The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s

  BY BRIAN ALDISS

  The Friday Project

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2013

  Copyright © Brian Aldiss 2013

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013

  Brian Aldiss asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  FIRST EDITION

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007482085

  Ebook Edition © August 2013 ISBN: 9780007482092

  Version: 2014-10-03

  We are indebted to the following individuals who provided rare source materials: Jim Linwood, Richard Fidczuk and Phil Stephensen-Payne.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Book in Time

  Criminal Record

  Breathing Space

  The Great Time Hiccup

  Not for an Age

  Our Kind of Knowledge

  Outside

  Panel Game

  Pogsmith

  Conviction

  Dumb Show

  The Failed Men

  Non-Stop

  Psyclops

  T

  There is a Tide

  Tradesman’s Exit

  With Esmond in Mind

  The Flowers of the Forest

  Gesture of Farewell

  The Ice Mass Cometh

  Let’s Be Frank

  No Gimmick

  The War Millennia

  The Sterile Millennia

  The Dark Millennia

  The Ultimate Millennia

  The Shubshub Race

  Supercity

  Judas Danced

  Ten-Storey Jigsaw

  The Pit My Parish

  Blighted Profile

  Who Can Replace A Man?

  The Carp That Once …

  Carrion Country

  Equator

  Fourth Factor

  The Megalopolis Millennia

  The Star Millennia

  The Mutant Millennia

  The New Father Christmas

  Ninian’s Experiences

  Poor Little Warrior!

  Sector Diamond

  Sight of a Silhouette

  They Shall Inherit

  Are You An Android?

  The Arm

  The Bomb-Proof Bomb

  Fortune’s Fool

  Intangibles, Inc.

  Sector Yellow

  The Lieutenant

  The Other One

  Safety Valve

  The Towers of San Ampa

  Three’s a Cloud

  About the Author

  Also by Brian Aldiss

  About the Publisher

  A Book in Time

  I was browsing in Albert’s, down Cecil Court, when I saw another customer slipping books under his coat. Indignation high, I made a grab at him, but he had seen my glance and was out of the shop before you could say ‘Limited signed edition’.

  I followed hot-foot (crepes always do that to me). Luckily, he did not run far. He had something that looked to my wild glance like a car, hidden behind a pile of crates in a hotel yard. As I jumped on to the running board, I realised it was a queer make. It had no steering wheel, no driving wheels. A publisher? The wild thought flashed through my head, and then my quarry at the dashboard flipped a lever …

  London was gone! At least, the old one had disappeared. It simply blurred and vanished, and a new one of smooth stone and metal took its place. We seemed not to have moved. I was bowled over; indeed, when the fugitive opened his door, I was knocked over.

  ‘Never impede a passing time machine,’ he said, helping me up.

  ‘Time machine?’ I queried. Could that really be the hideous explanation of the strangeness around about me?

  ‘What year is this?’ I asked.

  ‘2054,’ he said.

  ‘You’re sure your watch isn’t fast?’

  ‘Look friend, I’ve got no time for jokes. I’ve got just an hour off duty to snatch some lunch, and then I must be back into the past again. Goodbye.’

  By the time I had come out of the nearest thing a non-yogi gets to a trance, he had gone. I was stranded a century into the future! To think that a love of law and order should result in this, when I had only meant to pop out of the bank for five minutes. And what would they say there if I did not return? ‘He said he’d be back in no time.’ How right they were!

  Abruptly my misery vanished. My time traveller had said he was coming back in an hour! Then I was saved – I had an hour, just an hour, to look around in. Immediately I was filled with a thousand curiosities, but I knew there was time to gratify only one.

  What to do? Go to the bank and check if I ever got on to the board? Slip into the nearest library and look up racing records, so that I could be sure of winning the 1954–64 Derbys? Have a peep into the Tate and see if anyone ever got round to enjoying Picasso? Or just stand and talk to someone, anyone, in the street, and see what changes, if any, human nature had undergone?

  I stood there blankly, uncertain of my strange surroundings. Perhaps the bank, the library, the Tate had all long since gone. I tried to think of somewhere that would beyond doubt still be in existence.

  I hailed a passer-by in blue nylon.

  ‘Foyles?’ I prompted.

  He pointed up the street. ‘Ruddy bookworm,’ he muttered. Evidently human nature was much the same.

  So was Foyles. My heart beat excitedly as I passed the robot doorman searching outgoing customers. Eagerly, I ran from counter to counter.

  Book fashions had altered surprisingly little. Although novels were mainly royal octavo and technical books demy 16mo in two volumes, they were still printed on nothing more exotic than paper.

  Good paper, too (there was no war on, obviously!). Even the same dear old typefaces greeted me, although I spotted a new letter in the alphabet, a cross between an ‘a’ and a ‘y’.

  The Collected Works of Angus Wilson in 22 volumes hypnotised me. It cost nine poundels. Alas, I had no poundels! My eyes floated over novel titles. His Dear Dead Body, In What Mad Ecstasy? Too Soon the Plebiscite. Not much change there …

  Dust jacket art was impressive. Nearly every one looked fit for framing, to my bulging eyes. I glanced at a blurb. ‘This absorbing account of the ages when our ancestors travelled by railway trains holds the reader in an iron track all its own. Every chapter sizzles with steamy excitement – not a sleeper among them. Once you pick up this saga of a man who commuted …’ I dropped it, plus ça change …

  But the quote came from the Mirror
Literary Supplement. What fantastic revolution in taste did that denote?

  Even more tantalising were the technical books. Teach Yourself Astrogravitics – there was a counter full of that. Current bestsellers: Third-Stage Mutation, published by Harwell University. Cybernetics in the Home, Through the Time Barrier and Lunar Fungi and Quasi-grasses. And what were Venusian Calatapods?

  Many publishers’ names were new, although most of the old ones still seemed to be going strong. I could see nothing of Blank and Blank, rather to my pleasure – I had always hoped they would expire since they rejected a modest little treatise on money I had written.

  What quaint story, I wondered, lay behind the name Jonathan Carp. Or was it merely a pronunciation change?

  I sighed. The Encyclopaedia Britannica was still in 48 volumes. Knowledge was still accumulating.

  Biographies also accumulated. Abide the Question, One Final Thing – the usual kind of title. And then I jumped! A memoir by John Fluffstone, 1950–2027. It must, it couldn’t, it must be my infant son, Johnny! Fluffstone is not such a common name, and the dates fitted. And the title – That Old Rip, Father: or, The Naked and the Dud. Tenth edition, too!

  My hour was up! Indeed, I was almost late. I burst out of the door, dodging the robot, and bolted down the street …

  He was just climbing into the time machine.

  ‘Hey!’ I called wildly. ‘Hey! If you will take me back to 1953, I promise not to mention those books you stole from Albert’s.’

  It was hardly a tactful way of cadging a lift. I admit I was upset. But the fellow smiled and said, ‘Jump in.’

  I did so.

  ‘Those books were not stolen,’ he said casually. ‘I’m a bookseller. I left a small gold nugget for them. It’s tedious I know, but we have different currencies, then and now.’

  ‘Why didn’t you make yourself known to Albert?’ I asked accusingly. ‘He’s always helpful.’

  He flipped up his lapel, revealing a hidden badge. On it were the initials ABA.

  ‘Not – not the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association?’ I gasped.

  He nodded grimly. ‘We’re a secret organisation these days,’ he said. ‘There have been two major wars since your time. All the old books have gone up in smoke. Our only source of supply is the past. It’s illegal, of course – police after us night and day.’

  ‘I see. You have come back a century for supplies? It seems very underhand.’

  ‘We’d never see a Golden Cockerel otherwise,’ he said sadly. ‘Besides, a chap has to live.’

  ‘OK I won’t say anything,’ I promised. How did I know what weapons he could produce if driven too far?

  ‘Right. Hold on.’ The lever flipped, the dials crawled … back to 1953.

  Wordlessly, I made my way back to the bank.

  As you see, I did not keep my word; somehow it hardly seems binding – after all, the fellow will not be born for 50 years yet.

  You do not believe this? Doubters may call and inspect a little volume I pocketed with few qualms; it provides complete proof for my statements. It is published by Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, 2052. It is called The Observer’s Book of Spaceships.

  Criminal Record

  This must all be written down quickly while I have the chance. Let me see how it began … Yes, the gramophone record and the smoof. Only two days ago – don’t bother to check that word; I will repeat it: smoof. Only two days ago – my name’s Curly Kelledew, by the way, and I’d better try and think straight.

  Are you fortunate enough to know Cambridge? One of my favourite haunts there is Curry Passage. It boasts three very similar, very satisfactory junk shops (over the three doors the word ‘junk’ is spelt A-N-T-I-Q-U-E-S). This particular afternoon, I made a find – quite accidentally. I had already bought a three-foot Chinese junk with a high prow and a real lateen sail that I thought would amuse a nephew of mine, and a little eighteenth-century milkmaid in china that was purely for my own gratification, and was just turning to go. Then I saw the pile of records behind a chest.

  I put down the junk and the china maid, and began to shuffle through the pile. They were a mixed bunch, some 78s, some LPs, sold probably by hard-up undergraduates at the end of the Trinity term. Jazz – several Louis Armstrongs for those who liked him – dance, Stravinsky, a cracked ‘Prize Song’ and – I breathed faster! – Borodin’s Second Symphony, the Coates recording that is now out of the catalogue. It was in an album, neat and new. I scrutinised the first record, and it looked as if it had never been played. The shop had no player, but the price was low; I wanted that symphony, so I paid my money and carted the album off with the junk and the figurine.

  That was how I got it! The next afternoon, Sunday, Harry Crossway came round as usual. That’s my definition of a friend, a man you work with all the week and are glad to see on Sundays. After a drink, after he had admired the little porcelain breasts swelling beneath the porcelain bodice, I pulled out the Borodin. We had the first movement on before I got the second record out of its envelope. I knew at once that it was odd, although it bore the correct red labels in the middle; when I touched them, they peeled off easily.

  We were left with a chocolate-coloured freak twice as fat as the usual record, only one side grooved and those grooves highly extraordinary looking. Of course, I should have noticed it in the shop, but in my excitement I had only glanced at the labels and that had been sufficient. Clearly, I had been had!

  I stated my irritation in very certain terms, and spent five minutes stamping round my room. Only when I had calmed a little did Harry say, in an interested voice: ‘Do you mind if I try this on the table, Curly?’

  Harry and I work for Cambridge’s biggest radio firm, on the experimental side. Discs, tapes, short wave, TV – plain and coloured – we are paid to tackle them all, well paid. Next time you hear of a crease-innoculator on the new TV cameras, think of Harry and Curly, the proud parents. All of which I mention merely to explain why one wall of my lounge is covered with amplifiers and what-have-you and the bureau is full of electric tackle. All my equipment is home assembled, an improvement on the commercial variety. Even so, we did not get anything out of the mystery record. The turntable seemed unable to hold it; it slipped beneath the light pick-up. For one thing, the hole in the middle of the disc was not round but shaped like a star with sixteen points; for another, the groove seemed to be separated by a smooth groove of fair width on which the needle had no grip. We left it, and played ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ instead.

  But when Harry had gone, I picked the thick disc up again and re-examined it. On the blank side was a small panel. It yielded to my exploratory fingernail and slid up. Underneath was a label which read:

  POLICE VIDEOFILE B/l191214/AAA

  – –

  INTERPLANETARY

  – –

  Cat: Ganymede-Eros-Earth-Venus

  Cr: Sabotage. Timesliding. Murder.

  Type: Humanoid Venusian experiment: smoof.

  Name: Above type use only generic name, smoof.

  Filed –/viii/14/305

  Rev. 2/xii/12/309

  When I had read it, I re-read it. Then I re-read it. Catching sight of myself in a mirror, I saw my features were suffused with an expression of blank imbecility. ‘What’s a smoof?’ I asked the dolt.

  ‘A humanoid Venusian experiment,’ it replied.

  Was the disc a joke of some sort? And what was a videofile? And what was a videofile doing in my room? I put it on the turntable again and started it up. But again came the trouble of dodging the smooth groove; that one being the wider, into that one the sapphire generally went. Finally I succeeded in hitting the other groove.

  There was a high and rapid babble of sound, together with a rasping noise. I switched off smartly. There was no reason why it should have worked. Then it occurred to me that at 78 revs I might have played it too fast. I switched on at 33 1/3. Now the babble resolved itself into a high, fast voice; but still that horrible rasp. Again I switched off. Po
ssibly the sapphire was overrunning the grooves; somewhere I had a finer one on a lighter pickup. After searching excitedly through three littered drawers, I found it and attached it. Breathless, setting the speed still slower, I tried again.

  This time I had it! I had, to be accurate, a number of things. I soon gathered this disc was only the sound-track for a sort of film. And I knew the police report was no joke; it threw sidelights, tantalising and confusing, on a complex future world. It threw a searching light on to a smoof that made my hair stand on end …

  Next day I smuggled the disc down to the works, carefully avoided Harry Crossway, and took a few plates of it under the X-ray apparatus they use for checking valves, etc.

  The X-rays revealed an interior that looked at first about as complicated to me as a watch would have done to a primitive who had only just stumbled on to the use of a wheel. But the harder I looked, the more convinced I became that the disc was some sort of television receiver. There were, for instance, the normal horizontal and vertical deflecting systems employed in today’s circuits, although infinitely better packed and planned.

  The thin spiral that we had called our ‘smooth groove’ proved to be a vast number of separate but linked rectangular plates. They were made of a glass that seemed infinitely strong and thin. And then I had an idea, and locked myself away from mortal men for a day. Oh, one thing I ought to mention. Foolishly – curiosity plays deadly tricks on a man! – I inserted an ad. in the local paper. It read: ‘Smoofs welcome here. No spoofs.’ And my address. Facetious to the last, that’s me.

  When I had inserted that ad. I did not fully believe. But at the end of that day and night of figuring, swearing and tinkering, I emerged believing all too fully. I felt grey; I felt bald; I felt scared. With a shaking hand, I phoned Harry. He was still at the workshop, but at the sound of my voice he said he would be over at once. While I waited, I took a drink and composed myself.

  Very shortly I heard Harry letting himself in. He climbed the stairs, entered, and said, handing me a note: ‘This was tucked in your letter flap.’ Then he exclaimed: ‘What have you got here?’ and went over to my gadgets on the side-table.