The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

  Visitors seek comfort from me, as once, against my will, I sought comfort here, and I try to give it—even to those who have only a muddled understanding of what a Sharer does. My battles are not really with these unhappy people, but with the advance columns of my senility (a fact I do not care to admit) and the shock troops of memory, which still functions—remarkably well for one so old.

  Wardress Kefa died seventeen years ago, Diderits twenty-two, and Rumai two. Thus do I keep score, nowadays. Death has also carried off the gem-eyed Tropeman and the Sharer who drew the real Dorian Lorca out of the prosthetic rind that he had mistaken for himself.

  I intend to stay here longer. I have recently taken a chamber into which the light sifts with a painful white brilliance reminiscent of the sands of Miroste or the snows of Wolf Run Summit. This is all to the good.

  Either way, you see, I die at home.

  Sporting with the Chid

  BARRINGTON J. BAYLEY

  Barrington J. Bayley (1937–2008) was an underrated, often fascinating English science fiction writer associated with the New Wave movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Bayley was a frequent contributor to New Worlds when it was edited by Michael Moorcock, and the two became good friends. Moorcock later reprinted Bayley in various New Worlds paperback anthologies and continued to be a strong advocate for the author. Later, more than twenty of Bayley’s stories would appear in the magazine Interzone. His work also appeared in the anthologies Tomorrow’s Alternatives and An Index of Possibilities. His approach to writing science fiction has been cited as influential on M. John Harrison, Brian Stableford, Bruce Sterling, Iain M. Banks, and Alastair Reynolds.

  Bayley’s first book, The Star Virus, was followed by more than a dozen other novels, including Annihilation Factor, Collision with Chronos, Empire of Two Worlds, The Fall of Chronopolis, The Great Hydration, The Grand Wheel, The Pillars of Eternity, The Soul of the Robot, Star Winds, and The Zen Gun. However, the most lasting impact made by Bayley remains in the realm of short fiction, especially his work from the 1970s. His two collections The Knights of the Limits (1978, reprinted in 2001) and The Seed of Evil (1979) are remarkable for the wealth of their ideas and their kinetic and often playful style. Some of the stories are fairly experimental in both form and content, while others take core science fiction ideas or tropes and use traditional story structures to turn those ideas or tropes on their head. Some, like “Mutation Planet,” “The Exploration of Space,” and “The Bees of Knowledge”—inspired by the mathematical writings of C. Davies and W. G. Peck—are so different they could have been written by different people, and yet are equally brilliant.

  Of Bayley’s work, Bruce Sterling wrote, “[he] reminds one that the power of the British New Wave was…due…to its sheer visionary intensity.” In Vector, Chris Evans observed that “Bayley is one of the most inventive and idiosyncratic writers in the genre; his short stories, especially, read like no one else’s…His plots are fast-paced and action-packed, with the fate of a world or solar system in the balance—but his subject matter extends far beyond the limited horizons of the pulp format.”

  “Sporting with the Chid,” the lead-off story from The Seed of Evil, provides a classic example of Bayley’s liveliness, playfulness, and ingenuity. Yet Bayley was never frivolous in his expressions of a unique imagination. “Sporting” may be vastly entertaining, but it is also dark and layered, and contains a sting in its tail.

  SPORTING WITH THE CHID

  Barrington J. Bayley

  “But look at him, he’s such a mess,” Brand protested. “There wouldn’t be any point in it.”

  Ruiger grunted, looking down at what remained of their comrade. It was a mess, all right, a sickening, bloody mess. The scythe-cat they had been hunting had practically sliced Wessel to ribbons. The ruined body still retained a lot of blood, however, due to the heart having stopped at the outset, when the cat had ripped open the rib cage. For that reason, Ruiger had supposed there was still hope.

  “We can’t just stand here doing nothing,” he said. He glanced up the trail along which the cat had fled under the hail of their gunfire. Wessel’s own gun lay nearby, wrecked by the first blow of the animal’s terrible bladed claw. It infuriated Ruiger to think that the beast had bested them. He wondered why the toxic darts they had fired had failed to take effect. Possibly they had lodged in its very thick dermis and the poisons were spreading slowly. In that case, the cat’s corpse should be found within not too great a distance.

  “The brain isn’t damaged,” he observed stubbornly. “Come on, do what I say: freeze him quick, before it starts to degenerate.” He was a broad-set man with a rugged face; he spoke with traces of a clipped, hard-toned accent Brand had never yet been able to identify.

  Brand hesitated, then submitted to the other’s more positive personality. He moved closer to the dead Wessel, nerving himself against the raw, nauseating smell of blood and flesh. Kneeling, he opened the medical kit and took out a blue cylinder. From the cylinder there flowed a lavender mist which settled over the body and then seemed to fly into it, to be absorbed by it like water into a sponge.

  “You can’t freeze somebody without special equipment,” he told Ruiger. “Frozen water crystallises and ruptures all the body cells. This stuff will keep him fresh, but it’s only good for about twelve hours. It holds the tissues in a gelid suspension so chemical processes don’t take place.”

  “He’s not frozen?”

  “No.” Brand straightened. “You realise what this means? The nearest fully equipped hospital is six weeks away. Even then, I don’t suppose the surgeons could do much. He’d be crippled for life, probably paralysed if he lived at all. Maybe he wouldn’t like that.”

  Before replying Ruiger glanced at the sky, as if summing up interstellar distances. “What about the Chid camp on the other side of the continent? You know their reputation.”

  Brand snapped shut the medical case with an angry gesture. “Are you crazy? You know damned well we can’t go messing with the Chid.”

  “Shut up and help me get him on the sled.” They tackled the unpleasant job in silence. It should have been the scythe-cat the sled was carrying, Ruiger thought, but he fought down an urge to go after the animal and make sure it was dead. A more compelling urge had come over him, for he was a man who hated to admit defeat if there remained even the possibility of action, and Wessel had been a good comrade.

  The sled floated a foot or two above the coarse broad-bladed grass that covered most of the planet’s dry surface. As they trudged back to the ship Ruiger looked at the sky again. The sun lay well below the horizon, but there was no such thing as real night—this was the N4 star cluster, where suns were packed so thick as to turn even midnight into what would have been a mellow autumn evening on Earth. The multicoloured blaze never faded; it filled the sky not only at night but throughout the day, augmenting the light of the somewhat pale sun.

  The cluster teemed, if such a vast region could be said to teem, with freelance prospectors looking for anything that, by reason of rarity or novelty, would command a high price back in civilisation. Exotic furs and hides, unknown gems, outlandish chemicals and minerals, drugs with unexpected properties—these days, rarity was the name of the game. If it was new, preferably unique, and had a use, then it was valuable. The fur of the scythe-cat, for example, would grace the wardrobes of no more than a dozen exorbitantly wealthy women.

  Not all the prospectors were human. The cluster had few sentient races of its own, but it had attracted the attentions of scores of others, lured by its wealth or else engaged on less identifiable business. As a rule the various species prudently ignored one another, a practice with which Ruiger would normally have concurred wholeheartedly. With some of the alien races known to mankind—so numerous that only the most cursory examination had been made of most of them—one could communicate with ease. But with others one had to be cautious.

  And there were yet others with habits and attitudes so inexplicable by human standa
rds that the central government had placed a strict prohibition on any kind of intercourse with them whatsoever.

  Such a species was the Chid.

  Back at the ship, Ruiger took out the official government handbook on aliens. Like many others, the entry on the Chid was subheaded: Absolutely No Contact in Any Circumstances. The information offered supplied very little by way of explanation, but he carefully read such as there was. Following the location of the Chid star, and a description of the extent of Chid influence, the sociological information was scant, apparently depending on the word of some lone-wolf explorer who had visited the home planet and later had volunteered an account of his experiences to the Department of Alien Affairs. Ruiger knew, however, that subsequent encounters between Chid and humans had reinforced the impression of them as a wayward and difficult people.

  “An extraordinary feature of the Chid,” he read, “is their aptitude for the medical sciences. Among them advanced surgery is a household skill; even the most highly trained Earth surgeon would find himself outclassed by the average Chid, who traditionally prides himself on his surgical ability, much as a human will pride himself on being able to repair his own auto. That Chid surgical skill is so universal is probably because it was the first technique to be developed on the Chid world, predating even the discovery of fire.

  “Surgery’s prominent place in Chid lore, even from primitive times, is attested by the following incident from the saga of the ancient champion Gathor. On finding himself trapped in a country surrounded by enemies, he ordered his followers to dissect him, and to smuggle him out in pieces, ‘none of them larger than a single finger-joint.’ After being reassembled, Gathor went on to free his people from slavery.

  “The Chid have a love of sports and games, and are addicted to gambling. Otherwise there is little in the Chid mind that renders it suitable for human company. On the contrary, Chid mental processes are so foreign to human mentality as to present considerable danger. Anyone finding himself in the presence of a Chid should on no account attempt to have dealings with it, since if he does he will almost certainly misunderstand its intentions. Instead, he should at once remove himself from the vicinity of the Chid.”

  Slowly, Ruiger put away the handbook.

  Outside, he found Brand sitting gazing into the night sky. “We’ll go to the Chid,” he said with finality.

  Brand stirred. “You realise the risks we’ll be taking?”

  Ruiger nodded. “Intercourse with prohibited aliens. A twenty-thousand-labour-credit fine, or five years in a work prison. Or both.” The government took such matters seriously.

  “I was thinking less of that,” Brand said, “than of the Chid themselves. Those laws are for our own protection. Maybe we’d be getting into something we can’t get out of.”

  Ruiger’s voice was blunt and obstinate. “My ancestors were Boers,” he said. “They were people who learned to hang on to life, no matter what it costs. That’s my outlook, too. Chances are worth taking where it’s a matter of living or not living.”

  He took a last look round the clearing, feeling a lingering regret that he had not found time to go after the scythe-cat. “No sense hanging about here. Let’s get moving.”

  —

  “The way I see it,” Ruiger said as they flew over the tawny-coloured continent, “creatures with such a knowledge of surgery can’t be all that bad. They can mend the sick and injured—that’s not something I find incomprehensible. Maybe the government’s too quick to write the no-go sign.”

  Brand didn’t answer. Soon the Chid camp came in sight. It was on the edge of a level plain, perched near a two-hundred-foot cliff that fell away to sharp rocks and a boiling sea. It had only three features: a pentagonal hut that seemed to be roofed with local ferns; the Chid ship, which resembled nothing so much as an Earth street tram; and a small, dark wood which occupied an oval-shaped depression in the ground. Ruiger did not think the wood was indigenous. Probably, he thought, the Chid had set it up as a garden or a park, using plants and trees from their own world.

  They set down on what could roughly be interpreted as the perimeter of the camp. For some time they sat together in the control cabin, saying nothing, watching the site through the viewscreens. At first there was no sign of life. After about half an hour, two tall Chid emerged from the hut and strolled to the wood, with not a single glance at the Earth ship nearby.

  Anxiously Ruiger and Brand watched. At length the Chid reappeared, brushing aside foliage and coming into the light of day from the dank depths of the wood. Unconcernedly they ambled back to the fern-covered hut.

  “It seems they spend their time in the hut, not in the ship,” Brand observed.

  “Unless there are more of them in the ship.”

  “It’s not very big. It couldn’t carry many.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Ruiger gnawed his knuckles. “They’re ignoring us.”

  “Wise of them. We’d do the same if they landed near us. We might even move away. They haven’t done that.”

  “Well, the first move’s up to us.” Ruiger rose, and looked at Brand. Both men felt nervousness make a sick ache in their stomachs. “Let’s go out there and see what they’ll do for us.”

  They bolstered their sidearms inside their shirts so that to outward appearances they were unarmed. Wessel’s jellified body still lay on the sled. They eased it out of the port, and set off across the short stretch of savannah-like grass to the Chid hut.

  From outside the hut looked primitive and could as well have been erected by savages. They stopped a few feet from the door, which like the walls was made of a frame of branches from a local tree interwoven with ferns.

  He decided it was probably an advantage that they would have to converse by means of gestures. When only the simplest and most obvious wants could be made known there was less room for misunderstanding.

  He hooked his thumbs in his belt and called out. “Hello! Hello!”

  Again: “Hello! We are Earthmen!”

  The door opened, swinging inwards. The interior was dim. Ruiger hesitated. Then, his throat dry, he stepped inside, followed by Brand, who guided the sled before him. “We are Earthmen,” he repeated, feeling slightly ridiculous. “We have trouble. We need your help.”

  Anything else he might have said was cut off as he absorbed the scene within. The two Chid he had seen earlier swivelled their eyes to look at him. One lolled on a couch, but in such a manner as to seem like a corpse that had been carelessly thrown there, limbs flung apart in disarray, head hanging down and almost touching the beaten earth floor. The other was leaning forward half upright, dangling limply from a double sling into which his arms were thrust, and which was suspended from the roof rafters. His head lolled forward, his legs trailed behind.

  Both postures looked bizarrely uncomfortable. Ruiger supposed, however, that the Chid were simply relaxing.

  Somewhat larger of frame than a human, they had a lank, loose appearance about them. Their skin was grey, with undertones of green and buff orange. For clothing they wore a simple garment consisting of short trousers combined with a bib held in place by straps going over the shoulders. As with many androform species, their nonhuman faces were apt to seem caricatures of a particular human expression—in the Chid instance, an idiotic, chuckling gormlessness. It was important, Ruiger knew, not to be influenced by this doubtlessly totally wrong impression.

  Unrecognisable utensils lay scattered and jumbled about the floor, and Ruiger’s gaze went to the rest of the hut. He shuddered. The walls resembled the racks of some prehistoric butcher’s shop, hung with pieces of raw flesh—limbs, entrails, various internal organs, and other organic components and substances he could not identify, from a variety of creatures unknown to him. The Chid clearly had botanic interests, too. Items of vegetable origin accompanied the purely animal ones, plants, tree branches, cuttings, fruit, strips of fibre, and so forth. A moist, slightly rotten smell hung on the air, though whether from the grisly array or from the C
hid themselves he could not say.

  Unable to find a clear space on the floor, Brand left the sled floating. Ruiger pointed to the body. He hoped the purpose of their visit was self-evident.

  “This is our comrade. He has been badly injured. We came to ask if you can heal him.”

  The Chid in the sling swayed slightly from side to side. “Werry-werry-werry-werry…,” he said, or that was what it sounded like to Ruiger. But then he broke off, and to the Earthmen’s great surprise spoke in almost perfect English.

  “Visitors come to us from off the vast plain! You are here to sport with us, perhaps?”

  “We came to ask for your help,” Ruiger replied. Again he pointed to the sled. “Our friend was attacked by a scythe-cat—a dangerous animal that’s found on this continent.”

  “For the time being I’ve suspended his organic processes with a gelid solution,” Brand interrupted. “But when it wears off he’ll be dead, unless the damage can be made good first.”

  “Chid are famed for their surgical skill,” Ruiger added.

  The Chid withdrew his arms from the sling and approached the sled with an ambling gait, kicking aside metal artifacts that lay on the floor. Automatically Ruiger drew back. The strangeness of the scene made him fearful. It was hard to believe that these people were as advanced as they were supposed to be.

  Bending over the sled, the Chid prodded Wessel’s inert form with a long finger. He chortled: a brassy sound like the braying of a cornet.

  “Can you help him?” Ruiger enquired.

  “Oh yes. Quite easy. Simple slicing. Nerves, muscles, blood vessels, lymph channels, skin—you won’t even know where the joins are.”

  A feeling of relief flooded through the two men. “Then you’ll operate?” Ruiger pressed.

  Straightening, the Chid stared directly at him. His eyes, now that Ruiger saw them close up, were horrible, like boiled eggs. “I have heard it said that Earthmen can leave their bodies and move about without them. Is it true?”