Greybeard

by Brian Wilson Aldiss

  “It’s our job, Mr. Timberlane, to be professional pessimists in DOUCH,” he said. “With reference to the future, we may only permit ourselves to be hard-headed and dry-eyed. You have to face up to the fact that if vital genes have been knocked out of the human reproductive apparatus, the rest of the apparatus may never have the strength to build them back up again. In which case, young men like you and this reprobate Pilbeam represent the ultimate human generation. That’s why we need you; you’ll record the death throes of the human race.”

  “Sounds to me as if you want journalists,” Timberlane said.

  “No, sir, we require steady men with integrity. This is not a scoop, it’s a way of life.”

  “Way of death, Bill,” Pilbeam corrected.

  “Bit of both. As the Good Book reminds us, in the midst of life we are in death.”

  “I still don’t see the object of the project if the human race is going to become extinct,” Timberlane said. “Whom will it help?”

  “Good question. Here’s what I hope’s a good answer. It will help two sorts of people. Both groups are purely hypothetical. It will help a small group we might imagine in, say, America thirty or forty years from now, when the whole nation may have broken up in chaos; suppose they establish a little settlement and find that they are able to bear children? Those children will be almost savages — feral children, severed from the civilization to which they rightly belong. DOUCH records will be a link for them between their past and their future, and will give them a chance to think along right lines and construct a socially viable community.”

  “And the second group?”

  “I imagine you are not a very speculative man, Mr. Timberlane. Has it ever crossed your mind that we are not alone in this universe? I don’t mean just the Creator; it’s difficult to imagine he would make any human company except Adam. I mean the other races who live on the planets of other stars. They may one day visit Earth, as we have visited the Moon and Mars. They will seek an explanation for our ‘lost civilization’, just as we wonder about the Martian lost civilization of which Leatherby’s expedition found traces. DOUCH will leave them an explanation. If the explanation also packs a moral they can use, so much the better.”

  “There’s a third hypothetical group,” Pilbeam said, leaning forward. “That’s the one that sends the prickles down my spine. Maybe I read too much of my father’s science fiction at too early an age. But if man is going to tumble off his ecological niche, maybe some creature lurking around right now will climb up and take his place in a couple of hundred years — when the place is properly aired.”

  He laughed. With quiet humour, Dyson said, “Could be, Jack. Statistics on how the Big Accident affected the larger primates is hard to come by. Maybe the grizzlies or the gorillas have already started along a favourable mutational line.”

  Timberlane was silent. He did not know how to join in this sort of conversation. The whole thing was still unreal to him. When he said good-bye to Charley Samuels, the look of dismay on his friend’s face had shaken him almost as much as the C.O.’s instant co-operation with Childsweep. He peered down through the window. Far below, cumulus made a tumbled bed of the Earth. He was in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

  Down below in that tenebrific world, a million years’ doubtful dynasty was coming to an end, with the self-immolation of the reigning house. He was not sure how he would relish recording its death throes.

  There were mild autumnal sunshine and a military escort to greet them at Bolling Field. Half an hour — to Pilbeam’s sore irritation — passed in the Inspection Block before Health and Security checks cleared them. They were driven with their kit by electric truck to a little grey private bus which awaited them outside. On its side were painted the letters DOUCH.

  “Looks good,” Timberlane exclaimed. “Now for the first time I believe I’m not the victim of some elaborate hoax.”

  “Didn’t think you’d find yourself putting down in Peking, did you?” Dyson said, grinning his comfortable grin.

  “And be sure never to climb into a bus labelled OICH or DUCA, however canned you are,” warned their military escort, helping Timberlane with his bags. “They stand for Oriental Integration and Cultural Habitation or something like it, and DUCA is a flamboyant organization run by the Post and standing for Department of Unified Child Assistance. They keep awful busy, even without any actual children to assist. Washington is a rash of initials and organizations — and disorganization — right now. It’s like living up to here in alphabet soup. Jump in, fellows, and we’ll go see a traffic jam or two.”

  But somewhat to Timberlane’s disappointment, they kept to the east of the grey river he had glimpsed as they came in to land, and crawled into the part of town Pilbeam informed him was Anacostia. They pulled up in a trim street of new white houses before a block he was told was home. It proved to be swarming with decorators and echoing with the sound of carpenters.

  “New premises,” Pilbeam explained. “Up until a month ago, this was a home for mentally deranged juvenile delinquents. But that’s one problem this so-called Accident has abolished entirely. We’ve run clean out of delinquents! It’ll make us a good HQ, and when you see the swimming pool, you’ll realize why delinquency in this country was almost a profession!”

  He flung open the door of a spacious room. “You’ve got bedroom and toilet off through that door there. You share shower facilities with the guy next door, who happens to be me. Right down the corridor is the bar, and by God if they don’t have that to rights by now, and with a pretty girl at the alert behind it, there’s going to be hell raised. See you across a martini in ten minutes, eh?”

  * * *

  The DOUCH training course was planned to last for six weeks. Although it was in a high degree of organization, the system remained chaotic, owing to the disorder of the times.

  Internally, all big cities were in the toils of labour problems; the conscription of strikers into the armed forces had served only to spread trouble to those bodies. The war was not a popular one, and not only because the enthusiasm of youth was missing.

  Externally, the cities were under enemy bombardment. The so-called “Fat Choy” raids were the enemy’s speciality: detection-baffled missiles that dropped in from spatial orbits, disintegrating above ground and scattering “suitcases” of explosive or incendiaries. It was the first time the American population had experienced aerial attack on their home ground. While many city dwellers evacuated themselves to smaller towns or country areas — only to straggle back later, preferring the risk of bombardment to an environment with which they had little sympathy — many country folk entered the cities in search of higher wages. Industry complained loudly; but as yet it was agriculture that was hardest hit, and Congress was busily passing laws that would enable it to order men back to the land.

  The one happy feature of the whole war was that the enemy’s economy was a deal more insecure than America’s; the number of Fat Choys had noticeably decreased over the last six months. As a result, the hectic night life of the wartime capital had accelerated.

  Timberlane was able to see a good deal of this night life. The DOUCH officials had good contacts. Within a day, he was supplied with all necessary documents enabling him to survive in the local rat race: stamped passport, visa, alien curfew exemptions, police file card, clothing purchase permit, travel warrant within the District of Columbia, and vitamin, meat, vegetable, bread, fish, and candy ration cards. In every case except that of the travel warrant, the restrictions seemed liberal to all but the local inhabitants.

  Timberlane was a man who only rarely indulged in self-examination. So he never asked himself how strongly his decision to throw in his lot with DOUCH was influenced by their promise to reunite him with his girl friend. It was a point on which he never had to press Dyson.

  Within four days, Martha Broughton was flown out of the little besieged island off the continent of Europe and delivered to Washington.

  Martha Broughton was twenty-six, T
imberlane’s age. Not only because she was among the youngest of the world’s women but because she carried her good looks with an easy air, she attracted attention wherever she went. At this time, she boasted a full crop of fine ash-blond hair, which she wore untamed to shoulder length. One generally had to be well-acquainted with her to notice that her eyebrows were painted on; she had no eyebrows of her own.

  At the time of what Washington circles referred to euphemistically as the Big Accident, Martha was six. She had fallen ill with the radiation sickness; unlike many of her little contemporaries, she had survived. But her hair had not; and the baldness which had accompanied her throughout all her schooldays, in subjecting her to taunts against which she had readily defended herself, had been instrumental in sharpening her wit. By her twenty-first birthday, a fuzz covered her skull; now her beauty would not have been despised in any age. Timberlane was one of the few people outside her family who knew of the internal scars that were the unique mark of her own age.

  Pilbeam and Timberlane showed her to a women’s hostel a couple of blocks from the new DOUCH headquarters.

  “You’re having an effect on Algy already,” Martha told Pilbeam. “His long English a’s are eroding; he told the taxi driver to pahss another car, instead of parss. What’s next to go?”

  “Probably the English middle class inhibition against kissing in public,” Timberlane said.

  “My God, if you call me public, I’m getting out of here,” Pilbeam said good-naturedly. “I can take a hint as well as anyone — and a drink. You’ll find me down in the bar when you want me.”

  “We won’t be long, Jack.”

  “We won’t be very long, Jack,” Martha amended.

  As the door closed, they put their arms about each other and stood with their lips together, feeling the other’s warmth through mouth and body. They remained like that, kissing and talking, for some while. Finally he stood back on the other side of the room, cupped his chin in his hand in a judicious gesture, and admired her legs.

  “Ah, the cute catenary curve of your calves!” he exclaimed.

  “Well, what a lovely transatlantic greeting,” Martha said. “Algy, this is wonderful! What a marvellous thing to happen! Isn’t it exciting? Father was furious that I so much as contemplated coming — preached me a long sermon in his dee-eepest voice about the flightiness of young womanhood—”

  “And no doubt admires you madly for sticking to your guns and coming! Though if he suspects the American male will be after you, he’s right.”

  She opened her night bag, setting bottles and brushes out on the dressing-table, and never taking her eyes off him. As she sat down to attend to her face, she said, “Any fate is better than death! And what is going on here? And what is DOUCH, and why have you joined, and what can I do to help?”

  “I’m being trained here for six weeks. All sorts of courses — boy, these fellows really know how to work! Contemporary history, societics, economy, geopolitics, a new thing they call existentietics, functional psychology — oh, and other things, and practical subjects, such as engine maintenance. And twice a week we drive out to Rock Creek Park for lessons in self-defence from a judo expert. It’s tough but I’m enjoying it. There’s a dedicated feeling about here that gives everything meaning. I’m out of the war, too, which means life again makes a little sense.”

  “You look well on it, honey. And are you going to practise self-defence on me?”

  “Other forms of wrestling perhaps; not that. No, I suspect you are out here for one very good reason. But we’ll ask Jack Pilbeam about that. Let’s go and join him — he’s a hell of a good chap; you’ll like him.”

  “I do already.”

  * * *

  Pilbeam was in one corner of the hostel bar, sitting close with an attentive redhead. He broke away reluctantly, swung his mack off the back of a chair, and came towards them, saluting as he did so. “All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy,” he said. “Where do we take the lady now, and is it anywhere we can take a friendly redhead?”

  “Having restored the ravages of travel, I’m in your hands,” Martha said.

  “And she doesn’t mean that literally,” Timberlane added.

  Pilbearn bowed. “I have the instructions, the authority, and the inclination, to take you anywhere in Washington, and to wine and dine you as long as you are here.”

  “I warn you, darling, they play hard as well as work hard. DOUCH will do its best for us before dumping us down to record the end of the world.”

  “I can see you need a drink, you grumpy man,” Pilbeam said, forcing his smile a little. “Let me just introduce the redhead, and then we will move along to a show and a bottle. Perchance we could jemmy our way into the Dusty Dykes show. Dykes is the Slouch Comedian.”

  The redhead joined the party without too great a feigning of reluctance, and they moved into town. The blackouts which had afflicted the cities of other nations in earlier wars did not worry Washington. The enemy had the city firmly in its missile sights, and no lighting effects would change the situation. The streets were a blaze of neon as the entertainment business boomed. Flashing signs lit the faces of men and women with the stigmata of illness as they pushed into cabarets and cafés. Black market food and drink were in plentiful supply; the only shortage seemed to be parking spaces.

  These hectic evenings became part of a pattern of fierce work and relaxation into which the DOUCH personnel fitted. It was only on her third night in Washington, when they were sitting in the Trog and watching the cabaret that included Dusty Dykes — the comedian for whom Pilbeam failed to acquire tickets on the first night — that Martha managed to put her question to Pilbeam.

  “Jack, you give us a wonderful time. I wish I could seem to do something in return. Is there something I can do? I don’t see really why I was invited out here.”

  Without ceasing to caress the wrist of the dark and green-eyed beauty who was his date for the night, Pilbeam said, “You were invited to keep one Algy Timberlane company — not that he deserves any such good fortune. And you have sat in on several of his lectures. Isn’t that enough? Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to over-consume.”

  “I am enjoying myself. I’d just like to know if there is anything I can do.”

  Pilbeam winked at his green-eyed friend. “You’d better ask Algy that, honey baby.”

  “I’m terribly persistent, Jack. I do want an answer.”

  “Go and ask Bill Dyson — it’s really his pigeon. I’m just the DOUCH playboy — Warm Douche, they call me. And I may have to be off on my travels again, come Wednesday.”

  “Oh, cherry pie, but you said — ” the green-eyed girl protested. Pilbeam laid a cautionary finger on her lustrous lips. “Shhh, my sweetie — your Uncle Sam must come before your Uncle Jack. But tonight, believe me, Uncle Jack comes first — metaphorically speaking, you understand.”

  The lights dimmed, there was a drum roll followed by an amplified hiccup. As silence fell, Dusty Dykes floated in on an enormous dollar note and climbed down on to the floor. He was an almost menacingly ordinary little man, wearing a creased lounge suit. He spoke in a flat, husky voice.

  “You’ll see I’ve abandoned my old gimmick of not having a gimmick. It’s not the first time this country’s economy has taken me for a ride. Good evening, ladies and gentiles, and I really mean that — it may be your last. In New York, where I come from — and you know state tax is so high there I needed a parachute to get away — they are very fond of World End parties. You rub two moralities together: the result’s a bust. You rub two busts together: the result is always a titter. The night Senator Mulgravy went, it was a twitter.” At this, there was a round of applause. “Oh, some of you have heard of senators? Friends told me when I arrived — friends are the people who stand you one drink and one afternoon — they told me Washington D.C. was politically uneducated. Well, they didn’t put it like that, they just said nobody went to photograph the African bronzes in the White House
any more. I said, remember, it isn’t the men of the state that counts, it’s the state of the men. At least they’re no poorer than a shareholder in the contraceptive industry.”

  “I can’t hear what he’s saying — or else I can’t understand it,” Martha whispered.

  “It doesn’t sound particularly funny to me either,” Timberlane whispered.

  With his arm round his girl friend’s shoulder, Pilbeam said, “It’s not meant to be funny. It’s meant to be slouch — as they call it.”

  Nevertheless, he was grinning broadly, as were many other customers. Noticing this, Dusty Dykes, shook a cautionary finger. It was his only gesture. “Smiling won’t help it,” he said. “I know you’re all sitting there naked under your clothes, but you can’t embarrass me — I go to church and hear the sermon every Sunday. We are a wicked and promiscuous nation, and it gives me as much pleasure as the parson to say so. I’ve no objection to morality, except that it’s obsolete.

  “Life gets worse every day. In the High Court in California, they’ve stopped sentencing their criminals to death — they sentence them to life instead. Like the man said, there’s no innocence any more, just undetected crime. In the State of Illinois alone, there were enough sex murders last month to make you all realize how vicarious your position is.

  “The future outlook for the race is black, and that’s not just a pigment of my imagination. There were two sex criminals talking over business in Chicago the other day. Butch said, ‘Say, Sammy, which do you like best, murdering a woman or thinking about murdering a woman?’ ‘Shucks, I don’t know, Butch, which do you prefer?’ ‘Thinking about murdering a woman, every time!’ ‘Why’s that, then? ‘That way you get a more romantic type of woman.’”

  For some minutes more the baby-faced little man stood there under the spot in his slept-in suit, making his slept-in jokes. Then the light cut off, he disappeared, and the house lights rose to applause.

  “More drinks,” Pilbeam said.

  “But he was awful!” Martha exclaimed. “Just blue!”