by John Wyndham
THE PERFECT CREATURE
from THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM
John Wyndham
SPHERE BOOKS
Published 1973
ISBN 0 7221 9369 6
Copyright© The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973
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INTRODUCTION
AT a very tender age my latent passion for all forms of fantasy stories, having been sparked by the Brothers Grimm and the more unusual offerings in the children's comics and later the boy's adventure papers, was encouraged in the early 1930s by the occasional exciting find on the shelves of the public library with Burroughs and Thorne Smith varying the staple diet of Wells and Verne.
But the decisive factor in establishing that exhilarating ‘sense of wonder’ in my youthful imagination was the discovery about that time of back numbers of American science fiction magazines to be bought quite cheaply in stores like Woolworths. The happy chain of economic circumstances by which American newstand returns, sometimes sadly with the magic cover removed or mutilated, ballasted cargo ships returning to English ports and the colonies, must have been the mainspring of many an enthusiastic hobby devoted to reading, discussing, perhaps collecting and even writing, science fiction – or ‘scientifiction’ as Hugo Gernsback coined the tag in his early Amazing Stories magazine.
Gernsback was a great believer in reader participation; in 1936 I became a teenage member of the Science Fiction League sponsored by his Wonder Stories. Earlier he had run a competition in its forerunner Air Wonder Stories to find a suitable banner slogan, offering the prize of ‘One Hundred Dollars in Gold’ with true yankee braggadacio. Discovering the result some years later in, I think, the September 1930 issue of Wonder Stories seized upon from the bargain-bin of a chain store, was akin to finding a message in a bottle cast adrift by some distant Robinson Crusoe, and I well remember the surge of jingoistic pride (an educational trait well-nurtured in pre-war Britain) in noting that the winner was an Englishman, John Beynon Harris.
I had not the slightest anticipation then that I would later meet, and acknowledge as a good friend and mentor, this contest winner who, as John Wyndham, was to become one of the greatest English story-tellers in the idiom. The fact that he never actually got paid in gold was a disappointment, he once told me, that must have accounted for the element of philosophical dubiety in some of his work. Certainly his winning slogan ‘Future Flying Fiction’, although too late to save the magazine from foundering on the rock of economic depression (it had already been amalgamated with its stablemate Science Wonder Stories to become just plain, if that is the right word, Wonder Stories), presaged the firm stamp of credibility combined with imaginative flair that characterized JBH's writings.
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (the abundance of forenames conveniently supplied his various aliases) emerged in the 1950s as an important contemporary influence on speculative fiction, particularly in the exploration of the theme of realistic global catastrophe, with books such as The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes, and enjoyed a popularity, which continued after his sad death in 1969, comparable to that of his illustrious predecessor as master of the scientific romance, H. G. Wells.
However, he was to serve his writing apprenticeship in those same pulp magazines of the thirties, competing successfully with their native American contributors, and it is the purpose of this present collection to highlight the chronological development of his short stories from those early beginnings to the later urbane and polished style of John Wyndham.
‘The Lost Machine’ was his second published story, appearing in Amazing Stories, and was possibly the prototype of the sentient robot later developed by such writers as Isaac Asimov. He used a variety of plots during this early American period particularly favouring time travel, and the best of these was undoubtedly ‘The Man From Beyond’ in which the poignancy of a man's realization, caged in a zoo on Venus, that far from being abandoned by his fellow-explorers, he is the victim of a far stranger fate, is remarkably outlined for its time. Some themes had dealt with war, such as ‘The Trojan Beam’, and he had strong views to express on its futility. Soon his own induction into the Army in 1940 produced a period of creative inactivity corresponding to World War II. He had, however, previously established himself in England as a prominent science fiction writer with serials in major periodicals, subsequently reprinted in hard covers, and he even had a detective novel published. He had been well represented too – ‘Perfect Creature’ is an amusing example – in the various magazines stemming from fan activity, despite the vicissitudes of their pre- and immediate post-war publishing insecurity.
But after the war and into the fifties the level of science fiction writing in general had increased considerably, and John rose to the challenge by selling successfully to the American market again. In England his polished style proved popular and a predilection for the paradoxes of time travel as a source of private amusement was perfectly exemplified in ‘Pawley's Peepholes’, in which the gawping tourists from the future are routed by vulgar tactics. This story was later successfully adapted for radio and broadcast by the B.B.C.
About this time his first post-war novel burst upon an unsuspecting world, and by utilizing a couple of unoriginal ideas with his Gernsback-trained attention to logically based explanatory detail and realistic background, together with his now strongly developed narrative style, ‘The Day of the Triffids’ became one of the classics of modern speculative fiction, surviving even a mediocre movie treatment. It was the forerunner of a series of equally impressive and enjoyable novels including ‘The Chrysalids’ and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ which was successfully filmed as ‘Village of the Damned’. (A sequel ‘Children of the Damned’ was markedly inferior, and John was careful to disclaim any responsibility for the writing.)
I was soon to begin an enjoyable association with John Wyndham that had its origins in the early days of the New Worlds magazine-publishing venture, and was later to result in much kindly and essential assistance enabling me to become a specialist dealer in the genre. This was at the Fantasy Book Centre in Bloomsbury, an area of suitably associated literary activities where John lived for many years, and which provided many pleasurable meetings at a renowned local coffee establishment, Cawardine's, where we were often joined by such personalities as John Carnell, John Christopher and Arthur C. Clarke.
In between the novels two collections of his now widely published short stories were issued as ‘The Seeds of Time’ and ‘Consider Her Ways’; others are reprinted here for the first time. He was never too grand to refuse material for our own New Worlds and in 1958 wrote a series of four novelettes about the Troon family's contribution to space exploration – a kind of Forsyte saga of the solar system later collected under the title ‘The Outward Urge’. His fictitious collaborator ‘Lucas Parkes’ was a subtle ploy in the book version to explain Wyndham's apparent deviation into solid science-based fiction. The last story in this collection ‘The Emptiness of Space’ was written as a kind of postscript to that series, especially for the 100th anniversary issue of New Worlds.
John Wyndham's last novel was Chocky, published in 1968. It was an expansion of a short story following a theme similar to The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos. It was a theme peculiarly appropriate for him in his advancing maturity. When, with characteristic reticence and modesty, he announced to a few of his friends that he was marrying his beloved Grace and moving to the countryside, we all felt that this was a well-deserve
d retirement for them both.
But ironically time – always a fascinating subject for speculation by him – was running out for this typical English gentleman. Amiable, erudite, astringently humorous on occasion, he was, in the same way that the gentle Boris Karloff portrayed his film monsters, able to depict the nightmares of humanity with frightening realism, made the more deadly by his masterly precision of detail. To his great gift for story-telling he brought a lively intellect and a fertile imagination.
I am glad to be numbered among the many, many thousands of his readers whose ‘sense of wonder’ has been satisfactorily indulged by a writer whose gift to posterity is the compulsive readability of his stories of which this present volume is an essential part.
— LESLIE FLOOD
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THE PERFECT CREATURE (1937)
THE first thing I knew of the Dixon affair was when a deputation came from the village of Membury to ask us if we would investigate the alleged curious goings-on there.
But before that, perhaps, I had better explain the word ‘us’.
I happen to hold a post as Inspector for the S.S.M.A. — in full, the Society for the Suppression of the Maltreatment of Animals — in the district that includes Membury. Now, please don't assume that I am wobble-minded on the subject of animals. I needed a job. A friend of mine who has influence with the Society got it for me; and I do it, I think, conscientiously. As for the animals themselves, well, as with humans, I like some of them. In that, I differ from my co-Inspector, Alfred Weston; he likes — liked? — them all; on principle, and indiscriminately.
It could be that, at the salaries they pay, the S.S.M.A. has doubts of its personnel — though there is the point that where legal action is to be taken two witnesses are desirable; but, whatever the reason, there is a practice of appointing their inspectors as pairs to each district; one result of which was my daily and close association with Alfred.
Now, one might describe Alfred as the animal-lover par excellence. Between him and all animals there was complete affinity — at least, on Alfred's side. It wasn't his fault if the animals didn't quite understand it; he tried hard enough. The very thought of four feet or feathers seemed to do something to him. He cherished them one and all, and was apt to talk of them, and to them, as if they were his dear, dear friends temporarily embarrassed by a diminished I.Q.
Alfred himself was a well-built man, though not tall, who peered through heavily-rimmed glasses with an earnestness that seldom lightened. The difference between us was that while I was doing a job, he was following a vocation — pursuing it wholeheartedly, and with a powerful imagination to energize him.
It didn't make him a restful companion. Under the powerful magnifier of Alfred's imagination the commonplace became lurid. At a run-of-the-mill allegation of horse-thrashing, phrases about fiends, barbarians and brutes in human form would leap into his mind with such vividness that he would be bitterly disappointed when we discovered, as we invariably did, (a) that the thing had been much exaggerated, anyway, and (b) that the perpetrator had either had a drink too many, or briefly lost his temper.
It so happened that we were in the office together on the morning that the Membury deputation arrived. They were a more numerous body than we usually received, and as they filed in I could see Alfred's eyes begin to widen in anticipation of something really good — or horrific, depending on which way you were looking at it. Even I felt that this ought to produce something a cut above cans tied to cats' tails, and that kind of thing.
Our premonitions turned out rightly. There was a certain confusion in the telling, but when we had it sorted out, it seemed to amount to this:
Early the previous morning, one Tim Darrell, while engaged in his usual task of taking the milk to the station, had encountered a phenomenon in the village street. The sight had so surprised him that while stamping on his brakes he had let out a yell which brought the whole place to its windows or doors. The men had gaped, and most of the women had set up screaming when they, too, saw the pair of creatures that were standing in the middle of their street.
The best picture of these creatures that we could get out of our visitors suggested that they must have looked more like turtles than anything else — though a very improbable kind of turtle that walked upright upon its hind legs.
The overall height of the apparitions would seem to have been about five foot six. Their bodies were covered with oval carapaces, not only at the back, but in front, too. The heads were about the size of normal human heads, but without hair, and having a horny-looking surface. Their large, bright black eyes were set above a hard, shiny projection, debatably a beak or a nose.
But this description, while unlikely enough, did not cover the most troublesome characteristic — and the one upon which all were agreed despite other variations. This was that from the ridges at the sides, where the back and front carapaces joined, there protruded, some two-thirds of the way up, a pair of human arms and hands!
Well, about that point I suggested what anyone else would: that it was a hoax, a couple of fellows dressed up for a scare.
The deputation was indignant. For one thing, it convincingly said, no one was going to keep up that kind of hoax in the face of gunfire — which was what old Halliday who kept the saddler's had give them. He had let them have half a dozen rounds out of twelve-bore; it hadn't worried them a bit, and the pellets had just bounced off.
But when people had got around to emerging cautiously from their doors to take a closer look, they had seemed upset. They had squawked harshly at one another, and then set off down the street at a kind of waddling run. Half the village, feeling braver now, had followed them. The creatures had not seemed to have an idea of where they were going, and had run out over Baker's Marsh. There they had soon struck one of the soft spots, and finally they had sunk out of sight into it, with a great deal of floundering and squawking.
The village, after talking it over, had decided to come to us rather than to the police. It was well meant, no doubt, but, as I said:
“I really don't see what you can expect us to do if the creatures have vanished without trace.”
“Moreover,” put in Alfred, never strong on tact, “it sounds to ine that we should have to report that the villagers of Membury simply hounded these unfortunate creatures — whatever they were — to their deaths, and made no attempt to save them.”
They looked somewhat offended at that, but it turned out that they had not finished. The tracks of the creatures had been followed back as far as possible, and the consensus was that they could not have had their source anywhere but in Membury Grange.
“Who lives there?” I asked.
It was a Doctor Dixon, they told me. He had been there these last three or four years.
And that led us on to Bill Parsons' contribution. He was a little hesitant about making it at first.
“This'll be confidential like?” he asked.
Everyone for miles around knows that Bill's chief concern is other people's rabbits. I reassured him.
“Well, it was this way,” he said. “ 'Bout three months ago it'd be—”
Pruned of its circumstantial detail, Bill's story amounted to this: finding himself, so to speak, in the grounds of the Grange one night, he had taken a fancy to investigate the nature of the new wing that Doctor Dixon had caused to be built on soon after he came. There had been considerable local speculation about it, and, seeing a chink of light between the curtains there, Bill had taken his opportunity.
“I'm telling you, there's things that's not right there,” he said. “The very first thing I seen, back against the far wall was a line of cages, with great thick bars to 'em — the way the light hung I couldn't see what was inside: but why'd anybody be wanting them in his house?”
“And then when I shoved myself up hig
her to get a better view, there in the middle of the room I saw a horrible sight — a horrible sight it was!” He paused for a dramatic shudder.
“Well, what was it?” I asked, patiently.
“It was — well, it's kind of hard to tell. Lying on a table, it was, though. Lookin' more like a white bolster than anything — 'cept that it was moving a bit. Kind of inching, with a sort of ripple in it — if you understand me.”
I didn't much. I said:
“Is that all?”
“That it's not,” Bill told me, approaching his climax with relish. “Most of it didn't 'ave no real shape, but there was a part of it as did — a pair of hands, human hands, a-stickin' out from the sides of it...”
In the end I got rid of the deputation with the assurance we would look into the matter. When I turned back from closing the door behind the last of them I perceived that all was not well with Alfred. His eyes were gleaming widely behind his glasses, and he was trembling.
“Sit down,” I advised him. “You don't want to go shaking parts of yourself off.”
I could see that there was a dissertation coming: probably something to beat what we had just heard. But, for once, he wanted my opinion first, while manfully contriving to hold his own down for a time. I obliged:
“It has to turn out simpler than it sounds,” I told him. “Either somebody was playing a joke on the village — or there are some very unusual animals which they've distorted by talking it over too much.”
“They were unanimous about the carapaces and arms — two structures as thoroughly incompatible as can be,” Alfred said, tire-somely.
I had to grant that. And arms — or, at least, hands — had been the only describable feature of the bolster-like object that Bill had seen at the Grange...
Alfred gave me several other reasons why I was wrong, and then paused meaningly.
“I, too, have heard rumours about Membury Grange,” he told me.