Dark Night in Toyland

by Bob Shaw

  Hillowen tilted his head pensively. “What kind of securities?”

  “Well, if you wanted, I could probably get authorisation to offer you…” He gave a meditative sniff and tapped on the counter as though keying an invisible computer. “Let’s say three thousand one-dollar preference shares in Kwangsi Imperial Railroads.”

  “Kwangsi? Where’s that?”

  “China.”

  “China!” cried Hillowen, his temples beginning to throb. “I don’t give a toss about anything in China. What I really want is…”

  “Another thing you can’t have is extra time,” Zurek said firmly, making it clear that he had no intention of relinquishing his superior bargaining position.

  “There’s no point in your asking for immortality, or even to live to be a hundred. Even if I were to make you a younger man again—say, in your forties—you would only go on for your allotted four more years and then something would happen to end your time on earth. Four years is the time remaining to you—and nothing can alter that.”

  Hillowen nodded. “I’m not as naïve as you seem to think. Four years may be a brief span of time, but if I am allowed to live them as I want to, those four years will contain enough ecstasy to make them equivalent to four centuries. I have had a good life, by the material standards which satisfy most people—an excellent house in Royal Tunbridge, respected position in the community, success in my profession, but the one thing denied to me, the one thing I craved above all others, was…was…”

  “Political success is also out of the question,” Zurek said quickly. “When I think of how we were taken in by that woman and what she has done…”

  “No, no, no! I don’t care about politics. All I want from what remains of my life is…is to be…”

  “Say it, Mr Hillowen.” Zurek picked the black cat up and cradled it against his chest. “Marge and I can be very understanding.”

  Hillowen took a deep breath and expelled it in a rush of words. “I want to be irresistible to women.”

  “Is that all?” Zurek said, unceremoniously dumping the cat on the floor. “Why didn’t you say so at the start and save us a lot of time?”

  “You mean…?” Hillowen had to take a deep breath to ease the pounding in his chest. “You mean you’ll do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I mean really irresistible to women. I want them to go weak at the knees at the sight of me. I want them to be unable to keep their hands off me.”

  “I understand perfectly,” Zurek said in matter-of-fact tones. “You are now totally irresistible to women—or you will be as soon as you sign the necessary contracts.” He gave a doleful smile. “Nothing but forms these days, isn’t it?”

  Hillowen was taken aback and made suspicious—everything was now going almost too smoothly. “I must say you agreed to that very quickly.”

  “I’ll let you into a little secret,” Zurek said gently as he produced a sheaf of documents from under the counter. “You’re the third irresistible-to-women I’ve had today.”

  Hillowen blushed and tried to look nonchalant. “Is it a perennial favourite?”

  “Only among our male clients. Now, if you would like to read through these forms…”

  “No, no,” Hillowen said, still embarrassed. “I’m sure everything is fine. Mr Lorrimer tells me he is very happy with his contract. He says you are observing it to the letter.”

  “It’s nice to know we’re appreciated. In that case, if I could just have your signature here, please…”

  “It doesn’t have to be in blood, does it?” Hillowen peered uneasily at the proffered forms. “I’ve always been a bit squeamish…”

  “Ballpoint will be fine,” chuckled Zurek, taking a silver pen from his pocket. “Here, use mine. Now, if you will just sign here…that is…and once again here…and once more on the pink copy…and just once more for the computer centre…Fine!”

  Ballpoint and contract vanished together, and Zurek shook Hillowen’s hand with a smile of warmth and great sincerity. The cat leapt up on to the counter beside him and began to purr.

  “Mr Hillowen,” Zurek announced genially, “we have a deal!”

  “Splendid,” Hillowen said, his heart beginning to pound again. “So that’s it, then, is it? I don’t feel any different. What do I…?”

  “All you have to do, Mr Hillowen, is count to three.”

  “And as soon as I’ve done that I’ll be…”

  “Completely,” said Zurek, maintaining his smile.

  “Well,” Hillowen said, deciding not to waste a second more of his four years, “in that case—one…”

  “Goodbye, Mr Hillowen.”

  “Goodbye,” murmured Hillowen, and suddenly he was seeing everything through a kaleidoscope. Far from causing him alarm, the experience was quite amusing. Zurek’s teeth, for example, had become a hinged circle of white; and the cat’s head was a black billiard ball with sixteen ears.

  “Two,” Hillowen said, chuckling.

  The kaleidoscope began to spin, and he gave himself up to a mild, delightful dizziness. The universe purred softly all around him. Why is all this necessary? he thought, but for some reason he was becoming very drowsy.

  “Three,” he whispered, and immediately was engulfed in a cosy darkness.

  He awoke abruptly to sharp, random noises and found he was lying on his back, unable to see anything but meaningless patches of colour. The sounds were annoyingly loud, the colours intensely bright, and he had a vague impression of being in the open air.

  Suddenly, from directly overhead, a blurred pink ovoid began to descend. He blinked at it uncertainly as it came into focus—and then, with a twinge of astonishment, he recognised it as a face. The face had melting blue eyes, a powdery nose, and a huge lipsticked mouth which was curving into a tender smile.

  “Oooza booful boy, den?” it crooned. “Ooza booful, wooful ickle diddums?”

  Wrinkling his tiny features, kicking with his tiny feet in rage and frustration, Hillowen threw his bright green rattle out of the pram. Then he began to howl.

  COURAGEOUS NEW PLANET

  The Savage was brooding in one brightly-lit corner of Foodroom 127, his shoulders hunched as he stared down at the smear resistant surface of a table. A somaburger and a beaker of surrocoff remained untouched at his elbow. Once apparently motivated by a dull curiosity, he squeezed some ketchup out of a plastic tomato on to the atomically polarised table-top which naturally rejected the contamination. The red blob squirmed towards the edge like an agitated amoeba, dropped off into the Savage’s lap and was promptly absorbed by the fabric of his 20th Century clothing. His lips moved silently, but only for a few seconds, then he returned to his apathetic reverie.

  “I wonder why he isn’t happy,” Experimenter Gatesby said watching the dejected figure through a discreet viewing device’ “I mean, he would have died in that car accident if we hadn’t snatched him forward to our time. You’d think he would be grateful.”

  “I raised the matter with him,” replied Controller Carson. “All he said was, ‘I’m a stranger in a strange land’. Apparently that’s a quotation from the 20th Century writer Heinz-Lyon author of a philosophical work called 57 Verities.”

  Gatesby shook his head. “It’s quite incredible. The Savage hasn’t enjoyed one hour of sensuvision, and he won’t even look at our best nymphobots. You know, it’s going to affect our promotion prospects if we can’t bring about a successful adjustment.”

  “We’d better talk to him again,” Carson said. He turned to the nearest dispensomat and keyed in the specification for a capsule which would increase his persuasiveness, psychic aura and problem-solving ability. A bright plastic egg dropped into his hand a second later. Carson popped it into his mouth and, thus fortified, set off with springy gait for another meeting with the Savage. Gatesby, who had declined a capsule, trailed a short distance behind.

  “Frankly, I don’t understand you,” Carson said. “We’ve brought you forward in time to a world in whi
ch disease, hunger and war have been abolished. There is no need for anyone to work, unless he wishes to, and every citizen can command greater sensual gratification than was available to the most powerful kings of old. This is the future the people of your era could only dream of—and yet you are not happy. Why? Please tell me why.”

  “If you must know,” the Savage said, twiddling with his beard, “it’s partly because I was a science fiction fan.”

  Carson turned in the direction of his colleague and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “I ran a check on the term the first time he used it,” Gatesby said. “Apparently he was a devotee of a small group of scientific visionary writers with names like Azimuth, Anny Logg, and Funnygut. Those writers spent most of their time trying to visualise the future. They didn’t all have strange names, though—one of the best was called Shaw.”

  The Savage stirred and his eyes glowed momentarily. “Ah, yes—Shaw!”

  “But that explains nothing,” Carson protested. “In fact, it makes things more baffling. If you were so intrigued by the future you should be overjoyed at finding yourself actually in it. Why aren’t you deliriously happy?”

  “Why? Why?” The Savage straightened up, his face registering an interplay of emotions—anger, despair, contempt. “Don’t you see—you slithy tove, you miserable greep-crottler—that here there is too much of everything? There’s none of the variety and challenge, longing and disappointment that add spice to life. You live in an endless desert of plentitude, a desert from which there is no escape.”

  “Escape?”

  “That’s what I said. I loved science fiction because it allowed me to burst through the gloomy barricades of the 20th Century—it was a dapple of primary colour on the dark palette of the times. The human soul feeds on contrast. Pleasure has to be tempered with pain, love with hate…”

  “But a nymphobot can be instructed to inflict pain,” Carson said quickly. “Within certain…”

  “…pre-set limits,” the Savage sneered. “But is there any chance that one of your fluid-solenoid automata would try to kill me through jealousy of one of her mass-produced sisters? No, this perfect plastic world of yours has been rendered germ-free, sterilised, regardless of the fact that life itself is a coloured stain on the white radiance of eternity. Everything that made us human has been cauterised out of existence.

  “Oh God, how I miss those things—the unpredictability of a real woman, the ever-varying taste of a living ale, the hiss and kiss of rain, the choking smell of a pensioner’s black tobacco, the irrationality of religion and politics, even the barely-suppressed violence of a football crowd, and…”

  “Just a minute,” Carson cut in. “Did you say football? Do you like soccer?”

  “Next to the science fiction works of Captain S. P. Meek, there was nothing I loved more,” the Savage breathed. “But of course all that will have been swept away by what you call progress.”

  Carson shook his head. “No, it hasn’t—soccer is our most popular sport.”

  “What?” The Savage gazed from one man to the other, jaw sagging, then his brow cleared. “Oh, I understand—you have reduced it to mere electronic blobs on the face of a cathode ray tube.”

  “But that would have destroyed the essence of the game.” Carson gave the Savage a reassuring smile. “Soccer is, and always will be, a contact sport—a test of human strength, speed and skill.”

  “You mean…?”

  “I mean that league football is alive and thriving in 25th Century Britain,” Carson said. “Would it cheer you up if we were to attend tomorrow night’s big match here in London? I’m sure that even in your time Arsenal and Manchester City were serious contenders for the F.A. cup.”

  “Arsenal and City in a cup match!” The Savage lowered his head, but not before Carson and Gatesby had glimpsed the welling of his tears. They exchanged triumphant glances, then stood up and diplomatically left the Savage to the quietness of his room.

  The atmosphere of a big match had not changed much in five centuries—and yet the Savage seemed oddly dissatisfied.

  He paced uneasily in the directors’ box, staring down at the floodlit turf, the patterned movements of the twenty-two players, the rippling of the rapt multitudes on the terraces. Several minutes of the match’s first half ticked by, with the Savage growing more and more agitated, then he came to an abrupt halt. A frown gathered on his bearded countenance as he surveyed the packed ground below.

  Gatesby, who had been observing him with some disquiet, said, “Is not everything to your liking?”

  “The crowd is so orderly…so passive…” The Savage turned to Gatesby with a look of accusation. “I see only Arsenal scarves down there. Those are all Arsenal supporters.”

  “Naturally.”

  “But where is the opposition? Where are the Manchester City supporters?”

  “In Manchester, of course. They’re watching the match in Manchester.”

  “Huh!” The Savage looked disgusted. “On television!”

  Gatesby shook his head emphatically. “Not at all! Everybody accepts that television cannot convey the real atmosphere of a soccer match—one has to be there in person. In Manchester they are watching the actual match—just as we are doing here.”

  The Savage clenched his fists in annoyance. “What kind of double-talk is this? Either we are watching the real match or…”

  “Perhaps I should put in a word here,” said Controller Carson smoothly. “You see, by the end of the 20th Century the social problems associated with soccer hooliganism had grown so great—with entire districts being destroyed by visiting supporters on the rampage—that it looked as though football would have to be suppressed altogether. Then, happily, science came to the rescue. Thanks to the great progress made in robotics it became possible to eliminate the whole concept of the ‘away’ match. Every soccer game is now a ‘home’ match, and the crowds of proles are easy to control while at their own local ground.”

  “Robotics?” The Savage glanced suspiciously at the weaving figures on the floodlit pitch. “Are you telling me that is a contest between two teams of robots?”

  Carson laughed aloud. “Of course not! That would be a poor substitute indeed for the traditional clash between two teams of red-blooded men.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t you see it? One team out there, the visiting team, is composed of robots—each of them perfectly linked to and controlled by a human counterpart up in Manchester. Similarly, every one of our human Arsenal players out there is linked to a robot counterpart which was sent up to Manchester this morning. Every movement of every human player is faithfully duplicated at the other venue, every spin and slice of the ball is replicated to perfection. In this way the same match can be played in two different places, in front of two crowds of home supporters—thus eliminating the old problem of hooliganism at away matches.”

  “But this is all wrong,” the Savage cried. “That’s why the match is so dead. The human players aren’t being fired and inspired and driven by the emotional energies generated in the crowd. All the sense of tribal conflict is gone from the terraces, the catharsis of personal involvement is missing, the hint of danger…

  “Wait a minute! Why did the soccer-supporting public accept this terrible new system so meekly and passively? Why didn’t some of them insist on travelling to away matches just as they always did?”

  Carson put a capsule into his mouth and swallowed it. “Some of them did at first, then the Government realised it was in the best interests of everybody in the country to limit the mobility of proles. A geosynchronous satellite blankets the country with a type of radiation which, unless a person is specially protected, induces pain and severe nausea in all who travel through it laterally for more than about five kilometres. In a way, it almost makes the dual match idea redundant, except that players have got used to never having to waste time travelling in person, and never having to face a hostile foreign crowd in person. The whole system is very
effective.”

  “It’s evil and inhuman,” the Savage whispered, his eyes smouldering in a face which had become a brooding mask. “Tell me, my good friends, am I protected from your cursed radiation which keeps ordinary men in invisible cages?”

  “There is no restriction on your mobility,” Gatesby said, “but I don’t see…”

  “You will—I promise you.” The Savage strode to the edge of the directors’ box, and in one powerful flowing movement vaulted the balustrade and disappeared into the milling crowds below. At that moment one of the players on the lime-glowing turf scored a goal and the stadium echoed with polite orderly applause.

  “What are we going to do?” Gatesby said when the cheering had subsided. “Should we inform the police?”

  “Don’t bother,” Carson replied comfortably. “I was getting pretty bored with the Savage—and he will soon learn that there is absolutely nothing he can do to upset the system.”

  Controller Carson had cause to remember his words when, only a month later at the F.A. cup final, he was struck on the head by a beer bottle which had been launched with superhuman accuracy from the hand of a robot soccer hooligan, part of a gang which—under the leadership of a wild-eyed and bearded figure—had begun kicking up a very human kind of hell on terraces throughout the length and breadth of the country.

  CUTTING DOWN

  Herley was awakened by the sounds of his wife getting out of bed. Afraid of seeing her nude body, he kept his eyes closed and listened intently as she padded about the room. There came a silky electrostatic crackling as she removed her nightdress—at which point he squeezed his eyes even more tightly shut—then a rustling of heavier material which told him she had donned a dressing gown. He relaxed and allowed the morning sun to penetrate his lashes with bright oily needles of light.

  “What would you like for breakfast?” June Herley said.