The Perfect Creature

by John Wyndham

  THE PERFECT CREATURE

  from THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM

  John Wyndham

  SPHERE BOOKS

  Published 1973

  ISBN 0 7221 9369 6

  Copyright© The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973

  * * *

  INTRODUCTION

  AT a very tender age my latent passion for all forms of fantasy stories, having been sparked by the Brothers Grimm and the more unusual offerings in the children's comics and later the boy's adven­ture papers, was encouraged in the early 1930s by the occasional exciting find on the shelves of the public library with Burroughs and Thorne Smith varying the staple diet of Wells and Verne.

  But the decisive factor in establishing that exhila­rating ‘sense of wonder’ in my youthful imagi­nation was the discovery about that time of back numbers of American science fiction magazines to be bought quite cheaply in stores like Wool­worths. The happy chain of economic circum­stances by which American newstand returns, some­times sadly with the magic cover removed or mutilated, ballasted cargo ships returning to English ports and the colonies, must have been the mainspring of many an enthusiastic hobby devoted to reading, discussing, perhaps collecting and even writing, science fiction – or ‘scientifiction’ as Hugo Gerns­back coined the tag in his early Amazing Stories magazine.

  Gernsback was a great believer in reader partici­pation; in 1936 I became a teenage member of the Science Fiction League sponsored by his Wonder Stories. Earlier he had run a compe­tition in its fore­runner Air Wonder Stories to find a suitable banner slogan, offering the prize of ‘One Hundred Dollars in Gold’ with true yankee bragga­dacio. Discovering the result some years later in, I think, the September 1930 issue of Wonder Stories seized upon from the bargain-bin of a chain store, was akin to finding a message in a bottle cast adrift by some distant Robinson Crusoe, and I well remember the surge of jingo­istic pride (an educa­tional trait well-nurtured in pre-war Britain) in noting that the winner was an English­man, John Beynon Harris.

  I had not the slightest antici­pation then that I would later meet, and acknow­ledge as a good friend and mentor, this contest winner who, as John Wyndham, was to become one of the greatest English story-tellers in the idiom. The fact that he never actually got paid in gold was a disappoint­ment, he once told me, that must have accounted for the element of philo­so­phical dubiety in some of his work. Certainly his winning slogan ‘Future Flying Fiction’, al­though too late to save the maga­zine from foundering on the rock of eco­nomic depression (it had already been amalga­mated with its stable­mate Science Wonder Stories to become just plain, if that is the right word, Wonder Stories), presaged the firm stamp of credi­bility combined with imagi­native flair that charac­terized JBH's writings.

  John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (the abundance of fore­names conve­niently supplied his various aliases) emerged in the 1950s as an important contem­porary influence on specu­lative fiction, parti­cularly in the explo­ration of the theme of realistic global catas­trophe, with books such as The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes, and enjoyed a popularity, which continued after his sad death in 1969, comparable to that of his illus­trious pre­decessor as master of the scientific romance, H. G. Wells.

  However, he was to serve his writing apprentice­ship in those same pulp maga­zines of the thirties, competing success­fully with their native American contributors, and it is the purpose of this present collection to high­light the chrono­logical develop­ment of his short stories from those early beginnings to the later urbane and polished style of John Wyndham.

  ‘The Lost Machine’ was his second published story, appea­ring in Amazing Stories, and was possibly the proto­type of the sentient robot later developed by such writers as Isaac Asimov. He used a variety of plots during this early American period parti­cu­larly favour­ing time travel, and the best of these was undoubtedly ‘The Man From Beyond’ in which the poign­ancy of a man's reali­za­tion, caged in a zoo on Venus, that far from being aban­doned by his fellow-explorers, he is the victim of a far stranger fate, is remark­ably out­lined for its time. Some themes had dealt with war, such as ‘The Trojan Beam’, and he had strong views to express on its futility. Soon his own induc­tion into the Army in 1940 produced a period of crea­tive inactivity corres­ponding to World War II. He had, however, previously established him­self in England as a promi­nent science fiction writer with serials in major period­icals, subse­quently reprinted in hard covers, and he even had a detec­tive novel published. He had been well repre­sented too – ‘Perfect Crea­ture’ is an amu­sing example – in the various maga­zines stemming from fan activity, despite the vicissi­tudes of their pre- and imme­diate post-war publish­ing insec­urity.

  But after the war and into the fifties the level of science fiction writing in general had increased consi­derably, and John rose to the challenge by selling success­fully to the American market again. In England his polished style proved popular and a predi­lection for the para­doxes of time travel as a source of private amuse­ment was perfectly exem­plified in ‘Pawley's Peepholes’, in which the gawp­ing tourists from the future are routed by vulgar tactics. This story was later success­fully adapted for radio and broad­cast by the B.B.C.

  About this time his first post-war novel burst upon an unsus­pecting world, and by utili­zing a couple of unori­ginal ideas with his Gernsback-trained atten­tion to logically based expla­natory detail and realis­tic back­ground, together with his now strongly deve­loped narra­tive style, ‘The Day of the Triffids’ became one of the classics of modern specu­lative fiction, survi­ving even a mediocre movie treat­ment. It was the fore­runner of a series of equally impressive and enjoyable novels inclu­ding ‘The Chrysalids’ and ‘The Mid­wich Cuckoos’ which was success­fully filmed as ‘Village of the Damned’. (A sequel ‘Children of the Damned’ was markedly inferior, and John was care­ful to dis­claim any responsi­bility for the writing.)

  I was soon to begin an enjoy­able asso­ciation with John Wyndham that had its origins in the early days of the New Worlds maga­zine-publish­ing venture, and was later to result in much kindly and essen­tial assis­tance enabling me to become a specia­list dealer in the genre. This was at the Fantasy Book Centre in Blooms­bury, an area of suitably asso­ciated literary acti­vities where John lived for many years, and which provi­ded many pleasu­rable meet­ings at a renowned local coffee establish­ment, Cawardine's, where we were often joined by such person­alities as John Carnell, John Chris­topher and Arthur C. Clarke.

  In between the novels two collec­tions of his now widely pub­lished short stories were issued as ‘The Seeds of Time’ and ‘Consider Her Ways’; others are re­printed here for the first time. He was never too grand to refuse mater­ial for our own New Worlds and in 1958 wrote a series of four novel­ettes about the Troon family's contri­bution to space explo­ration – a kind of Forsyte saga of the solar system later collected under the title ‘The Outward Urge’. His ficti­tious colla­borator ‘Lucas Parkes’ was a subtle ploy in the book version to explain Wyndham's appa­rent devia­tion into solid science-based fiction. The last story in this collection ‘The Empti­ness of Space’ was written as a kind of post­script to that series, especially for the 100th anni­versary issue of New Worlds.

  John Wyndham's last novel was Chocky, published in 1968. It was an expan­sion of a short story follow­ing a theme similar to The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos. It was a theme pecu­liarly appro­priate for him in his advancing matu­rity. When, with charac­teristic reti­cence and modesty, he announced to a few of his friends that he was marry­ing his beloved Grace and moving to the country­side, we all felt that this was a well-deserve
d retire­ment for them both.

  But ironically time – always a fasci­nating subject for specu­lation by him – was running out for this typical English gentle­man. Amiable, eru­dite, astrin­gently humo­rous on occasion, he was, in the same way that the gentle Boris Karloff portrayed his film monsters, able to depict the night­mares of humanity with fright­ening realism, made the more deadly by his masterly preci­sion of detail. To his great gift for story-telling he brought a lively intellect and a fertile imagi­nation.

  I am glad to be numbered among the many, many thou­sands of his readers whose ‘sense of wonder’ has been satis­facto­rily indulged by a writer whose gift to posterity is the compul­sive reada­bility of his stories of which this present volume is an essen­tial part.

  — LESLIE FLOOD

  * * *

  THE PERFECT CREATURE (1937)

  THE first thing I knew of the Dixon affair was when a depu­tation came from the village of Membury to ask us if we would inves­ti­gate the alleged curious goings-on there.

  But before that, perhaps, I had better explain the word ‘us’.

  I happen to hold a post as Inspector for the S.S.M.A. — in full, the Society for the Suppression of the Mal­treat­ment of Animals — in the district that includes Mem­bury. Now, please don't assume that I am wobble-minded on the subject of animals. I needed a job. A friend of mine who has influence with the Society got it for me; and I do it, I think, con­scien­tiously. As for the animals them­selves, well, as with humans, I like some of them. In that, I differ from my co-Inspector, Alfred Weston; he likes — liked? — them all; on principle, and indis­crimin­ately.

  It could be that, at the salaries they pay, the S.S.M.A. has doubts of its personnel — though there is the point that where legal action is to be taken two witnesses are desirable; but, what­ever the reason, there is a practice of appointing their inspec­tors as pairs to each district; one result of which was my daily and close asso­ciation with Alfred.

  Now, one might describe Alfred as the animal-lover par excellence. Between him and all animals there was complete affinity — at least, on Alfred's side. It wasn't his fault if the animals didn't quite under­stand it; he tried hard enough. The very thought of four feet or feathers seemed to do some­thing to him. He cherished them one and all, and was apt to talk of them, and to them, as if they were his dear, dear friends temp­orarily embarrassed by a diminished I.Q.

  Alfred himself was a well-built man, though not tall, who peered through heavily-rimmed glasses with an earnest­ness that seldom lightened. The difference between us was that while I was doing a job, he was follow­ing a vocation — pursuing it whole­heartedly, and with a power­ful imagi­nation to energize him.

  It didn't make him a restful com­panion. Under the powerful magni­fier of Alfred's imagi­nation the common­place became lurid. At a run-of-the-mill alle­ga­tion of horse-thrashing, phrases about fiends, barba­rians and brutes in human form would leap into his mind with such vivid­ness that he would be bitterly disap­pointed when we discovered, as we invariably did, (a) that the thing had been much exagge­rated, anyway, and (b) that the perpe­trator had either had a drink too many, or briefly lost his temper.

  It so happened that we were in the office together on the morning that the Membury depu­tation arrived. They were a more nume­rous body than we usually received, and as they filed in I could see Alfred's eyes begin to widen in antici­pation of some­thing really good — or horrific, depen­ding on which way you were looking at it. Even I felt that this ought to produce some­thing a cut above cans tied to cats' tails, and that kind of thing.

  Our premo­nitions turned out rightly. There was a certain confu­sion in the telling, but when we had it sorted out, it seemed to amount to this:

  Early the previous morning, one Tim Darrell, while engaged in his usual task of taking the milk to the station, had en­countered a pheno­menon in the village street. The sight had so surprised him that while stamp­ing on his brakes he had let out a yell which brought the whole place to its windows or doors. The men had gaped, and most of the women had set up screaming when they, too, saw the pair of creatures that were standing in the middle of their street.

  The best picture of these creatures that we could get out of our visitors suggested that they must have looked more like turtles than any­thing else — though a very improb­able kind of turtle that walked upright upon its hind legs.

  The overall height of the appari­tions would seem to have been about five foot six. Their bodies were covered with oval cara­paces, not only at the back, but in front, too. The heads were about the size of normal human heads, but without hair, and having a horny-looking surface. Their large, bright black eyes were set above a hard, shiny projection, debatably a beak or a nose.

  But this description, while unlikely enough, did not cover the most trouble­some charac­teristic — and the one upon which all were agreed despite other varia­tions. This was that from the ridges at the sides, where the back and front cara­paces joined, there pro­truded, some two-thirds of the way up, a pair of human arms and hands!

  Well, about that point I suggested what anyone else would: that it was a hoax, a couple of fellows dressed up for a scare.

  The deputation was indig­nant. For one thing, it convin­cingly said, no one was going to keep up that kind of hoax in the face of gun­fire — which was what old Halliday who kept the saddler's had give them. He had let them have half a dozen rounds out of twelve-bore; it hadn't worried them a bit, and the pellets had just bounced off.

  But when people had got around to emerging cautiously from their doors to take a closer look, they had seemed upset. They had squawked harshly at one another, and then set off down the street at a kind of waddling run. Half the village, feeling braver now, had followed them. The creatures had not seemed to have an idea of where they were going, and had run out over Baker's Marsh. There they had soon struck one of the soft spots, and finally they had sunk out of sight into it, with a great deal of floun­dering and squawk­ing.

  The village, after talking it over, had decided to come to us rather than to the police. It was well meant, no doubt, but, as I said:

  “I really don't see what you can expect us to do if the crea­tures have vanished with­out trace.”

  “Moreover,” put in Alfred, never strong on tact, “it sounds to ine that we should have to report that the villagers of Mem­bury simply hounded these unfor­tu­nate creatures — what­ever they were — to their deaths, and made no attempt to save them.”

  They looked some­what offended at that, but it turned out that they had not finished. The tracks of the creatures had been followed back as far as possible, and the consen­sus was that they could not have had their source any­where but in Membury Grange.

  “Who lives there?” I asked.

  It was a Doctor Dixon, they told me. He had been there these last three or four years.

  And that led us on to Bill Parsons' contri­bu­tion. He was a little hesi­tant about making it at first.

  “This'll be confidential like?” he asked.

  Everyone for miles around knows that Bill's chief concern is other people's rabbits. I reassured him.

  “Well, it was this way,” he said. “ 'Bout three months ago it'd be—”

  Pruned of its circum­stantial detail, Bill's story amounted to this: finding him­self, so to speak, in the grounds of the Grange one night, he had taken a fancy to investi­gate the nature of the new wing that Doctor Dixon had caused to be built on soon after he came. There had been consider­able local specu­lation about it, and, seeing a chink of light between the curtains there, Bill had taken his oppor­tunity.

  “I'm telling you, there's things that's not right there,” he said. “The very first thing I seen, back against the far wall was a line of cages, with great thick bars to 'em — the way the light hung I couldn't see what was inside: but why'd anybody be wanting them in his house?”

  “And then when I shoved myself up hig
her to get a better view, there in the middle of the room I saw a horrible sight — a horrible sight it was!” He paused for a dramatic shudder.

  “Well, what was it?” I asked, patiently.

  “It was — well, it's kind of hard to tell. Lying on a table, it was, though. Lookin' more like a white bolster than any­thing — 'cept that it was moving a bit. Kind of inching, with a sort of ripple in it — if you under­stand me.”

  I didn't much. I said:

  “Is that all?”

  “That it's not,” Bill told me, approaching his climax with relish. “Most of it didn't 'ave no real shape, but there was a part of it as did — a pair of hands, human hands, a-stickin' out from the sides of it...”

  In the end I got rid of the depu­ta­tion with the assu­rance we would look into the matter. When I turned back from closing the door behind the last of them I perceived that all was not well with Alfred. His eyes were gleaming widely behind his glasses, and he was trembling.

  “Sit down,” I advised him. “You don't want to go shaking parts of yourself off.”

  I could see that there was a disser­tation coming: probably some­thing to beat what we had just heard. But, for once, he wanted my opi­nion first, while man­fully contri­ving to hold his own down for a time. I obliged:

  “It has to turn out simpler than it sounds,” I told him. “Either somebody was playing a joke on the village — or there are some very unu­sual animals which they've distorted by talking it over too much.”

  “They were unani­mous about the cara­paces and arms — two struc­tures as thoroughly incom­patible as can be,” Alfred said, tire-somely.

  I had to grant that. And arms — or, at least, hands — had been the only describ­able feature of the bolster-like object that Bill had seen at the Grange...

  Alfred gave me several other reasons why I was wrong, and then paused meaningly.

  “I, too, have heard rumours about Mem­bury Grange,” he told me.