The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  He did not know that the news of Meller’s disappearance had already spread across the whole area, and that the desperate farmers were digging up the rifles they had hidden.

  The Hands

  JOHN BAXTER

  John Baxter (1939– ) is an Australian writer of fiction and nonfiction, born in Randwick, New South Wales, and now living in Paris, France. Since 2007 he has served as the codirector of the annual Paris Writers’ Workshop. He began publishing his science fiction stories in New Worlds during the New Wave boom of the 1960s and also published two groundbreaking anthologies of Australian science fiction during that time: The Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction (1968) and its sequel. Baxter serialized his first novel, The Godkillers, through New Worlds, after which it was published by Ace as The Off-Worlders (1968). But science fiction was only one of Baxter’s interests. At the same time he was writing fiction, Baxter became a member of the influential WEA Film Study Group, for which he edited the journal Film Digest. He was active in the Sydney Film Festival for many years and wrote film criticism for various publications.

  Since the 1980s Baxter has turned exclusively to producing or writing such documentaries and television series as The Cutting Room and First Take. His nonfiction about the movies includes writing about, among others, Woody Allen, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg.

  The move to Paris was prequel to writing four books of autobiography, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, We’ll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light, Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas, and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris.

  “The Hands” (1965) is an extremely unique and creepy science fiction horror story, one that serves as a perfect example of the successes of the New Wave era.

  THE HANDS

  John Baxter

  They let Vitti go first because he was the one with two heads, and it seemed to the rest that if there was to be anything of sympathy or honour or love for them, then Vitti should have the first and best of it. After he had walked down the ramp, they followed him. Sloane with his third and fourth legs folded like the furled wings of a butterfly on his back; Tanizaki, still quiet, unreadable, Asiatic, despite the bulge inside his belly that made him look like a woman eight months gone with child; and the rest of them. Seven earth men who had been tortured by the Outsiders.

  When the crowd saw Vitti, they shouted, because that was what they had gathered there to do. Ten thousand sets of lungs emptied themselves in one automatic, unthinking cry. The sound was a wave breaking over them, a torrent of sound that made them want to fall on the ground and wait for its passing. But there was only one shout. By the time the cry was half over, the people had seen Vitti and the rest of them, and when their lungs were empty they had neither the will nor the ability to draw them full for another shout. There were some who did; a few standing at the back. But their shouts were like the cries of seabirds along the edge of the ocean. From the others, there was no sound but the susurrus of whispers like the melting of sea foam after a wave has receded. Nobody had anything to say. At that moment, Alfred Binns realized for the first time that he was a monster.

  —

  In the anteroom at headquarters, Binns stood at the window, looking down on the city. The streets were empty now. As he watched, a family of three—mother, father, and one small boy—hurried across the square below him and disappeared into the subway entrance. They must have been the last, because no more people moved anywhere on the wide, clean streets. Binns had almost forgotten that nobody lived in the cities anymore. Thousands had come to see them arrive, but now the show was over and they were going back to their homes, leaving the city to those who had to live there.

  “Nobody left at all?” Farmer said. Nobody else had spoken.

  “You’re listening again,” Binns said without turning. “You promised you wouldn’t.”

  “I can’t help it,” Farmer said. He looked down at the bulge on his chest where the other brain had grown. Through the soft clear skin he could see the grey convolutions and the ebb of blood through vein and tissue. “It’s growing up.”

  “You and Tanizaki ought to get together,” somebody said. It was safe now, though at the beginning of the trip back Hiro had been sensitive about his huge belly where the second set of intestines had grown. There had been fights, as if violence could wipe it all away, but after a few weeks they had learned.

  A man came into the anteroom. He worked very hard at not being embarrassed and for a while he almost succeeded. But Farmer was more than a normal man could take. His eyes went glassy and he turned away for a moment. When he looked back his gaze was directed over their heads.

  “Would you like to follow me?” he said.

  They went with him along the corridor to where the debriefing was to take place. The light was soft and there were no shadows. They were all glad of that; the one thing more horrible to each man than his deformed body was his grotesque dancing shadow.

  “Disgusting,” the general said. “Barbaric. Inhuman.” He was very pale.

  “Not really,” Binns said politely. “They aren’t like us, you know.”

  A colonel shook his head in bewilderment. “Incredible,” he said.

  “Not really,” Binns said again.

  —

  “Do you feel any pain at all?” the doctor asked gently. “When you move them, I mean.”

  Binns clenched one of the hands that grew from the centre of his chest.

  “None at all,” he said. “If I make a fist four or five times I feel a sort of shortness of breath, but that’s probably because the chest muscles seem to work the hands as well as my lungs.”

  The doctor made a note in a small neat hand.

  “May I examine it?” he said.

  His reverent manner was irritating. Everybody spoke in whispers. Any sort of revulsion would be better than this. When the doctor reached out, Binns grabbed his outstretched hand and shook it vigorously. The doctor screamed.

  After the medical examinations they were brought back to the big room again for more questioning. Everybody was very quiet and very understanding. Binns still wished they could be a little less reverent. It made him feel different and this disturbed him. On Huxley, he had never felt different, and even when they left Huxley Kolo had made them feel that there was nothing wrong in having another arm or leg or some extra organs. He almost wished that Kolo was back with them. When he had been there, the group had been complete. Now, it was wrong, out of balance. Something was missing.

  The questioners continued to be understanding. Their queries were always quiet and considerate. Only the politicians showed any signs of impatience.

  “And you never tried to escape?” one of them asked sharply.

  “Yes, we tried,” Sloane said. “Once—no, twice. Then we gave up. It just wasn’t possible to escape.”

  “It’s always possible,” another man said, but not very loudly.

  On Binns’s chest the two hands stirred, the fingertips brushing each other restlessly.

  “The people on Huxley aren’t like us,” Binns said. “They look like us—sometimes—but otherwise they’re completely different. You don’t know how it is. You can’t understand….”

  “The fingers,” Vitti said. Only his right head spoke. The effect was odd. When one mouth spoke, you expected the other to speak also, but it never did. Even though Farmer had its brain, one expected some sort of reaction. Binns wondered if the two brains thought on separate tracks. He had never asked Vitti. It didn’t seem the right thing to do.

  “Yes, the fingers,” Dixon said. “Kolo had a thing he used to do with his fingers that made us…made us…”

  The handless arms that grew from his shoulders below his own moved to gesture, then stopped as he realized the lack of hands made it meaningless.

  “He snapped them,” Binns said. “Not like ordinary snapping. Sort of quick and hollow. When he did that, we just had to
do whatever he told us.”

  The general snapped his fingers twice. “Like that?”

  “No,” Vitti said. “Kolo was the only one who could do it.”

  “Other than this, no other pressure was placed on you?”

  “Well, we couldn’t leave the city,” Sloane said. “Otherwise, we could do most things. We weren’t locked up or anything.”

  There was silence in the big room for a moment.

  “Well,” said one of the psychiatrists, “how did they…”

  He stopped, conscious of the quiet. Nobody had wanted to ask the question. Now that he had started, there was nothing to do but continue.

  “How did they make you…I mean…”

  “You mean how did they change us ?” Binns said.

  “Yes.”

  Sloane laughed. “They didn’t make us,” he said. “We did it ourselves.”

  “Things are different on Huxley,” Vitti said. “Up there, this is normal. Everybody can grow and change to suit themselves. If you want to be a foot taller…well, you just grow a foot taller. Physically, they aren’t very different to us. This is just a sort…well, a sort of trick they’ve learned. They taught it to us.”

  “But why did you grow these…appendages?”

  “We don’t know,” Binns said. “Kolo just snapped his fingers and…” He shrugged. There was nothing else to be said.

  —

  It was quieter down by the sea. There was no sound but the wind and the gurgle of water. Binns wished there were still beaches, but the city had long ago engulfed the sea’s edge and even its shallows. He stood on the farthest lip of the city, looking down at the pylons that disappeared into the grey water. There were no particular thoughts in his mind, but those that were there moved silent and separately, like fish in a pool. This above all was the curious thing: that he had no two thoughts that went together. His mind seemed limitless and the thoughts like pet fish suddenly emptied into an ocean. Ever since he had left Huxley, it had been like this. The collision of this thought with another might have sparked an explosion of fear, but the meeting never occurred. It joined the rest of the ideas that swam quietly about in his mind.

  There was rain on his face, or perhaps spray. He looked up and felt the hard drops sting his skin. His clothes were wet. It must have been raining for a long time while he was standing there by the sea. The cold needles of water stung the tender skin of his new hands. With his own hands he groped in his pocket and slipped on the cover they had given him. The hands rubbed themselves together for a moment, then clasped inside the darkness of the hood. Binns could sense them there, holding each other. It was a pleasant feeling.

  He stood by the water a moment longer, watching the waves lap at the pillars, staring down, trying to follow with his eyes their long dive to the floor of the ocean. Sometimes he almost thought he saw all the way down, right to the silt at the bottom, but he knew that was only an illusion. Yet an illusion hardly less real than his other thoughts. It was easy to believe that he could see down through all those yards of water; as easy as to believe in Huxley, or the hands on his chest. No thought had any real permanence. They were all vague and shadowy. He felt nothing sharply, with real emotion. He seemed always to be watching pictures of thoughts rather than the thoughts themselves. It came to him, as slowly as did all his thoughts now, that perhaps the things he thought were not of his own creation.

  Nonsense, a voice said inside his mind.

  But it could be true. The idea was not terrifying. He no longer had the ability to be terrified. But it was disturbing. For the first time since he had arrived back, a real emotion stung him. He was grateful for the stimulus. He turned quickly from the sea. Too quickly. The man watching him had time only to hide part of his body behind a pylon before he was seen. Binns didn’t show any sign of recognition. He had expected to be followed, and was glad in a way that he had been. It meant there was somebody near; somebody he could talk to.

  He hunched his cloak about him against the rain and walked quickly up the sloping ramp towards the pylon until he was beside it. Then he stopped.

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  There was no sound for a moment. Then the man came out from behind the pillar. He was young and very thin—gawky, Binns thought. His face and hair were soaked with rain. The wet hair clung to his skull as if the rain had softened it, making it liquid and transparent. Binns could imagine him hiding behind the pylon, pressed against it, his hands flattened against the metal, the rain falling steadily on his face.

  “Are you following me?”

  The boy reached into his pocket and took out a small metal emblem. Binns knew it well.

  “I was assigned to see you were safe.”

  “Why don’t you walk along with me? There’s no point in dodging around corners.”

  He started walking. After a few steps, the boy followed, then fell in beside him. The rain drove at their backs and they both hunched forward to keep the cold water from the back of their necks. Together, in step, they walked up the long ramp towards the city.

  “You’re very young for this sort of work.”

  “Twenty-two. Age doesn’t matter really.” His voice was very young though. It hardly seemed that a boy like this would know what age meant.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Teris.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “I’m a ward.”

  A ward. That explained a lot. Brought up by the state for employment by the state. No wonder he was so young. Binns tried an experiment.

  “Are they following the others too?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  Interesting. He had expected something like that.

  Then he stopped walking, very suddenly.

  Why had he asked that question? Why “conduct an experiment”? He had no reason to. It was not the sort of thing he normally did.

  Teris was watching him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Binns shook his head. “I feel…odd. I’m wondering why I asked you that.”

  “Will I call headquarters?”

  No! Not headquarters!

  “No. Don’t bother.”

  He started walking again. Teris fell in beside him, but Binns could feel him looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Inside the hood on his chest, the hands were stirring slightly.

  They were at the top of the ramp now. A narrow street ran along the edge of the sea, swinging in a wide circle around the curve of the city. There were a few vehicles going by, but the rain kept most people inside. For a moment Binns watched the cars pass with a sound like ripping silk. Patches of oil flowed on the grey road, flashing false and faded rainbows.

  “Do you want to go to your home?” Teris asked.

  “No.” Binns looked around. “Is there a park?”

  “A park?” Teris glanced at the street indicators. “There’s one about half a mile away. Or Central Park, of course.”

  “The nearest one will do.” He looked around and saw a wide street leading off the avenue at a sharp angle. There were no cars on it that he could see.

  “Up there, isn’t it?”

  Teris looked at him sharply.

  “How did you know that?”

  Careful.

  “I lived here for a long time, remember. Before you were born, I imagine.”

  He stepped off the kerb and crossed the street.

  They walked together for a few blocks.

  “I’m making you nervous,” Binns said.

  “No.”

  “I can tell. It’s the hands, isn’t it?”

  Teris didn’t answer. Typical, the other voice in his head commented. He wondered about the voice, but without real interest. It was not his problem.

  “I can’t help it, you know. They just grew on me.”

  No answer. Their feet made twin clatterings on the wet footpath. The rain fell softly, like snow. They were the only people on the street.

  “I was told no
t to discuss the matter with you,” Teris said.

  “Aren’t you interested at all? I don’t mind talking about it.”

  The boy’s face was set, partly in embarrassment.

  “I have my instructions.”

  Give it up. Try something else.

  “Very well. If you don’t want to talk…Ah, this is the park, isn’t it?”

  The park took up a whole block. It was a huge field of grass, with a few trees and a pavilion built in antique style. The grass was clean and smooth, like a carpet. They crossed the street and stood at the edge of the grass. There was a control post near them. All they had to do was press the button and the rain would stop, the sun would come out, the birds would sing. But nobody had pushed the button on any of the control posts around the perimeter of the park. It was empty.

  Teris moved towards the post.

  “No,” Binns said quickly. “I prefer the rain.”

  Teris looked at him suspiciously.

  “It doesn’t rain on Huxley,” Binns said.

  This seemed to satisfy him.

  Binns walked onto the grass. It was very wet and spongy. He could feel the water in the brown soil. Under the grass, the earth was dark and deep and wet. Idly he took off the hood that covered his second pair of hands. They moved more easily now, rubbing their fingertips together and spreading their palms to weigh the damp air. He looked out across the park. On the far verge he could see movement, awkward halting movement. There were people over there. Six people, to be exact.

  “Teris.”

  The boy walked up behind him. He could hear his feet on the turf making a soft squishing noise. He was very close now, just by his right shoulder.

  Binns turned quickly. He grabbed the boy’s arm and pulled him suddenly in against his body. As they touched, the other two hands grabbed the loose cloth of the boy’s cloak. Binns’s hands went to his throat.

  It didn’t take very long, and nobody saw it. For a moment the limp body hung pressed against Binns, the boy’s dead eyes staring into his. Only after a moment did the hands release their grip and let the body slump to the grass.