
‘Finding out exactly how they behave within their own groups will be valuable work for the scientific bodies who’ll follow us. It should shed a lot of light on human impulses.’
He stood up, his face clouded.
‘And so we’ve got everything taped. Or have we? We know in outline how the Plimsol species ticks. We know it’s plenty tough. It can live on dirt and bite through anything, while I’d say one of those fore-flippers could break a man’s leg. But there’s only half of our task. Little as I love colonists, I hate to think of them facing up to these armoured monsters with buckshot. My prediction is that they won’t take long to lose their fear of bright lights. They may be generally doggo in the daytime, but who wants to die at sunset? In short, what recommendations can we possibly make to PEST HQ about dealing with the brutes?’
Grinning, making a rude sign he had picked up in a dive on Droxy, Barney stood up.
‘That sounds like a cry to your man of action,’ he said. ‘This is where I come in.’
Craig emitted a hollow groan.
‘Tell me the worst,’ he invited.
‘No, I’ve something to show you in the control room,’ Barney said. ‘While you and Tim were cogitating so powerfully yesterday, I was after turtles’ eggs, if you remember. I found I couldn’t eat the things, so I hatched ’em in an improvised incubator. Come have a look-see.’
He led the way up into the control room, smiling as he went. He hated what he had discovered, and he knew Craig would hate it even more; that did not prevent his seeing the diabolically funny side to the whole business.
On the control room floor was a heavy box with a visiplex top. Inside it, on a layer of sand, lay three baby pseudo-chelonia, each measuring about a foot long.
‘Good heavens!’ Craig exclaimed. ‘How old are they?’
‘About a day old. You’ve not seen the eggs. They’re as big as cannon balls and almost as heavy. The female only lays about half a dozen at a time – and that must be a pretty painful process. Better her than me.’
Barney showed Craig how he had screened off the box, so that even though it was night and the F-layer established overhead, no radiations were getting through to the three creatures.
‘Otherwise they’d be biting tunnels through the hull,’ he said. ‘Believe me, these babies have milk teeth like buzz saws.’
He went over to the transmitter on one side of the room, unhooked an aerial, placed it in with the pseudo-chelonia and returned to the set. He switched on, starting up a music tape.
‘Just in the interests of science,’ he said grimly. ‘I am going to give these babies a snatch of Debussy’s La Mer on their frequency. Here it comes.’
Craig and Tim heard the music, damped right down, from the tape player. Barney’s babies heard it in their heads. At once they began to move.
They moved uncertainly, like puppets twitched by the hand of a drunkard. First they went forwards, then they went backwards, then they shuffled sideways. Their heads rolled in ungainly fashion. Their six limbs retracted then shot out again. It was horrible to watch them.
‘That’s enough, Barney,’ Craig said.
‘I’ll give ’em a bit more volume,’ Barney said, twiddling a knob.
At once the pseudo-chelonia were seized by convulsions. They leapt and bucked like unbroken steers, clattering against the side of the box, waving their limbs frantically, wagging their antennae. They threw themselves about like creatures gone crazy, even twisting onto their backs and running into each other.
‘All right, Barney, turn it off,’ Craig said, in a shaken voice. Tim Anderson too looked slightly rattled.
‘Those beings are blessed – or cursed! – with intelligence,’ he said. ‘Think how they must feel with an alien madman bawling inside their heads.’
‘Horrid, I agree,’ Barney said flatly. His three specimens slumped back into immobility as he switched the radio off. Leaving the tape recorder still playing its quiet melody, he got up, returning Craig’s straight stare.
‘And that’s how the colonists are going to cope with our Plimsol species,’ he said. ‘Just a little demonstration for you, Craig. The miners and farmers who touch down here in a year or two aren’t going to need shotguns or blasters. They only have to switch on the short wave to burn these critters’ brain boxes out. … It’s not pretty, but it’s simple – and nice and safe. Why are you looking so grim?’
Tim, recovering, slapped Craig on the back and said, ‘At our moments of triumph, our leader always turns philosophical and sad.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Barney said, leading the way back to the lounge and the bottle of wine. ‘He will now tell us that we’ve done our stuff in record time, but that nevertheless we are degenerate. The ancients, he will remind us, had a saying “to understand all is to forgive all”. And now the PEST motto means something less than that. “Capite Superare”: “Comprehend To Conquer” … Shows how the race is going downhill … Have a drink, Craig.’
‘I will,’ Craig said mildly, holding out his glass, ‘when you’ve finished bullying me.’
As the three of them drank, he said, ‘If I looked grim, it was because I realised something you may have overlooked.’
He sat down in a chair and surveyed the two of them.
‘After your demonstration, Barney, we can do nothing but send off a report that will soon bring the colonists flocking in. Askanza is going to be a tough planet for a long while. It’s going to demand a lot of work from everyone.’
‘We should worry,’ Tim said.
‘Yes, we should worry! You think the colonists will kill off the pseudo-chelonia by Barney’s method?’
‘Of course. What else?’
‘In no time, one colonist brighter than the rest is going to find a way of broadcasting – not death, but something more deadly – orders. It won’t take them long to find out a way either; you know as well as I do what the main sort of colonist is like: he’s society’s misfit, a reject. How many millions of these tough beasts do you think there are on Askanza? In no time they’ll be transformed into a radio-controlled army, working, dying, killing, for a few tinpot tyrants crouching behind transmitters.’
Barney spilt half his drink down his beard.
He jumped up.
‘My God, Craig, you have the nastiest ideas!’ he said.
‘You think I like them? It makes me shudder just to think of the future of Askanza – but as Pontius said, once I’ve filed my report it’s out of my hands.’
Tim gazed fearfully out of the window. Beyond the ring of lighting, the turtles waited for they knew not what. Beyond them was only the blackness, warm and unlit. And beyond that blackness: a deeper blackness.
‘Our job’s finished,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to hell out of here – and make sure we never come back.’
About the Author
Several of Aldiss’ books have been adapted for the cinema; his story ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ was adapted and released as the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence in 2001. Besides his own writing, Brian has edited numerous anthologies of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as the magazine SF Horizons.
Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society and in 2000 was given the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Aldiss was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2005.
Also by Brian Aldiss
The Brightfount Diaries
Interpreter
The Primal Urge
The Monster Trilogy
Frankenstein Unbound
Moreau’s Other Island
Dracula Unbound
The Eighty-Minute Hour
Brothers of the Head
Enemies of the System
The Squire Quartet
Life in the West
Forgotten Life
Remembrance Day
Somewhere East of Life
Cretan Teat
Jocasta
Finches of Mars
Comfort Zone
The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s
The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Part One: 1960-62
The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Part Two: 1963-64
The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Part Three: 1965-66
The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Part Four: 1967-69
Poetry
Songs from the Steppes: The Poems of Makhtumkuli
Non-fiction
Bury my Heart at W. H. Smith’s
The Detached Retina
The Twinkling of an Eye
When the Feast is Finished
Essays
This World and Nearer Ones
The Pale Shadow of Science
The Collected Essays
And available exclusively as ebooks
The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy
50 x 50: The Mini-sagas
Supertoys Trilogy
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