Neanderthal Planet

by Brian Aldiss

  Tired though Anderson was, as soon as his head was down he began to worry about Kay and the general situation. Could his sister possibly have had any reason for returning on foot to the ship? Tomor­row he must go and see. He turned over restlessly.

  Something was watching him through the window.

  In a flash, Anderson was out of bed, gripping the revolver, his heart hammering. The darkness outside was almost total. He glimpsed only a brutal silhouette in which eyes gleamed, and then it was gone.

  He saw his foolishness in accepting Alice's laissez faire advice to wait until Kay's captors got in touch with him. He must have been crazy to agree: or else the general lassitude of Nehru II had overcome him. Whatever was happening here, it was nasty enough to endanger Kay's life, without any messenger boys arriving first to parley about it.

  Alice had said that Arlblaster lived across the river. If he were as much the key to the mystery as he seemed to be, then Arlblaster should be confronted as soon as possible. Thoroughly roused, angry, vexed j with himself, Anderson went over to the window and opened it.

  He peered into the scruffy night.

  He could see nobody. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Anderson discerned nearby features well enough. A bright star in the sky which he took to be Bose, Nehru II's little moon, lent some light. Swinging his leg over the sill, Anderson dropped to the ground and stood tensely outside.

  Nothing moved. A dog howled. Making his way I between the outer circle of houses, gun in hand, Anderson came to the river's edge. A sense of the recklessness of what he was doing assailed him, but he pressed on.

  Pausing now and again to insure he was not being followed, he moved along the river bank avoiding the obstacles with which it was littered. He reached a bridge of a sort. A tall tree had been felled, so that it lay across the stretch of water. Its underside was lapped by the river.

  Anderson tucked his gun away and crossed the bridge with his arms outstretched for balance.

  On the far side, crude attempts to cultivate the ground had been made. The untidy patchwork stopped as the upward slope of the land became more pronounced. No dwellings were visible. He stopped and listened.

  He could hear a faint and indescribable choric noise ahead. As he went forward, the noise became more distinct, less a part of the ill-defined background of furtive ground and river sounds. On the higher ground, a patch of light was now vaguely distinguishable.

  This light increased as did the sound. Circumnavigating a thorny mass of brush, Anderson could see that there was a depression ahead of him in the rising valley slope. Something—a ceremony?—was going on in the depression. He ran the last few yards, doubled up, his revolver ready again, grinning in his excitement.

  On the lip of the depression, he flung himself flat and peered down into the dip.

  A fire was burning in the middle of the circular hollow. Around it some three dozen figures paraded, ringing two men. One of the two was a menial, throwing powder into the blaze, so that green and crimson flames spurted up; the other filled some sort of priestly role. All the others were naked. He wore a cloak and pointed hat.

  He sang and waved his arms, a tall figure that woke in Anderson untraceable memories. The dancers—if their rhythmic shuffle might be called a dance— responded with low cries. The total effect, if not beautiful, was oddly moving.

  Hypnotized, Anderson watched. He found that his head was nodding in time to the chant. There was no sign of Kay here, as he had half-anticipated. But by his carrot-colored beard and his prominent nose the priest was distinguishable even in the uncertain fire­light It was Frank Arlblaster.

  Or it had been Frank Arlblaster. Items that most easily identify a man to his friends are his stance and his walk. Arlblaster's had changed. He seemed to sag at the knees and shuffle now, his torso no longer vertical to the ground. Yet the high timbre of his voice remained unaltered, though he called out in a language unknown to Anderson.

  The dancers shuffled eagerly, clapping their hands, nodding their shaggy heads. Gradually it dawned on Anderson what they looked like. Beyond doubt they were the inhabitants of Swettenham: they were also, unmistakably, pre-homo sapiens. He might have been witnessing a ritual of Neanderthal men.

  Mingled repulsion and elation rooted Anderson to the spot where he lay. Yes, unarguably the faces of Ell and his friends earlier had borne the touch of Neanderthal. Once the idea took, he could not shake it off.

  He lay in a trance of wonder until the dance had stopped. Now all the company turned to face the spot where he lay concealed. Anderson felt the nerves tingle along his spinal cord. Arlblaster lifted an arm and pointed toward him. Then in a loud voice he cried out, the crowd shouting with him in chorus.

  "Aigh murg eg neggy oggy Kay bat doo!"

  The words were for Anderson.

  They were unintelligible to him, yet they seemed to penetrate him. That his whereabouts was known meant nothing beside an even greater pressure on his brain. His whole being trembled on the threshold of some great, disastrous revelation.

  A magical trance had snared him. He was literally not himself. The meaningless words seemed to shake him to his soul. Gasping, he climbed to his feet and took himself off at a run. There was no pursuit.

  He had no memory of getting back to Mender-stone's place, no recollection of crossing the rough bridge, no recollection of tumbling through the window. He lay panting on the bed, his face buried in the pillow.

  This state in its turn was succeeded by a vast unease. He could not sleep. Sleep was beyond him. He trembled in every limb. The hours of night dragged on forever.

  At last Anderson sat up. A faint dawn washed into the world. Taking a torch from his kit, he went to investigate the other empty rooms next to his.

  A dusty corridor led to them.

  Alice had said this had been the HQ of Swettenham’s original intellectual coterie. There was a library in one room, with racked spools gathering dust; Anderson did not trouble to read any titles. He felt vague antipathy for the silent ranks of them. Another room was a small committee chamber. Maps hung on the walls, meaningless, unused. He saw without curiosity that the flags stuck to one map had mostly fallen on the floor.

  A third room was a recreation room. It held a assortment of egghead toys. There was even a model electric railway of the type fashionable on Earth a couple of centuries ago. A lathe in the corner suggested that rail and rolling stock might have been made on the premises.

  Anderson peered at the track. It gleamed in his torchlight. No dust on it. He hesitatingly ran a finger along it.

  A length of siding raised itself like a snake's head. Coiling up, it wrapped around Anderson's wrist, snapped tight. He pulled at it, yelling in surprise. The whole layout reared up, struggling to get at him.

  He backed away, beating at the stuff as it rolled up from the table. The track writhed and launched itself at him, scattering wagons and locomotives. He fired his revolver wildly. Loops of railroad fell over him, over his head, wrapping itself madly about him.

  Anderson fell to the floor, dropping his gun, dropping the torch, tearing at the thin bands of metal as they bit tighter. The track threshed savagely, binding his legs together. He was shouting incoherently.

  As he struggled, Menderstone ran into the room, rifle in hand, Alice behind him. It was the last thing Anderson saw as he lost consciousness.

  When he roused, it was to find himself in Menderstone's living room, sprawled on a bunk. Alice sat by him, turning toward him as he stirred. Menderstone was not in the room.

  "My God ..." Anderson groaned. His brain felt curiously lucid, as if a fever had just left him.

  "It's time you woke up. I'll get you some soup if you can manage it," Alice said.

  "Wait, Alice ... Alice...." His lips trembled as he formed the words. "I'm myself again. What came over me? Yesterday—I don't have a sister called Kay. I don't have a sister at all! I was an only child!"

  She was not surprised. He sat up, glaring at her.

 
"I guessed as much, said so to Stanley. When you brought your supply kit in from the vehicle there was nothing female in it."

  "My mind. I was so sure—I could have pictured her, described her—She was actual! And yet if anyone ... if you'd challenged me direct, I believe I’d have known it was an... an illusion."

  His sense of loss was forced aside as another realization crowded in on him.

  He sank down confusedly, closing his eyes, muttering. "Aigh murg eg neggy oggy Kay bat doo.... That's what they told me on the hillside: ‘You have no sister called Kay.' That's what it meant.... Alice, it's so strange...."

  His hand sought hers and found it. It was ice cold.

  "Your initial is K, Keith," she said, pale at the lips. "You were out there seeking yourself."

  Her face looking down at him was seared and ugly; yet a sort of gentle patience in it dissolved the ugliness.

  "I’m…I’m in some way mad," he whispered.

  “Of course you're mad!" Menderstone said as he burst open the door. "Let go of his hand, Alice—this is our beloved home, not the cheap seats in the feelies on Earth. Anderson, if you aren't insane, why were you rolling about on the floor, foaming at the mouth and firing your damned gun, at six o'clock this morning?”

  Anderson sat up.

  “You saw me entangled in that jinxed railroad when you found me, Menderstone! Another minute and it would have squeezed the life out of me."

  Menderstone looked genuinely puzzled. It was the first time Anderson had seen him without the armor of his self-assurance.

  “The model railroad?" he said. "It was undisturbed. You hadn’t touched it."

  “It touched me," Anderson said chokingly. "It... it attacked me, wrapped itself round me like an octopus. You must have peeled it off me before getting me through here."

  “I see,” Menderstone said, his face grim.

  He nodded slowly, sitting down absentmindedly, and then nodding again to Alice.

  “You see what this means, woman? Anderson's N-factor is rising to domination. This young man is not on our side, as I suspected from the first. He's no Crow. Anderson, your time's up here—sorry! From no on, you’re one of Arlblaster's men. You'll never get back to Earth.”

  “On the contrary, I'm on my way back now."

  Menderstone shook his head.

  “You don't know your own mind. I mean the words literally. You're doomed to stay here, playing out the miserable life of an Ape! Earth has lost another of her estimable nonentities."

  "Menderstone, you're eaten up with hatred! You hate this planet, you hate Earth!"

  Menderstone stood up again, putting his rifle down on the table and coming across to Anderson with his fists bunched.

  "Does that make me crazy, you nincompoop? Let me give you a good hard fact-reason why I loathe what's happening on Earth! I loathe mankind's insatia­ble locust activities, which it has the impertinence to call "assuming mastery over nature." It has overeat­en and overpopulated itself until the only other ani­mals left are in the sea, in zoos, or in food-factories. Now it is exhausting the fossil fuels on which its much-vaunted technology relies. The final collapse is due! So much for mastery of nature! Why, it can't even master its own mind!"

  "The situation may be desperate, but World Gov­ernment is slowly introducing economies which...."

  "World Government! You dare mention World Gov­ernment? A pack of computers and automata? Isn't it an admission that man is a locust without self-discipline that he has to hand over control piecemeal to robots?

  "And what does it all signify? Why, that civilization is afraid of itself, because it always tries to destroy itself.

  "Why should it try to do that? Every wise man in history has asked himself why. None of them found the answer until your pal Arlblaster tumbled on it, because they were all looking in the wrong direction. So the answer lies hidden here where nobody on Earth can get at it, because no one who arrives here goes back. I could go back, but I don't because I prefer to think of them stewing in their own juice, in the mess they created."

  "I'm going back," Anderson said. "I'm going to col­lect Arlblaster, and I'm going back right away—when your speech is finished."

  Menderstone laughed.

  “Like to bet on it? But don't interrupt when I'm talking, K. D. Anderson! Listen to the truth while you have the chance, before it dies for ever."

  "Stop bellowing, Stanley!" Alice exclaimed.

  "Silence, female! Attend! Do you need proof that fear-ridden autocrats rule Earth? They have a star-drive on their hands, they discover a dozen habitable planets within reach; what do they do? They keep them uninhabited. Having read just enough history to frighten them, they figure that if they establish colo­nies those colonies will rebel against them.

  "Swettenham was an exceptional man. How he pulled enough strings to get us established here, I'll never know. But this little settlement—far too small to make a real colony—was an exception to point to a rule: that the ruling regime is pathologically antilife— and must be increasingly so as robots take over."

  Anderson stood up, steadying himself against the bunk.

  "Why don't you shut up, you lonely man? I'm get­ting out of here."

  Menderstone's reaction was unexpected. Smiling, he produced Anderson's gun.

  "Suit yourself, lad! Here's your revolver. Pick it up and go."

  He dropped the revolver at his feet. Anderson stooped to pick it up. The short barrel gleamed dully. Suddenly it looked—alien, terrifying. He straightened, baffled, leaving the weapon on the floor. He moved a step away from it, his backbone tingling.

  Sympathy and pain crossed Alice's face as she saw his expression. Even Menderstone relaxed.

  "You won't need a gun where you're going," he said. "Sorry it turned out this way, Anderson! The long and tedious powers of evolution force us to be antagonists. I felt it the moment I saw you."

  "Get lost!"

  Relief surged through Anderson as he emerged into the shabby sunshine. The house had seemed like a trap. He stood relaxedly in the middle of the square, sagging slightly at the knees, letting the warmth soak into him. Other people passed in ones or twos. A couple of strangely adult-looking children stared at him.

  Anderson felt none of the hostility he had imagined yesterday. After all, he told himself, these folk never saw a stranger from one year to the next; to crowd around him was natural. No one had offered him harm—even Ell had a right to act to protect himself when a stranger charged around a rock carrying a gun. And when his presence had been divined on the hillside last night, they had offered him nothing more painful than revelation: "You have no sister called Kay."

  He started walking. He knew he needed a lot of explanations; he even grasped that he was in the middle of an obscure process which still had to be worked out. But at present he was content just to exist, to be and not to think.

  Vaguely, the idea that he must see Arlblaster stayed with him.

  But new—or very ancient?—parts of his brain seemed to be in bud. The landscape about him grew in vividness, showering him with sensory data. Even the dust had a novel sweet scent.

  He crossed the tree-trunk bridge without effort and walked along the other bank of the river, enjoy­ing the flow of the water. A few women picked idly at vegetable plots. Anderson stopped to question one of them.

  "Can you tell me where I’ll find Frank Arlblaster?"

  "That man sleeps now. Sun go, he wakes. Then you meet him."

  "Thanks." It was simple, wasn't it?

  He walked on. There was time enough for every­thing. He walked a long way, steadily uphill. There was a secret about time—he had it somewhere at the back of his head—something about not chopping it into minutes and seconds. He was all alone by the meandering river now, beyond people; what did the river know of time?

  Anderson noticed the watch strapped on his wrist. What did it want with him, or he with it? A watch was the badge of servitude of a time-serving culture. With sudden revulsion for it, h
e unbuckled it and tossed it into the river.

  The shattered reflection in the water was of piled cloud. It would rain. He stood rooted, as if casting away his watch left him naked and defenseless. It grew cold. Something had altered.... Fear came in like a distant flute.

  He looked around, bewildered. A curious double noise filled the air, a low and grating rumble punctu­ated by high-pitched cracking sounds. Uncertain where this growing uproar came from, Anderson ran forward, then paused again.

  Peering back, he would see the women still stooped over their plots. They looked tiny and crystal-clear, figures glimpsed through the wrong end of a tele­scope. From their indifference, they might not have heard the sound. Anderson turned around again.

  Something was coming down the valley!

  Whatever it was, its solid front scooped up the river and ran with it high up the hills skirting the valley. It came fast, squealing and rumbling.

  It glittered like water. Yet it was not water; its bow was too sharp, too unyielding. It was a glacier.

  Anderson fell to the ground.

  "I'm mad, still mad!" he cried, hiding his eyes, fighting with himself to hold the conviction that this was merely a delusion. He told himself no glacier ever moved at that cra2y rate. Yet even as he tried to reassure himself, the ground shook under him.

  Groaning, he heaved himself up. The wall of ice was bearing down on him fast. It splintered and fell as it came, sending up a shower of ice particles as it was ground down, but always there was more behind it. It stretched right up the valley, gray and uncom­promising, scouring out the hills' sides as it came.

  Now its noise was tremendous. Cracks played over its towering face like lightning. Thunder was on its brow.

  Impelled by panic, Anderson turned to run, his furs flapping against his legs.

  The glacier moved too fast. It came with such force that he felt his body vibrate. He was being overtaken.

  He cried aloud to the god of the glacier, remember­ing the old words.

  There was a cave up the valley slope. He ran like mad for it, driving himself, while the ice seemed to crash and scream at his heels. With a final desperate burst of strength, he flung himself gasping through the low, dark opening, and clawed his way hand-over-fist toward the back of the cave.