The Complete Dangerous Visions

by Anthology

  It must have been some two hours later that I awoke, lying on a bench beside the bank. Under the night sky the town was silent, and I could hear the faint sounds of a water vole moving along the river and the distant splash of water around the bridge. I sat up and brushed away the dew that had formed on my clothes. Further along the bank the circus wagons stood in the clearing darkness, the dim forms of the horses motionless by the water.

  Collecting myself, I decided that after being knocked down by the horse I had been carried to the bench by the sailors and left there to recover when and as soon as I could. Nursing my head and shoulders, I looked around for any sign of the party, but the bank was deserted. Standing up, I slowly walked back towards the circus, in the vague hope that the dwarf might help me home.

  Twenty yards away, I saw something move in one of the cages, its white form passing in front of the bars. There was no sign of the dwarf or the young woman, but the wagons had been pushed back into place.

  Standing in the centre of the cages, I peered about uncertainly, aware that their occupants had at last emerged from the hutches. The angular grey bodies were indistinct in the darkness, but as familiar as the pungent smell that came from the cages.

  A voice shouted behind me, a single obscene word. I turned to find its source, and saw one of the occupants watching me with cold eyes. As I stared he raised his hand and moved the fingers in a perverted gesture.

  A second voice called out, followed by a chorus of abusive cat-calls. With an effort, I managed to clear my head, then began a careful walk around the cages, satisfying myself for the last time as to the identity of their tenants. Except for the one at the end, which was empty, the others were occupied. The thin figures stood openly in front of the bars that protected them from me, their pallid faces shining in the dim light. At last I recognised the smell that came from the cages.

  As I walked away their derisive voices called after me, and the young woman roused from her bed in the caravan watched quietly from the steps.

  Afterword

  “The Recognition” expresses a cordial distaste for the human race—not inappropriately. The temper of the times seems to be one of self-love, if of a strange sort—Caliban asleep across a mirror stained with vomit. But perhaps the story also illustrates the paradox that the only real freedom is to be found in a prison. Sometimes it is difficult to tell on which side of the bars we are—the real gaps between the bars are the sutures of one’s own skull. Originally I toyed with the notion of the narrator entering a cage and joining the circus, but this would have destroyed an important point. The story is not in fact a piece of hard-won misanthropy but a comment on some of the more unusual perspectives that separate us. The most important characters, whose motives are a key to the story, are the young woman and her dwarf. Why do they take this dismal circus on its endless tour?

  JUDAS

  J

  Introduction

  Seated at the right hand of God, I was asked, “Give the operable word for John Brunner, the well-known English science fiction novelist.” I thought a moment and suggested “urbane”. God smiled benignly, but was obviously not satisfied with the initial response. “ ‘Suave?’ “ I ventured. God made a tiny moue of vexation. “ ‘Chivalrous? Refined? Cultured? Gracious?’” God gave me one of those looks. “ ‘Charming?’ “ I said, in a small voice. God broke into a helluva smile. He clapped me on the back with camaraderie. “Excellent, Harlan, excellent!” he said in his mellow voice.

  “Thank you, Mr. Brunner,” I replied.

  The first time I heard of John Brunner was in 1952. He had one half the magazine known as Two Complete Science-Adventure Novels (I think that was the title. It’s been quite a few years. But I do recall the story on the other half of the magazine was a Poul Anderson epic). I don’t recall the name of the novelette (which they invariably called a “complete novel”) but it was published by Fiction House, so it must have been something like “Sex Kings of the Plutonian Pleasure Domes”. It was written by Killian Huston Brunner. Ha-ha, Brunner, now we gotcha! [And this comment from John Brunner: “Your memory anent the issue of TCSAB in which you first saw my name is a trifle astray. It wasn’t 1952 but 1953. The other half was Brian Berry’s ‘Mission to Marakee’, not a Poul Anderson story. The name was—and is—(John) Kilian Houston Brunner (not Killian Huston). And for what it’s worth the story was titled ‘The Wanton of Argus’.”]

  John Brunner was born in 1934, in Oxfordshire, England. He has written the Hugo nominee The Whole Man, which was brilliant. In 1940 he found a copy of Wells’s War of the Worlds in his nursery and was hooked. He has written The Long Result, which was almost a total success. In 1943 he started (but did not finish) writing his first s-f story, because he couldn’t find enough of the stuff to read. He has written “The Squares of the City”, which is a small masterpiece of technique. In 1947 he collected his first rejection slip, and in 1951 sold his first paperback in the United Kingdom. He has written “The Dreaming Earth”, which fell apart badly in the last section but was fascinating up to that point. In 1952 he made his first sales to American magazines, and from 1953 to 1955 he was a (drafted without enthusiasm) pilot officer in the RAF. He has written Wear the Butchers’ Medal, which is a stunning suspense-adventure novel. In 1956 he was a technical abstractor on a magazine edited by “John Christopher” and from 1956 to 1958 was a publishers’ editor under Jonathan Burke. He has written The Space-Time Juggler and Astronauts Must Not Land and Castaways’ World and Listen! The Stars! and ten others all for one publisher who slapped the insipid names just listed on books that may not be classics in the field of speculative fiction but are, each and every one, well written, entertaining and worth reading, which makes it a shame they are albatrossed by such hideous titles. But since 1958, when John Brunner got married and turned free lance, he has published over forty books, so he takes the bitter with the sweet.

  He has written mainly speculative fiction but his output also includes thrillers and straight novels. He has contributed to almost every magazine in sight, written a great many topical “folk” songs including one recorded by Pete Seeger, and he has managed to visit about fourteen different countries thus far. (“I have the impression that I’m losing ground, though,” he writes. “Every time I notch up a new one, another declares its independence and leaves me with just as many still unvisited.”)

  He lives in Hampstead, London, his favorite place, drives a Daimler V-8 convertible, and enjoys his work so much it seems to be almost a hobby for him. Brunner’s current ambition: to build a villa in Greece and get away from the English winter, which is almost always wet.

  The story you are about to read was the third Brunner submission for DANGEROUS VISIONS. Not that either of the first two wouldn’t have done marvelously, but there were some minor entanglements. On the first one, called “The Vitanuls”, I had the temerity to disagree with John on the manner of presentation of an absolutely brilliant and original concept. I sent him about five single-spaced pages of perceptive, intelligent, pithy comment, outlining rewrite, and with his usual good grace, and with almost a surfeit of panache, he wrote me back and told me to get stuffed.

  So that took care of that one. The stupid bastard doesn’t know a new Maxwell Perkins when he sees one. But, great in my magnanimity, I accepted a second submission from Brunner’s agent, a wildly hilarious black comedy called “Nobody Axed You,” and was ready to send out the check when I was informed, rather sheepishly, by the agent; that there was, uh, one small, er, minor, really insignificant, uh, problem with my publishing the story as a brand-new, never-before-in-print original. It had been published in England. But that didn’t matter, the agent hastily assured me. After all, it had only been in a British magazine so none of the readers of my anthology could possibly have seen it. So that took care of that one.

  A month later Brunner, shamefaced, and having received a cable from the sanitarium where I was under heavy sedation, sent me a story on his own. That story, “Judas”, begins
on the next page.

  You’d love Brunner. He’s quiet, but deadly. Like a curare-tipped blow dart in the back of the neck.

  Judas

  The Friday evening service was drawing to its close. The rays of the declining spring sun slanted through the polychrome plastic of the windows and lay along the floor of the central aisle like a pool of oil spilt on a wet road. On the polished steel of the altar a silver wheel spun continually, glinting between two ever burning mercury vapour lamps; above it, silhouetted against the darkling eastern sky, there stood a statue of God. The surpliced choir was singing an anthem—“The Word Made Steel”—and the minister sat listening with his hand cupped under his chin, wondering if God had approved of the sermon he had just preached on the Second Coming.

  Most of the large congregation was enraptured by the music. Only one man present, at the end of the rearmost row of bare steel pews, fidgeted impatiently, flexing the rubber pad from the forehead rest before him in nervous fingers. He had to keep his hands occupied, or else they kept straying to the bulge in the inside pocket of his plain brown jacket. His watery blue eyes wandered restlessly along the climactic, sweeping lines of the metal temple and shifted away every time they came to the wheel motif which the architect—probably God himself—had incorporated wherever possible.

  The anthem closed on a thrilling dissonance and the congregation knelt, their heads against the rubber rests, while the minister pronounced the blessing of the Wheel. The man in brown wasn’t really listening, but he caught a few phrases: “May he guide you in your appointed courses . . . serve you as your eternal pivot . . . bring you at last to the peace of the true eternal round . . .”

  Then he stood with the rest of them while the choir marched out to the strains of the electronic organ. Directly the minister had disappeared through the vestry door, the worshippers began to shuffle towards the main exits. He alone remained sitting in his pew.

  He was not the sort of person one would look at twice. He had sandy hair and a worn, tired face; his teeth were stained and irregular, his clothes fitted badly, and his eyes were a fraction out of focus, as though he needed glasses. Plainly the service had not brought him peace of mind.

  Eventually, when everybody else had gone, he stood up and replaced the rubber pad with scrupulous exactitude. For a moment his eyes closed and his lips moved soundlessly; as if this act had endowed him with the courage for a decision, he seemed to draw himself up like a diver poising on a high board. Abruptly he left the pew and walked—soundless on the rubber carpet of the nave—towards the small steel door that bore the single word VESTRY.

  Beside it there was a bell. He rang.

  Shortly the door was opened by a junior acolyte, a youth in a grey robe woven of metallic links that jingled as he moved, hands in grey shiny gloves, scalp hidden under a smooth steel cap. In a voice made impersonal by careful practice, the acolyte said, “You wish counsel?”

  The man in brown nodded, shifting a trifle nervously from foot to foot. Through the doorway were visible many devotional pictures and statues; he dropped his gaze before them.

  “What is your name?” the acolyte inquired.

  “Karimov,” said the man in brown. “Julius Karimov.”

  He tensed fractionally as he spoke, his eyes fleeting over the acolyte’s face in search of any reaction. None showed, and he relaxed on the youth’s curt order to wait while he informed the minister.

  The moment he was alone, Karimov crossed the vestry and examined a painting on the far wall: Anson’s “Immaculate Manufacture,” depicting the legendary origin of God—a bolt of lightning from heaven smiting an ingot of pure steel. It was excellently done, of course; the artist’s use of electro-luminescent paint for the lightning, in particular, was masterly. But from Karimov it provoked an expression of physical nausea, and after only seconds he had to turn away.

  At length the minister entered in the officiating robe which identified him as one of the Eleven closest to God, his headpiece—which during the service had concealed his shaven scalp—discarded, his white, slender hands playing with a jewelled emblem of the Wheel that hung around his neck on a platinum chain. Karimov turned slowly to confront him, right hand slightly raised in a stillborn gesture. It had been a calculated risk to give his real name; he thought that was probably still a secret. But his real face . . .

  No, no hint of recognition. The minister merely said in his professionally resonant voice, “What may I do for you, my son?”

  The man in brown squared his shoulders and said simply, “I want to talk to God.”

  With the resigned air of one well used to dealing with requests of that sort, the minister sighed. “God is extremely busy, my son,” he murmured. “He has the spiritual welfare of the entire human race to look after. Cannot I help you? Is there a particular problem on which you need advice, or do you seek generalised divine guidance in programming your life?”

  Karimov looked at him diffidently and thought: This man really believes! His faith isn’t just pretence for profit, but deep-seated honest trust, and it is more terrifying than everything else that even those who were with me at the beginning should believe!

  He said after a little, “You are kind, Father, but I need more than mere advice. I have”—he seemed to stumble at the word—“prayed much, and sought help from several ministers, and still I have not attained to the peace of the true round. Once, long ago, I had the privilege of seeing God in the steel; I wish to do so again, that’s all. I have no doubt, of course, that He will remember me.”

  There was a long silence, during which the minister’s dark eyes remained fixed on Karimov. Finally he said, “Remember you? Oh yes, he will certainly remember you! But I remember you too—now!”

  His voice shook with uncontrollable fury, and he reached for a bell on the wall.

  Strength born of desperation poured through Karimov’s scrawny frame. He hurled himself at the minister, striking aside the outstretched arm inches from its goal, bowling the tall man over, seizing the tough chain around his neck, and pulling with every ounce of force he could muster.

  The chain bit deep into pale flesh; as if possessed, Karimov tugged and tugged at it, twisted, took a fresh grip and tugged again. The minister’s eyes bulged, mouth uttered loathsome formless grunts, fists beat at his attacker’s arms—and grew weaker, and ceased.

  Karimov drew back, shaking at what he had done, and compelled himself unsteadily to his feet. To the former colleague who now had gone beyond all hope of hearing he muttered his sick apology, then calmed himself with deep breaths and approached the door by which he had not entered the room.

  On his throne beneath its wheel-shaped canopy of steel, God sat. His polished limbs gleamed under the muted lights, his head was beautifully designed to suggest a human face without possessing a single human feature—even eyes.

  Blind insensate thing, thought Karimov as he shut the door behind him. Unconsciously his hand touched what he had in his pocket.

  The voice too was more than humanly perfect, a deep pure tone as if an organ spoke. It said, “My son—”

  And stopped.

  Karimov gave an audible sigh of relief and his nervousness dropped from him like a cloak. He stepped forward casually and sat down in the central one of the eleven chairs arranged in a horseshoe before the throne, while the blank shiny gaze of the robot rested on him and the whole metal frame locked in astonishment.

  “Well?” Karimov challenged. “How do you like meeting somebody who doesn’t believe in you for a change?”

  The robot moved in human fashion, relaxing. Steel fingers linked under his chin while he reconsidered the intruder with interest instead of amazement. The voice rang out afresh.

  “So it’s you, Black!”

  Karimov nodded with a faint smile. “That’s what they used to call me in the old days. I used to think it was a silly affectation—assigning the scientists who worked on top-secret projects false names. But it’s turned out to have advantages, for me at a
ny rate. I gave my own name of Karimov to your—ah—late apostle outside, and it meant nothing to him. Speaking of real names, by the way: how long is it since anyone addressed you as A-46?”

  The robot jerked. “It is sacrilege to apply that term to me!”

  “Sacrilege be—bothered. I’ll go further and remind you what the A stands for in A-46. Android! An imitation of a man! A sexless insensate assembly of metal parts which I helped to design, and it calls itself God!” Scathing contempt rode the lashing words. “You and your fantasies of Immaculate Manufacture! Blasted by a bolt of heavenly lightning from a chunk of untooled steel! Talk about making men in God’s own image—you’re the ‘God’ who was made in man’s!”

  They had even incorporated the facility of shrugging in their design, Karimov recalled with a start as the robot made use of it.

  “Leaving sacrilege on one side for a moment, then,” the machine said, “is there any real reason why you should deny that I am God? Why should not the second Incarnation be an Inferration—in imperishable steel? As for your benighted and deluded belief that you created the metal part of me—which is anyway supremely unimportant since the spirit alone is eternal—it’s long been said that a prophet is without honour in his own country, and since the Inferration took place near your experimental station . . . Well!”

  Karimov laughed. He said, “Well I’m damned! I think you believe it yourself!”

  “You are beyond question damned. For a moment I hoped, seeing you enter my throne room, that you’d learned the error of your ways and come to acknowledge my divinity at last. Of my infinite compassion I will give you one final chance to do so before I call my ministers to take you away. Now or never, Black or Karimov or whatever you choose to call yourself: do you repent and believe?”