Greybeard

by Brian Aldiss

  “Martha’s right,” Charley said. “We’ve no moral right to pinch their boat, scoundrels though they may be.”

  Jingadangelow straightened himself and adjusted his toga. “If you’ve all finished arguing, kindly leave my cabin. I must remind you that this room is private and sacred. There will be no more trouble, I can assure you of that.”

  As they left, Martha saw a wild dark eye regarding them through a rent in the curtain over the far window.

  When Hagbourne appeared late that afternoon, it emerged not out of the mist but from curtains of heavy rain. For the morning mist had been dispersed by a wind that brought showers with it. They died away as the steamer was secured along a stone quay, and the line of the Berkshire Downs rose behind the small town. The town Jingadangelow called his base appeared almost deserted. Only three ancient men were there to greet the steamer and help tie it up. The disembarkation that followed lent some life to the dreary scene.

  Greybeard’s party detached their own boats warily from the steamer’s stern, although they scarcely expected more trouble from the crew. Jingadangelow did not give the appearance of a fighting man. What they did not expect was the appearance of Becky, who came up as they were loading their belongings into the dinghy.

  She set her head on one side and pointed her sharp nose up at Greybeard.

  “The Master sent me to speak with you. He says you owe him some labour for the privilege of the tow he gave you.”

  “We’d have done his work if he hadn’t attacked Greybeard,” Charley said. “That was attempted murder, that was. Those that worship false gods shall be damned forever, Becky, so you better watch it.”

  “You keep your tongue to yourself, Charley Samuels, afore you speak like that to a priestess of the Second Generation. I didn’t come to talk to you, anyhow.” She turned her back pointedly on him and said to Greybeard, “The Master always carries true forgiveness in his heart. He bears you no malice, and would like to give you shelter for the night. There is a place he has empty that you could use. It’s his offer, not mine, or I wouldn’t be making it. To think you struggled with him, laying hands on his person, you did!”

  “We don’t want his hospitality,” Martha said firmly. Greybeard turned to her and took her hands, and said over his shoulder to Becky, “Tell your Master we will be glad to accept the offer of shelter for the night. And see that we get someone with a civil tongue to take us to it.”

  As she shuffled back up the gangplank, Greybeard said urgently to Martha, “We can’t just leave without finding out more about that young girl of Jingadangelow’s, where she comes from and what’s going to happen to her. The night looks stormy, in any case. We are surely in no danger, and will be glad of dry billets. Let’s bide here.”

  Martha arched what would, in a different lifetime, have been her eyebrows. “I admit I don’t understand the interest that untrustworthy rascal holds for you. The attractions of that girl Chammoy are altogether more obvious.”

  “Don’t be a silly little woman,” he said gently.

  “We will do as you wish.”

  A flush spread from his face over the dome of his head. “Chammoy has no effect on me,” he said, and turned to instruct Pitt about the baggage.

  The quarters that Jingadangelow offered them proved to be good. Hagbourne was an untidy ruin of drab twentieth-century houses, many of them council-built; but at one end of the town, in a section Jingadangelow had chosen for the use of himself and his disciples, were buildings and houses in an older, less anaemic tradition. Over the area, vegetation grew thick. Most of the rest of the place was besieged by plants, elder, dock, willow herb, sorrel, nettle, and the ubiquitous brambles. Beyond the town, the growth was of a different nature. The sheep that once cropped short the grass of the downland had long ago disappeared. Without the flocks to eat the seedlings of shrubs arid trees, the ancient cover of beech tree and oak was returning, uprooting on its way the houses where the sheep-consumers had lived.

  This vigorous young forest, still dripping from the recent rain, brushed against the stone walls of the barn to which the party was directed. The front and rear walls of the barn were, in fact, broken in, with the result that the floor was muddy. But a wooden stair led up to a small balcony, onto which two rooms opened, snug under a still effective roof.

  They had recently been lived in, and held the offer of a comfortable night. Pitt and Charley took one room, Martha and Greybeard the other.

  They made a good meal of a pair of young ducks and some peas Martha had bought off one of the women on the boat, for the priestesses had proved not averse to a haggle in their off-hours. A search for bugs revealed that they were unlikely to have company during the night; with this encouragement, they retired early to their room. Greybeard lit a lantern and he and Martha pulled off their shoes. She began to comb and brush her hair. He was pulling the barrel of his rifle through with a piece of cloth when he heard the wooden stairs creak.

  He stood up quietly, slipping a cartridge into the breach and levelling the rifle at the door.

  The intruder on the stairs evidently heard the click of the bolt, for a voice called, “Don’t shoot!”

  Greybeard heard Pitt next door call out a challenge. “Who’s that out there, you devils?” he shouted. “I’ll shoot you dead!”

  “Greybeard, it’s me — Jingadangelow! I wish to speak to you.”

  Martha said, “Jingadangelow and not the Master!”

  He extinguished their lantern and threw open the door. In the protracted twilight, Jingadangelow stood halfway up the stairs, a small lamp held above his head. Its light, slanting down, lit only his gleaming forehead and cheeks. Pitt and Charley came out onto the little balcony to look at him.

  “Don’t shoot, men. I am alone and mean you no harm. I only wish to speak to Greybeard. You may go to bed and sleep securely.”

  “We’ll decide that for ourselves,” Pitt said, but his tone suggested he was mollified. “You saw earlier on that we’ll stand no nonsense from you.”

  “I’ll handle him, Jeff,” Greybeard said. “You’d better come up, Jingadangelow.”

  The timbers creaked under Jingadangelow’s tread as he pulled himself up onto the platform. Greybeard stood aside, and Jingadangelow entered their room. On seeing Martha, he made the jerk at his hips that was a portly substitute for a bow. He placed his lantern on a stone shelf set in the wall and stood there, pulling at his lip and observing them, breathing heavily as he did so.

  “Is this a social call?” Martha asked.

  “I’ve come to make a bargain with you,” he said.

  “We don’t make bargains; that’s your trade, not ours,” Greybeard said. “If your two toughs want their revolvers back, I’m willing to return them in the morning when we leave, provided you can guarantee their good behaviour.”

  “I didn’t come to discuss that. You needn’t use that sharp tone Just because you have me at a slight disadvantage. I want to put a straightforward proposition to you.”

  Martha said coolly, “Dr Jingadangelow, we hope to be moving early in the morning. Do please come directly to what you have to say.”

  “Is it something to do with that girl Chammoy?” Greybeard asked.

  Muttering that someone would have to help him up again, Jingadangelow sank to the floor and sat there.

  “I see I have no option but to lay some of my cards upon the metaphorical table. I want you both to listen generously, since I have indeed come to unburden myself. May I say I’m sorry you don’t receive me in a more friendly way. Despite that little spot of trouble on the boat, my regard for you is unchanged.”

  “We are interested in hearing about the girl in your possession,” Martha said.

  “Yes, yes, you shall hear about that straightaway. As you know, I have toured the Midlands extensively during my centuries of duty. In many respects, I am a Byronic figure, forced to wander and to suffer... During my peregrinations I have rarely seen any children. Of course we know there are supposed to be n
one. Yet my reason has led me to consider that the actual position may be vastly different from the apparent one. In reaching this conclusion, I considered a number of factors, which I will now lay before you.

  “If you can recall that distant epoch before the ancient technological civilizations crumbled, back in the twentieth century AD, you will remember that many specialists gave conflicting diagnoses of what was going to happen when the full effects of the space bombs were upon us. Some thought that everything would return to normal within a few years, others that accumulating radioactivity would wipe all life of every kind from this sinful but rather desirable world. As we who have the benefit of surviving now know, both these views were mistaken. Am I right?”

  “Right. Proceed.”

  “Thank you, I will. Other specialists suggested that the radioactivity from the Big Accident might be absorbed into the soil in the course of years. I believe this prediction to have come to pass. And I further believe that with it, some younger women have recovered the power to bring forth young.

  “Now, I have to confess that I have come across no fertile women myself, although in my new calling I have been vigilant for them. So I have been forced to ask myself, What would I do if I were a woman of approximately sixty summers who discovered she could produce what we call the Second Generation? This is rather a theoretical question. How would you answer it, madam?”

  Martha said slowly, “If I were to have a baby? I should be delighted, I suppose. At least, I have spent a number of years supposing I would be delighted. But I should be reluctant to let anyone see my child. Certainly I should be reluctant to come forward to someone like you and declare my secret, for fear that I would be forced into — well, some form of compulsory breeding.”

  Jingadangelow nodded magisterially. As talking soothed him, his manner acquired more of its old panache.

  “Thank you, madam. You are saying you would hide yourself and your offspring. Or you would exhibit yourself and might well get killed, as happened to a foolish woman who bore a girl child near Oxford. If we suppose that a number of women have borne children, we must remember that many must have done so in the isolated settlements that now lie off any beaten track. The news of the birth would not circulate.

  “Next, consider the plight of the children. You might hold that their lot would be enviable, with all the adults in the neighbourhood to spoil and protect them. Deeper knowledge of humanity will persuade you otherwise. The rancorous envy of those people without children would be insupportable, and aged parents would be unable to ward off the tangible effects of that envy. Babies would be stolen by motherhood-mad harridans, by crazy sterile old men. Young children would be the constant prey of the sort of blackguards I was forced to associate with some eighty years ago, when I travelled with an itinerant fair for my own protection. By the time the children — boys or girls — reached their early teens, one can only draw back aghast at the thought of the sexual indignities to which they would be exposed — ”

  “Chammoy’s experience must bear out all you say,” Greybeard cut in. “Leave out the hypocrisy, Jingadangelow, and get to the point.”

  “Chammoy needed my protection and my moral influence; besides which, I am a lonely man. However, my point is this: that the biggest menace any child could face would be — human society! If you wonder why there are no children, the answer is that if they exist, they hide from us in the new wilds, away from men.”

  Martha and Greybeard looked at each other. They read in each other’s eyes an acknowledgement of the likelihood of this theory. In its support, they could recall the persistent rumours about gnomes and small humanlike shapes in the bush that vanished when a man went near. And yet... It was too much to swallow at one time; in their minds and bodies they were dry of the belief in living children.

  “This is all part of your madness, Jingadangelow,” Greybeard said harshly. “Your mind is obsessed with getting hold of more of these young creatures. Please leave us. We want to hear no more — we have our own madnesses to contend with.”

  “Wait! You’re mad, Greybeard, yes, not I! Was my reasoning not clear enough? I’m saner than you are, with your crazy desire to get to the mouth of the river.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands together in a sort of agony. “Listen to me! I have a reason for telling you all this.”

  “It had better be good.”

  “It is good. It’s an idea. It’s the best idea I ever had, and I know you — both of you — will also appreciate it. You are both reasonable people, and it has been a great delight to come across you again after all these centuries, despite that unfortunate incident this morning, for which I fancy you were even more to blame than I — but, no, let’s forget that. The truth is that seeing you made me yearn for intelligent company — not the company of the fools that surround me now.” Jingadangelow leaned forward and addressed himself solely to Greybeard. “I am offering to give up everything and come along with you, wherever you go. I shall follow your lead implicitly, of course. It’s a great and noble renunciation. I make it purely for my soul’s sake, and because I am bored with these imbeciles who follow me.”

  In the brief silence that followed, the fat man looked anxiously at his listeners; he tried a smile on Martha, thought better of it, and switched it off.

  “You collected the fools who follow you, and you must put up with them,” Greybeard said slowly. “That’s something I think I learned from Martha not a million years ago: however you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.”

  “But this Master role, good heavens, it is not my only role. I wish to leave it behind.”

  “I don’t doubt you have a dozen roles you can play, Jingadangelow, but I’m equally sure that the essence of you lies in your roles. We don’t want you with us — I have to be brutally frank. We are happy! For all that everyone has lost since the terrible Accident back in 1981, one thing at least we have gained — there is no longer need for the hypocrisies and shams of civilization; we can be our natural selves. But you would cause dissent among us, because you carry the old rigmarole of mask-wearing into these simple days. You’re too old to drop it now — how many thousands of years old are you? — and so you would never find peace with us.”

  “You and I are philosophers, Greybeard! The salt of the earth! I want to share your simple life with you.”

  “No. You couldn’t share it. You could only spoil it. It’s no deal. I’m sorry.”

  He took down the lantern from the stone shelf and put it into Jingadangelow’s hand. The Master looked at him, then slowly swung his head to see Martha’s face. Extending a hand, he clutched the hem of her dress.

  “Mrs Greybeard, your husband’s grown hard since we met at Swifford Fair. You persuade him. I tell you there are children on the downs near here — Chammoy was one of them. The three of us could hunt them out and install ourselves as teachers. They’d look after us while we taught them all our old knowledge. Convince this hardhearted man of yours, I beg you.”

  She said, “You heard what he said. He’s the boss.”

  Jingadangelow sighed.

  Almost to himself he said, “In the end, we’re all alone. Consciousness — it’s a burden.”

  Slowly, he helped himself to his feet. Martha also rose. A tear forced itself from his right eye and rolled with some command down his cheek and over the expanse of his chin, where a crinkle diverted it down towards his neck.

  “I offer you my humility, my humanity, and you reject it!”

  “At least you have the chance of getting back to your divinity.”

  He sighed and produced the effect of bowing, without, in fact, doing more than bend his knees slightly.

  “I trust you will all be gone early in the morning,” he said. Turning, he moved out of the door, shut it behind him, and left them in darkness.

  Martha worked her hand into her husband’s.

  “What a splendid speech you made him, sweet! Perhaps you are imaginative after all. Oh, to hea
r you say as you did, ‘We are happy!’ You are truly a brave man, my beloved Algy. We should take the untrustworthy old fraud with us, if he could regularly provoke you to such eloquence.”

  For once Greybeard wanted to silence her teasing sweetness. He strained his ears to the sounds Jingadangelow made, or had ceased to make. For after a few steps down the creaking wooden stairs, Jingadangelow had paused, there had been a muffled noise Greybeard failed to interpret, and then silence. Putting Martha aside with a muttered word, he felt for where he had leaned his rifle, took it up, and pulled open the door.

  Jingadangelow’s light still shone. The Master no longer carried it. He stood on the floor of the barn with his hands shakingly above his head. Around him pranced three unbelievable figures, one of them grasping his lantern and swinging it about, so that the shadows whirled around the building, over roof timbers, floor, and walls.

  The figures were grotesque, but it was difficult to make them out in the dim and flickering light. They appeared to have four legs and two arms each, and to stand at a halfcrouch. Their ears stood up sharp on their skulls; they had snouty muzzles and long chins. They leaped about the human staggering in their midst. An onlooker might have been forgiven for mistaking them for medieval representations of the devil.

  All the hairs in Greybeard’s beard crackled with a flow of superstitious fear. Purely by reflex action, he brought up his rifle and fired.

  The noise was overwhelming. A farther section of the wall at the far end of the barn fell inward into the mud. At the same time, the dancing figure with the lantern uttered a cry and fell. The light crashed amid scampering feet and went out.

  “Oh God, oh Martha, bring a light!” Greybeard called, in a sudden alarm. He went lumbering down the dark stairs as Pitt and Charley ran onto the balcony. Charley carried their lantern.

  With a whoop of excitement, Pitt loosed an arrow at the escaping figures, but it fell short and remained quivering, upright in the dirt. He and Charley followed Greybeard down to the ground, with Martha close behind, bringing her lantern. Jingadangelow leaned against the safest wall, weeping out his shock; he seemed physically unharmed.