New Writings in SF 6 - [Anthology]

by Ed By John Carnell

  The plumes of their headdresses tossed like the manes of prancing horses. The girls writhed to the sinuous electronic melodies. Their lithe bodies were supple under a film of irridescent dust, which threw back like hoar-frost the shining spotlights.

  Timon watched listlessly as the girls were transformed by the coloured lights from acid-green sylphs into electric-blue harpies. It was all very cultural. But not even the warm and cuddlesome rose-pink finale was able to arouse much interest in his exhausted brain.

  Timon glanced again at his partner, and saw her bland face grow sultry and thoughtful as the male dancers came on and the music grew more vigorous in its rhythms. She looked quickly at him under long blonde eyelashes which reminded Timon of some bovine animal. She evidently wanted to know that he was enjoying the entertainment as much as she was.

  The girl performers, with the arrival of the men, threw themselves into the dance with renewed energy, and were achieving the most extraordinary postures.

  Timon sipped his drink. Absinthe laced with mescalin, he seemed to remember that it was. The blend was good, very good. The air in the night-club was getting warmer and thicker. It seemed to Timon that the revolving coloured lights were beginning to rotate inside his head.

  He put down his glass and looked again at the girl beside him, appraisingly. She was really quite a peach. That ample, but perfectly poised bosom. Those broad, experienced hips. Her bare arms, resting on the table, tapered in the subtlest modulation of smooth curves from shoulder to wrist. Perhaps it was the drink, but Timon began to feel a flicker of unwonted interest.

  In another moment he would suggest that they went back to his flat together....

  He took a long, lazy, voluptuous gulp of his drink. Visions of shapely, sprawling, cavorting limbs, and of the profound softness of the big bed, passed fondly through his mind.

  The dance now seemed to be developing into something very like an orgy. The lights were flickering and whirling. Timon had one eye on the glittering stage, the other on his tempting and amenable partner.

  The scene on the stage now exploded in an abandoned finale, and with a final flourish on the sub-drums, the dancers whirled outwards with the swift scintillations of a bursting firework. One of the girls came rushing towards Timon and leaped breathlessly into his lap. Timon gazed at the taut shining girl, slim as an eel, and his fuddled brain sent a nerve signal to his hand to paw at her delectable torso. But nothing happened. His hand refused to act; and Timon realized that he had taken one long sip too many of the insidious drink.

  The rainbow lights began to spin fiercely in his brain, creating endless abstract patterns of pure colour, into which intruded, occasionally, a glimpse of more earthy female beauty.

  Timon was dimly aware that he had lost contact with the night-club. He was launched on a chemically induced dream in which, paradoxically, he was aware that he was dreaming. He knew that the drug-provoked fantasy would last now until this final episode of the day ended and it was time to sleep.

  Even in his delirium, Timon felt the strange pull of the idea of sleep. It was supremely desirable.

  But the dream went on and on, for an immeasurable length of time, it seemed. Countless images of weird beauty or unspeakable horror passed before his closed eyes, and were forgotten as they came and went. It seemed to Timon, watching the succession of phantasms, that the whole range of possible experience was flickering before his consciousness.

  He had reached the shores of what was ultimately possible for his mind. He realized now, finally, that there was nothing more for him to experience.

  As Timon contemplated the final limits of his existence, the phantasms slowly cleared....

  He was back again, once more himself, in the grey half-light of the control room. He lay on the couch, before the console with its banked rows of selectors.

  Timon looked at the controls, and at the glowing spherical clock, and knew that it was time to press the sleep selector. He also knew that simply to press it was not enough.

  Of what use was it, to sleep for a mere eight hours, and then wake up again, and begin again the round of tedious and familiar recording sequences ?

  He strained his dim eyes to see clearly the sleep button. He gathered the shreds of his senile force together, reached out a skinny, trembling arm, and searched and probed with his slender claw.

  The claw skidded on the shiny surface of the panel, failing to find a purchase. Timon persisted, summoning the last dregs of his energy for a supreme effort. Suddenly the claw jammed itself in the panel, and would not move.

  For an instant Timon panicked; then he sighed with satisfaction, realizing that he had achieved his goal. Through oncoming waves of profound drowsiness, he saw his claw firmly fixed into the panel, locking the sleep button permanently in the “on” position.

  * * * *

  The Surveillance Centre, at the hub of the vast concourse of recording control rooms, was a place of undisturbed calm.

  Machines whirred slowly about their diverse duties at an unvarying speed. Nothing could halt or accelerate their methodical, unhurried activity.

  Certainly not the flashing red light, winking insistently, on Panel 23....

  For the moment, it could and would be ignored. This was, after all, only one red light among the many flickering signals which had to be watched and dealt with.

  At length Machine Z-137 rolled slowly forward, grumbling a little in its whining servomechanisms, and identified the source of the trouble. Complex 23 Timon. Sleep selector locked on.

  The Machine’s computer flickered briefly. The fault was a commonplace one, and the remedy was routine. No need for an immediate consultation at higher level. The usual report, filed in due course, would cover this one. But first, to attend to the little local difficulty.

  The Machine rumbled down an aisle between racks of heavy shelving loaded with assorted recording gear. Not much more than halfway down, it turned sharply left into the narrow runway between adjacent racks. Then the Machine began to scan up and down the shelves for the appropriate identification tag. Its antennae flickered over the racks like a braille reader; its hydraulic legs lengthened or shortened absurdly as it consulted high or low shelves.

  Now the Machine had found what it was looking for. It reached up and slowly slid a heavy memory drum from the rack, cradling the drum carefully in its manipulators. Then it made the leisurely journey back to the Surveillance Centre and, crossing the floor, went down the long corridor that led to Complex 23

  When it reached the control room of the Complex, the double doors opened automatically. The Machine spared only a brief glance at Timon’s slumped, inert figure-on the dimly-lit couch.

  Moving round behind the arc of the control console, the Machine carefully placed the memory drum on a low table. Then it moved forward to check over all the internal monitor circuits, looking for possible neural damage.

  Only when it was satisfied on this score did the Machine crack open the inner housing. One by one the multiple pickup heads were clicked aside, exposing the grey, finely-etched surface of the old worn memory drum already inside the complex. Patiently the Machine worked to ease out the worn memory drum. The label on the end read Universe 23c.

  Depositing the old memory drum on the table, it picked up the new drum, labelled Universe 23d, and slid this gently into the empty mountings. After checking that the new drum spun freely on its bearings, the Machine clicked the pick-up heads back into position around it.

  It was the work of only a few moments, then, for the Machine to free Timon’s claw from the sleep selector button.

  The time-sequencer had been re-set, so there was no delay. The Machine paused for a few moments, watching Timon’s chest heaving like one newly awakened from a slumber as deep as death. It observed his visual receptors click open once more.

  Satisfied, the Machine turned and, without looking back, moved out through the double doors and whirred quietly away down the corridor.

  <>


  * * * *

  THE DAY BEFORE NEVER

  by Robert Presslie

  Defeated, subjugated, almost exterminated, yet there is a force in some men which will drive them to any lengths in order to find a means of retaliation and revenge.

  * * * *

  Yesterday was a quiet day. I didn’t kill anyone and nobody killed me. Not even a try. Almost like old times. Hard to remember there used to be a world where you could meet a stranger without throwing anything more offensive than a smile at him. Apart from wars, of course. There is something about a war that repeals the Commandments, a lobotomy of the conscience that syrups the distaste of killing. Any other time it takes a special kind of man to be able to kill without compunction; to terminate the span of another human without the slightest urge to puke, either in the gullet or in the mind. This talent is mine. Not inborn. Not deliberately achieved. Thrust on me? That depends. Depends on whether it is possible to compel anyone to do something he inherently abhors. So maybe I am wrong: maybe I had this talent all the time and it took a special set of circumstances to bring it to flower.

  Anyhow, there were twenty-four hours of innocence behind me. Or thirty hours if we are going to be precise about it. Thirty hours at the wheel of the red Berlinetta. One thousand miles in thirty hours.

  If people ever get back to a state of affairs where they can pursue trivialities like erecting statues somebody should propose they perpetuate the memory of Enzo Ferrari. You can’t punish many cars the way I had the Berlinetta. It was reckoned to be the finest sports car made. I’m not arguing. Six hundred miles through Poland; from Krakow to Warsaw and from Warsaw to Kaliningrad on the other side of the border. Then nearly four hundred miles through Russia from Kaliningrad to Riga. Almost nonstop.

  On and under the seat at my right there was enough canned, processed or freeze-dried food to eliminate the necessity for stopping to beat the hell out of somebody to steal their supper. The only stops I had made were to refuel the Berlinetta at abandoned petrol stations. One of the few things I can still feel proud about is my skill in unlocking the pumps with a paper clip and warm spittle.

  Sometimes the stations are not abandoned. There is still the odd idiot who hasn’t got his values sorted out. It stares him in the face that sooner or later he must lose his prized possessions or his life. He still lives in yesterday, hasn’t got himself adjusted. So he gets blasted and he dies because he couldn’t adjust.

  But the idiots are getting fewer and fewer. Nobody got in my way this part of the trip. I didn’t kill anyone because I didn’t meet anyone. One thousand miles without the sight of another human. Mostly because I used the main trunk roads and nobody in their right senses travels along them on foot. And a lot of countryside this far north was pretty bleak and thinly populated at the best of times. Which this isn’t. And every time there was a town or village signposted up ahead I had made a deliberate detour. The easiest way to avoid trouble is just that. Avoid it.

  When I stopped to think about it—and it surprised even me that I still did—I was always faced with the conclusion that if I was not the most unpopular man alive then I was definitely on everybody’s short list of candidates. Understandable. You can’t do what I’ve done, what I’ve had to do, without setting yourself up as public enemy number two. Number one being the Barbarians of course. But hating them is a lot less futile than hating me. Them, you can do nothing about. Me, you could shoot, knife, strangle or otherwise dispose of. Provided I didn’t shoot, knife, etcetera, first. Which I have been able to do so far.

  The last stretch of road—between Jelgava and Riga— was reeling off under the Berlinetta’s wheels. This was the final lap of a long, long journey that had started a long, long time ago. And this was the moment, the last but most critical moment for alertness. This was one town I couldn’t skirt. Any more than I had been able to skirt Milan or Belgrade.

  The drill for self-preservation gets more automatic with practice. Make sure the road ahead is straight and clear. Grip the wheel firmly with one hand. Send the other scrabbling around you. Get the precise location of every weapon. The faithful Smith and Wesson first. The Magnum naturally. Holds one more shot than the .38 and gives you the choice of two sizes of cartridge when ammo is hard to come by. Then the rifles. The Schmeisser machine carbine for when you aren’t too fussy who gets hit and the Russian Tokarev for those special shots at a distant target. Grenades? Check. Bombs? Take your pick: plastic, magnetic, smoke. All there. Snuggle the right foot under the seat, trace out the curve of the sixty-pound bow, hear the clink of the aluminium arrows. Then the furtive touch of your own fingers at your own crotch. You keep your most secret weapon in your most secret place. A Baby Browning. Absolutely useless unless you are close enough to spit between the eyes where you have marked your target. But undetectable at the same range. A woman’s weapon really. Significant you should keep it there? You wonder. And from wondering about the gun you begin wondering about women. About all the women you haven’t had lately. But you can’t afford the erotic distraction. So you get both hands back on the wheel and both eyes flicking along the street. For the road has become a street. The first street of the town you were visiting. In this case Riga.

  Mnemographic recall on Riga: population 400,000. That’s what the book said. Visible population: nil. Which is the liar ? The book or the eyes ? Experience says it has to be both. The book was printed before the advent of the Barbarians taught people it didn’t pay to congregate. And even if the streets looked empty to me I had sallied through sufficient other streets to know I had more scrutineers than the rows of blank windows would suggest. No doubt either about whether the looks I was getting were hostile or otherwise. There was no otherwise to consider. Geographically this was part of Russia. But to bank on the legendary stolid Russian nature making the locals indifferent? Suicide. Anyhow it was Latvian before it was Russian; and Swedish before that; and it was Polish before the Swedes captured it. Throw in the paradox that the city was more German than anything else and you get what ? You get the common denominator that they hate your guts whatever the race or creed and you had better not relax.

  The Berlinetta responded to the nervous pressure of my foot, carried me racing out of these newer parts of Riga across the upper bridge on the Dvina and into the old city where the buildings look more German than they do in Germany.

  Fear gets suspended by the oddest things. Just for a minute I lost hold of conscious vigilance—although I long ago learned that the body does its own sentry work at these moments—and I remembered how often I had come across this before. I’m talking about the way residual national colonies or ghettos are always much more typically nationalistic than the mother country.

  Due west now. Still no sign of life. But the testaments of death abounded. For one more time I cursed the Barbarians and their abominable glazers. There were immense vacant lots where they had used their bigger glazers to reduce whole streets of houses to a ghastly flux of molten stone and flesh. A flux that had hardened after flowing so that the wheel of the Berlinetta jumped in response to every corrugation that overlaid the surface of the road. This was what made it easy to hate the Barbarians. Their utterly ruthless killings and their insensible destruction of property. Maybe my emotions are not yet altogether calloused. Maybe the Barbarians are right: an enemy is an enemy, and if part of it chooses to hide in buildings with fine old ringing names like the Castle of the Knights of the Sword and the House of the Blackheads it is just too bad. All I could find of the castle was an amorphous glazed blob, streaked with greys and browns like a massive lump of Swedish glass. When I passed the House of the Blackheads it was almost entire.

  Almost. A group of humans had been caught as they had sidled round one of the corners. Now they were smeared there for eternity. Or until the Barbarians decided to raze the building completely. Some were fused shallow reliefs on the ancient stone. Others hadn’t been so lucky. Not for them the quick, unfelt death. The glazer beams—powered by God-knows-what—had caught t
hem in motion. The terrible grimace on an oldster’s face told the agonies of every minute of life he had left to him after an arm and a leg had been fluidly bonded to the house. There was half a torso here, a grisly fraction there. The worst I saw before I passed the building was the girl. About fourteen or fifteen to judge by the nubile breasts laid bare by a glazer’s freakish heat. If it hadn’t been for the breasts I would never have known it was a girl who hung against the wall, headless, suspended only by the strips of flesh-and-silicon compound that stretched upwards from her shoulders.

  On. Drive on. Drive on and forget.

  No. Don’t forget. Just don’t let hatred refreshed be a weapon against yourself. Don’t let it dull your vigilance or in any way interfere with the intricate web of intrigue you have spun. You will be picking up the final thread soon. Wait. Be patient. All the murders you have committed, all the vilification you have brought on yourself because you couldn’t disclose your objective will be erased when you knit in the last thread and the enemy is reduced to lifeless dust.