Danger, Religion!

by Brian Aldiss

  "No point in running. They will not hurt us."

  "Who was going to run?" Candida asked indignant­ly. "We must learn their language and set to work converting them to Christianity. Nothing else can lift them from this animal state."

  "I don't believe they have language as we know it," Rastell said.

  The people approaching were long-legged and gro­tesque. Everything was so strange there that only when they had surrounded us did I realize that they went on stilts. There were six of them. All wore a kind of uniform. Since I was frantically trying to relate everything in that matrix to something in ours, I mistook the uniform for black leather, such as the young toughs of my Edinburgh wear; later I came to the firm conclusion that it must be the skin of their adversaries, the gorilla-people.

  The people—no, let's say the ape-people, for so they were—the ape-people were using stilts about three feet high, which they manipulated very cleverly with their feet, leaving their hands free. When one reached out for my shoulder, I put up my hand sharply, and he at once was down to the ground and, swinging his stilt as a weapon without changing "hands," dealt me a considerable blow in the ribs— and in a twinkling had resumed his stilt walk.

  "They won't attack you if you don't scare them!" Rastell said.

  "How can you be sure?" Candida asked.

  "Because they are not hostile like human beings, only suspicious like apes."

  "Well, I'm both!"

  But we allowed ourselves to be herded along docilely enough, for the stilt-walkers achieved what was evidently their aim, cowing us by overtopping us. The august effect was spoiled only by their chatter— at which I saw Candida frowning concentratedly, as if trying to distinguish words.

  The stilt-walkers herded us up to the large shack that stood like a mockery where our fine Gothic cathedral was in the home matrix. Four of them took up positions by the entrance. The other two pushed us in, jumping deftly down from their stilts as they got inside.

  Although dim, the interior was fairly large, as it had need to be, for a whole family of ape-people was here. With a dim memory of monkey behavior, I thought I could distinguish several old males squat­ting in the background, as well as more active fe­males, who moved about in coarse frocks of garish yellow which did not cover their posteriors. There were also children swarming here, though taking care to keep away from—I marveled that they had such an amenity!—a small fire burning to one side in a hollowed rock. The smells that assailed us were rich and strange.

  Almost above our heads hung a trapeze. Sitting negligently on it, chewing a carrot, was a hefty young male. His black uniform was decorated with bright feathers, while around his ankles, I saw, he had two dangerous-looking spurs tied. He was glaring at us.

  The stilt-walkers beside us had fallen to the floor and were groveling and uttering low moans.

  "This is the boss," I said.

  "We'd better kneel, just to show we're friendly," Rastell said. "Once we're accepted—no trouble."

  "Quite right! If we are to teach him humility, we must be prepared to humble ourselves," Candida said. She looked at me severely. "Kneel, Sherry!" Thus, I believe, the kindly woman saved my face; I could obey her.

  But as we were all going down, the boss above spat a piece of carrot which caught Rastell in the eye. He was up in an instant, forgetting discretion.

  "You baboon!" he called, shaking his fist

  It was immediately grasped. Before I could even leap up, the brute on the trapeze had swung Rastell right up, effortlessly, until for a moment their two faces were almost. touching. There was a flash of canine teeth, we heard a cry, Rastell was tumbling unsupported to the ground. He sprawled. I saw his ear was bleeding. It had been torn by the boss's teeth.

  The boss himself, snarling and spitting, landed lightly a few paces away, and was now advancing on Rastell, swinging his arms, leaping up and down, chattering. The children had all scattered back to their mothers, who huddled nervously together, say­ing nothing.

  There was going to be a fight

  Jumping up, I grabbed at one of the stilts lying by a prostrate guard. They were at once upon me. I swung the stick hard, striking them madly, but the gorilla hide protected them and they bore me down. I was flattened ignominiously, and the stilt twisted from my grip. They held me down, face pressed into the filthy ground, waiting like trained dogs for word from the master.

  Their master was still circling Rastell. Rastell had picked himself up and was looking hopelessly around for a weapon. His ear was scattering blood. I saw that two old males had lumbered up from the back and held Candida, clumsily but not viciously. The females in the corner were whooping and leaping.

  Then there was silence and the tableau held. The boss was about to spring, to throw himself, teeth and spurs, on Rastell, when the latter moved.

  He bent down, almost into a crouch, touching the ground with his elbows, and smacked his lips. His body was presented sideways to the boss. The stance made him resemble an ape. The boss advanced and hesitated—we were all tense—and then jumped to the rear of Rastell. Momentarily, he seized him around the ribs and clouted him, and then he broke free. Rastell stood up.

  All tension had disappeared. Candida and I were allowed to stand free. We brushed ourselves down; Rastell mopped his face and his ear. The children and the female ape-people began running and chat­tering again. As for the boss, he had lost interest in us. Whooping to the guards, he sprang onto his trapeze again. In a moment, we three human beings were led into the open again.

  The stilt-walkers hustled us along to the end of the street and there, with gestures and calls, plainly said good-bye. I shook Rastell's hand. "You were quick-witted in there- You adopted ape-behavior and so probably saved us all from being killed."

  "It was disgusting to see you kowtow to an animal,'' Candida said.

  Laughing, Rastell said, "Aren't they our superiors in many ways? They have no interspecies fighting or killing, as men have. I merely observed their tribal customs."

  "Our superiors, Mr. Rastell? Those godless beasts? No wonder they have not advanced from the ape if they have never found religion!"

  "We cap discuss that point at our leisure later, Mrs. Meacher," Rastell said coldly. Turning to me he added, "Now we've got a short walk."

  A little herd of idlers had gathered and was run­ning about us, whistling, calling, and mocking. They all dropped away as we set off from the village. I put my arm around Candida's shoulder to encourage her. The afternoon was growing very drab; rain threat­ened; and we were far from home. It was clear that we had passed some sort of inspection in the crude village and were now allowed to go free in this primi­tive world; clear, too, that Rastell knew what he was about; yet both Candida and I were reluctant to ask him questions.

  As we walked westward, following a track leading beneath the rocky outcrop on which-in any sane matrix-sat Edinburgh Castle, I was thinking hard: Rastell was not to be trusted. The episode with that Mithras-lover, Mark Claud Gale, had warned me against alliances where unknown factors were in­volved.

  Rastell's objectives were not mine, however he tried to make it look that way; and I clearly under­stood that the time when our objectives were to be revealed as opposed was approaching. Rastell was taking us for no afternoon stroll. We were purposeful­ly going somewhere. And I could guess, at least in outline, the sort of place it would be.

  I had no weapon. Rastell had a sidearm. He had not used it on the leader of the ape-people. So there was an arrangement of some sort with the ape-people. Rastell was familiar with this matrix.

  No. I was guessing. No proof; it could merely be my fears prompting me. And if my fears were un­founded, then I needed to cooperate with this man. He could be the only man in the whole matrix ... but I doubted that.

  As we walked, I watched him.

  He was marching stolidly ahead, leading us toward the Water of Leith, which probably existed in this matrix as it did in his and mine. Candida, still ob­sessed with religious aspects, w
as talking volubly to him; Rastell hardly seemed to be listening.

  "... all more terrible than anything I could imag­ine! You seem to understand their way of behaving— if we are to be here long, I also must try to understand them, to speak their language, so that I can bring the word of God to them. You will help, won't you, Mr. Rastell, as a man of God yourself?"

  "They're better left as they are."

  "How can you say that? How dare you say it? Isn't this entire matrix a proof of the power of God's love? They don't have it here—and they've stayed on the level of animals for a million years! We must bring Christ to them."

  Rastell turned to her blank-faced and solid; no gleam there. "Think again, Mrs. Meacher! These peo­ple haven't developed as we have. We progressed from their man-ape stage, didn't we? We—our ances­tors—became hunters after the arboreal phase, and from hunters on to higher organizations. Where do you think God entered the arrangement, Mrs. Meacher?"

  "God created the world."

  He laughed, bitter and dragging, as if the sound hurt him.

  "No, the reverse is true! Our world created God. In the arboreal stage, the monkey stage, where this ma­trix has stuck, there's no need for God."

  "No need! You don't mean...."

  "Monkeys have no need for God, I tell you. In­stead, each group has a boss, a leader, a tyrant, like the one we just met. He makes the law, dispenses rough justice, performs all the societal roles of your God. But when apes branch out into hunters and compete for food with clever carnivores like wolves, they have to reject such tyranny, because each mem­ber of the pack has to think for himself. So the leader's authority has to loosen. So he invents a shad­ow behind him, a supreme authority, in which all can believe. A moral law is intruded to keep order where before a fist ruled. A god is invented."

  Idols! Graven images!"

  "At first, yes. Then more sophisticated gods, gods omnipotent and invisible and angry—And finally— God! Jehovah!"

  We had scrambled down the banks of a little gorge. Before us flowed the narrow river called the Water of Leith. But in my time, it had been spanned by Telford's beautiful bridge. Now there was nothing there but a rotten little ferry—a flat-bottomed boat that could be dragged from one bank to the other by means of a wire secured across the stream. And I saw at once that even that humble arrangement was the work of men, not ape-people.

  On the far bank, confirming all I suspected, stood a barbed-wire fence; there was a locked gate in it, directly opposite the ferry.

  The rain began to fall. It was a moment of purest chill

  Candida was saying, numbly, to Rastell, "You claim God is merely man's invention to back his own authori­ty! You, a God-fearing man!"

  "Keep quiet—we're almost there. Get into the boat. And you...."

  Before he could finish, I dived sideways and grabbed at his gun. He struck my arm. I grasped him around the waist; he fought savagely and we sprawled to the ground.

  I was on top of him, a knee in his stomach. With both hands, I grasped him around the throat, just as I had once before. His torn ear began to seep blood again. His thumbs came up, gouging at my eyes; his face was livid under my pressure. Candida pulled his gun free and rammed its muzzle against his ear.

  "Lie still or I'll kill you!"

  I knew she would. So did he! He lay flat, the fight knocked out of him.

  Roughly, I rolled him over and started to untie the portal from his back.

  "Sheridan," he said hoarsely, "I'm taking you to safety, I swear!"

  "You swear, what do you swear by? By your honor? By God? You believe in nothing but power, Rastell— you've explained your philosophy to us. Anything is justified if it reinforces power. What's on lie other side of the wire fence?"

  He hesitated. I swung my arm back and caught him with open palm across the side of his face.

  "What's the other side of the wire fence?"

  "The boss-ape we met—we keep his enemies be­hind there—other tribes."

  "Oh, he's your ally!" I said to Candida as I handed her the folded portal, "Rastell told me once there was no finer state than a slave state. This is a slave world-low-grade slaves, it's true, but amenable to disci­pline. Here you can rear slave armies to twitch through to your own matrix and assist in quelling rebellions—entirely expendable ape-armies. Right Ras­tell?"

  I twisted his arm and enjoyed doing it

  "They have to suffer for righteousness' sake," he said.

  I took the gun from Candida and stood up. He started to rise and I told him to stay where he was in the mud. He propped himself on one elbow and lay glaring up at us—twice as dangerous as the boss-ape, I thought.

  My sister-in-law was shivering. She clung to my free arm, looking away from Rastell. "Why did he want us here, in this awful place?"

  "Someone has to train the ape-army. Am I right, Rastell? And you'd like revenge on me. You are no fugitive from your world. They need cynical minds like yours, don't they, to maintain their beastly status quo?'

  He lay in the mud without speaking, the folds of his mouth bitter.

  I said, "I was destined to guard the apes while your other exiles here trained them, wasn't I, Rastell? Something menial like that!"

  With some of his old spirit, he said, "Only those we trust get easy jobs like guard duty. For the rest, there are plenty of dirty jobs. Someone has to swab out the ape-barracks."

  He got up very slowly, watching me, his face gray, blood running over his cheeks and chin. He rubbed it away as if it were dirt.

  "What are you going to do with him, Sherry?"

  “I’ll have to shoot him, won't I?"

  "Yes, you'll have to shoot him."

  I was nerving myself to do that. Unfortunately, I had to look into his square sullen face. How little I understood him! I had seen him in bravery and fear. Rastell fought to maintain the iniquitous systems of his own matrix (as we all instinctively did), yet he had muttered of the slaves here that they were better left as they were. He was both a hypocrite and a believer. No, I couldn't sum him up—and perhaps the easy confidence with which we gauge a man's charac­ter is never possible when wide cultural differences lie between us.

  I couldn't sum him up. Equally, I couldn't kill him.

  "Give me the key to the gate across the stream, Rastell."

  He shook his head. "I haven't got a key."

  "Hold the gun on him, Candida, while I search him!"

  Rastell gestured defeatedly. Saying nothing, he unzipped a tunic pocket, pulled out a large key, and tossed it to me. I caught it, putting it in my own pocket without comment.

  The rain ran down his face in spasmodic drops, and he made no attempt to brush them away. I gestured at him with the gun.

  "Go back to the village," I said. "The boss-ape will look after you until someone comes to rescue you."

  Rastell stared fixedly at us. He opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he made the sign of the cross and turned away, beginning to walk slowly back along the way we had come. Candida and I watched him go.

  The rain was increasing now. Clutching the portal and the gun, we worked the ferry across the stream. I helped Candida up the slippery bank and we un­locked the gate. It led into a rank scrubby field; as we mounted the slope, the great enclosure beyond was revealed.

  Despite the drizzle, there were ape-people moving in squads—marching, I suppose you would say. They were watched over by black-uniformed men: victims, no doubt, of Rastell's regime, who would be more than pleased to shelter us. Curtains of rain, sweeping over the tiny figures, part-revealed, part-concealed gaunt concrete buildings behind, stretching like barracks before a line of fir trees.

  God knows, it was far from being a cheering pros­pect. Yet the sight of human misery and struggle-animal and spiritual always intermixed—seemed to reassure us in this strange place by its very familiari­ty. So Candida and I clutched each other's hands and trudged toward the gray buildings.

  No doubt they would offer more than shelter. More than brea
d.

  Over them, streaming water, a gigantic cross.

  Faith in ferroconcrete.