The Seed of Evil

by Barrington J. Bayley

  This was the fight that broke us.

  The raiders’ main aim was to board us. We had expended what remained of our torpedoes, and were resorting to the less effective seismo-beams, when they expertly blew a hole in the hull. In Command Section, Joule and myself heard alarmed cries and strange clattering sounds. A few minutes later came the explosion, deafening in the confined space. A crewman had heroically blasted the section through which the subearthers were pouring.

  Thereafter, the fight inside the ship was brief; yet it lost us our leader.

  Three raiders who had escaped the explosion came swimming along the central well, hurling destruction in every direction from powerful hand weapons, and within minutes they had arrived at Command Section. Never will I forget the look on Captain Joule’s face as he reached for his handgun. Nor can I describe it, for I saw every emotion there, each distinct, yet none dominant.

  Our adversaries were short, shadowy figures in bulky armour; humanoid, but with an odd serpentine slant to their bodies. Without pause, they fired, and Joule fell with a ruined right side, bringing down the foremost raider as he did so.

  From the corner of the cabin, I disposed of the other two.

  That was the last we saw of the sub-surface raiders. We never knew why they discontinued the attack, for our detectors were a mass of ruined equipment, and from that time we have never seen outside.

  As the other officers came into the control cabin I moved Joule to a couch. His breathing was quick and shallow, and his face was hardened against pain.

  “I’m done,” he whispered.

  I put an arm beneath his shoulders and propped him up gently. He was weak, but his eyes were full of intelligence. “Joule,” I pleaded, “what’s happening to us down here?”

  “This is my theory,” he said, speaking with difficulty. “Matter is a distortion of space. As matter becomes more concentrated … so the space it occupies becomes more concentrated.”

  He stopped, and for a moment I thought he had spoken his last. Then he seemed to revive somewhat, and continued.

  “Within the Earth, space itself is compressed in proportion to density. What from the surface looks like an inch, might really be a thousand miles. The Earth’s radius is the same at all levels—we shrink as we enter denser matter, so it always looks the same. There’s always the same distance to go.”

  His eyes grew dull, then glazed. As he died, I laid him down.

  And I am in command of the Interstice. I lost no time in taking what little action was necessary. The hull is sealed, all internal hatches have been closed and the lights dimmed to conserve power. The propulsors are set for greatest economy and speed: our prime concern is to maintain the polariser field for a long, steady drop towards the centre. Our power plant is theoretically inexhaustible—but the space within the Earth may be as great as the entire solar system for all we know.

  I do not think, now, that there is any mode of travel more sinister than that of a ship moving through solid matter. The deeper we sink, the greater is my awareness of the thousands of miles of rock over our heads, the more intense is the feeling of oppression. My conscience burdens me. It was I who persuaded Captain Joule to embark on the dive, and as I sit in the semi-darkness of this steel hull, I cannot help but think that I have persuaded my companions into Hell itself.

  The ship is a shambles. Men lie in utter silence throughout her length, the seismo-beams no longer manned. We have all accepted the idea that we will not survive this voyage.

  This is the story. Now I sit down to write it, so that those who find our ship when she finally emerges on the other side of the world—the polarisers will automatically be inactivated at that moment—may know of the nature of the Earth’s interior. …

  According to the farmer who claimed to have witnessed the event, the ship had come out of the hillside, then slithered twenty feet before coming to rest against an outcropping of rock.

  Bain could readily see the truth of the latter part of the story from the broken saplings which marked the vessel’s path, but the first part strained his imagination, specially as there was no sign of a break in the turf. He was a specialist in ancient civilisations, and since he could find not one familiar detail in the vessel whose five-hundred-foot bulk loomed over him, he inclined to the view that it came from a different direction altogether.

  “It must be a spaceship,” he said to the metallurgist who had come with the team from Sydney. “It couldn’t be anything else. That farmer was lying, or mistaken.”

  The metallurgist nodded. “I would think so too,” he replied, “but I can’t imagine why it should be so old. Look at the way it sags all over the place! Know what that is? Metal fatigue. Yet some of the alloys I don’t recognise!”

  Bain flicked through the metal-leaved book they had taken from the control room. For him, it provided almost irrefutable proof that the ship was from the stars: it appeared to be some sort of log, but its weird script bore absolutely no resemblance to any Earthly language, ancient or modern.

  “We’ll never find a Rosetta Stone for this,” he thought. It saddened him to think that the account would never be translated.

  At that moment Professor Wilson levered himself out of a hatch from inside the vessel and came over to them excitedly. “It’s a spaceship all right,” he said. “There’s an instrument in there that measures distance in terms of electromagnetic frequencies. Any physicist could read it from here to Andromeda.

  “Do you know what distance that meter clocked before it ran out? Nearly eleven light-years!”

  Man in Transit

  My name is Untuar Murti, and having spent all my life in airplanes, apart from short intervals of hours and minutes, I am better qualified than most to judge the state of the world. True, my experience of it is slight; but that is all to the good: it means that my understanding has not been attenuated or compromised by too close an involvement in life.

  This paper comprises, if you like, my last will and testament—not that I hope that anyone will find time to read it. As to myself: “Murti” was my father’s family name, while “Untuar” has no meaning or derivation but was invented by my father on the principle that it should lack any history or connection with anything else. That, he claimed, was most descriptive of my situation and thus the perfect name for his first, and only child. Let me add that the bitterness which tinged his attitude is not shared by me: the life into which one is born is naturally accepted without rancour, and I have known no other.

  My recollection of my parents is unusually sharp—due, no doubt, to the fact that no one has taken their place in my life—if one considers that I was only five years old at the death of my mother, and only eight at the death of my father. They were docile, rather harmless people who were somewhat prone to miscalculation. Their early deaths may be attributed to an inability to adjust to the ordeal which an adverse fate had thrust upon them.

  Fortunately enough the circumstances of my own birth are unique. I was born on board an airliner flying from Nairobi to London; I was not, however, permitted to disembark either at the port of arrival or at the port of departure. I have been travelling the same route ever since—a total of thirty-eight years.

  My aerial imprisonment disappointed my parents, naturally, but it came as no great surprise to them because they had already been suffering the same indignity for several months. In those days, when the affairs of the world were less settled or rigidified than they are now, large numbers of people were occasionally trapped in pernicious political antinomies. Let me explain: my own parents were of Indian stock, holders of British passports, and residents of East Africa where their families had lived for two generations. Into this heterogeneity of allegiances, arising from the dismantling of a once far-flung empire, the government of their resident country dropped a calamity: seized by a convulsion of nationalism, it pronounced measures against all its “non-citizens”, making it impossible for them to earn a livelihood there. Understandably, the victims of this decision
made moves to repair to their putative homeland, the British Isles, there being nowhere else for them to go. Alas, the moral qualities of that previously great nation must already have declined considerably by then; with open impudicity the British government revoked the official passports it had earlier issued, disowning all its guarantees, and turning away all who presented themselves for entry.

  That was not the end of the matter: there were still some who were prepared to take plane for England in the knowledge that once airborne they would not be let back into East Africa again. These stateless suppliants, capitalising perhaps on the reputed humanitarianism of their prospective hosts, or else desperate enough to try anything, were shuttled back and forth between airports for weeks. Finally, with much grumbling and misgiving, the officials would relent.

  Such a course of action was chosen by my parents. They embarked upon it cheerfully enough; others had been successful, and so, they thought, could they. Besides, my mother was pregnant at the time they set out and so …?

  On presenting their passports they were immediately returned to Nairobi, and thence back again to London. This occasioned them no dismay: they had expected it. Weeks, months even, might be required to pass before the portals to safety and freedom would at last open.

  Yet one factor failed to enter their cogitations: how long can any government allow its decisions to be persistently overruled? Already the draughty wind of change was causing doors to slam shut all round the world. Already the word “patrial” had entered official usage as an adumbration that in future nations would look after their own and no other. Today, a third of a century later, the maxim is well established: “Procedures take precedence over persons.” My parents haplessly became the test case that was to prove this rule; the weeks did indeed lengthen into months. I was born over water, in midflight, and was not even entered on the worthless passport which by now, I believe, was stained with my mother’s tears. Gradually it became evident that they were not, ever, going to be allowed into any country again.

  Sitting here gazing through the fuselage window, I often wonder how long they continued to hope. I have reason to think it was for a long time, and that when they finally lost hope was when they died. Even then my mother clung to the belief (my father knew better) that once I was alone some country would notice me, as an airborne waif, and take me in. But here I remain, the most long-suffering air passenger in history.

  For a spell during my early life my situation evoked some interest and an amount of pity, a form of intercourse I find thoroughly distasteful. In my twelfth year there was an abortive attempt to resurrect Human Rights Year and I appeared (to no purpose) on TV (and was able to see the programme on the flight screens). All such public interest has long since washed away and I am left in peace. It is possible that these efforts were doubly futile, for my own image of myself differs fundamentally from the one presented by the well-meaning media; the burden of their consciousness lies on the ground—mine is up here, traversing in this airliner. Mine is the image that once formed in the mind of a pagan English king on seeing a bird, at night, enter his hall by a window; for a few moments to flit over the warmth, the companionship, the light and the feasting that took place below, before passing by a second window, never to return, into the same darkness again. This glyph of human life converted the king to Christianity.

  I, let me make it clear, am no convert, for I am not the king but the bird. But does not the legend describe me precisely? Soon I shall pass into that same darkness again.

  I have seen a marvellous development in passenger plane services during the time I have spent with the airline. The transports are large and spacious, with plenty of room to walk about. There are showers, bars, TV and restaurants. Businessmen speak to colleagues and transactors over the in-transit viewphone service. And of course the planes are fast, efficient and need little servicing. From my point of view this is a disadvantage, for there is only the briefest turnaround time, which allows me almost no time to spend on the ground. Previously the hours I spent between journeys on the older aircraft were like a holiday for me—fresh air has an extraordinary effect on my system. I confess I miss my youthful jaunts to the cafeteria, to the passenger lounge, or along the frontage of the airport buildings, I had, in fact, virtual freedom of access on this side of the customs barrier. But then, perhaps, I am getting too old for such exercises.

  The airline has been good to me. Once when I was ill they brought me a doctor and several times I have been attended by a dentist. As I grew up pilots and stewardesses gave me new clothes to wear. For all items I am still dependent on these hand-outs, which have been my only way of accumulating property throughout life. Thus I am the possessor of adequate clothing, a toothbrush, an electric shaver, and a very small private collection of books culled over the years. These, together with my legacy (which I shall describe later) constitute my material wealth.

  There is also the question of emotional wealth accruing from personal relationships. In these my life could be described as deficient. Yet I did once have a girl friend; to be truthful she was a woman rather than a girl, and was several years older than myself. We met and were drawn to one another when, in the course of her work, she had cause to travel between London and Karachi several times in quick succession (this was during the period when African routes became impassable and I was shuttled instead to Karachi or Delhi). When her intercontinental commuting ceased she took to visiting the airport and we waved to one another through the fence. Infrequently we contrived brief meetings in the passenger lounge. Then one day she failed to appear and I never saw her again. In retrospect I discard my naivety and suppose that her good will was prompted partly by pity, a thought which spoils in no small measure my memories of the occasion.

  Our friendship, while it lasted, was sexually innocent; indeed there has been no occasion for sexual intercourse in my life—not that such things are impossible aboard an airliner; congress can be accomplished with a modicum of ingenuity and commonly is, in the toilets, in the changing room, even in the stewardesses’ galley. But my upbringing has given me little initiative in these matters, and I have been obliged to stifle such urges as I do feel.

  Enough of these divagations—poor I may be in material and emotional wealth, but they are not everything; there is also intellectual wealth. I have an education!

  For this I am indebted to my father, who before he died assiduously taught me to read and instructed me to study carefully the books in the list he drew up. I have not, it is true, finished the list. Contrary to what might be imagined, I am not a voracious reader. Debilitated by an unnatural life, I am very easily fatigued; altogether I am a weak individual, both physically and mentally. I sleep a good deal—fifteen to twenty hours a day and during the rest of the time reading is a painful effort for me. My progress is further impeded by the difficulty of obtaining the requisite books: I have to rely on chance to place most of the volumes in my hands, and have waited years, for instance, to acquire a copy of the Timaeus. This, as with several other volumes, I shall probably never see.

  Many would imagine that my father, a Vedantist, would have directed me to a study of the Vedas, particularly of the Upanishads, on the grounds that in the doctrine that the world is maya, merely illusion, might be found an anodyne to mitigate my plight. Nothing could have been further from his intention. Admittedly, it has fleetingly occurred to me that that other world, the world that rolls beneath me scudded with cloud, is only an insubstantial extrapolation, an epiphenomenon, and that the only substantive things in the universe are airliners, airports, and transient passengers who flick in and out of existence on embarkation and debarkation. But that thought cannot be taken seriously. All my father’s efforts strove not to obfuscate with recondite metaphysics but to exacerbate realities and make the apprehension of my condition all the sharper. He believed in science, a product of the West; all the books he specified are by Western writers, and I take their point of view: that the world exists in reality (in so far
as it is perceived between conception and death), that everything happening in it has really happened, that I really am trapped in this airliner, the only man in history never to be allowed to descend to earth.

  No, my father’s feeling for me did not lead him to compromise the facts. His educational programme was a work of genius—genius born, I tender, of intense emotional pain. I am convinced that his aim was to lead me by my own efforts towards a truth which he had wrested from the world but which otherwise is known to few, if any: the secret nature of that explosive, perdurable, many-headed hydra: the Christian religion.

  How much is implied—how much is masked—by the phrase “Christian civilisation”! To penetrate to the arcane core of what its existence on Earth means was the achievement of my father’s booklist.

  The list is extensive, but its greater part is introductory only, being designed to facilitate the process of intussusception by means of adroit acquaintanceship with vocabulary and ideas. At the centre of the system, like a centre of gravity, lie two major works around which all else revolves:

  1. The Socratic Dialogues.

  2. The Gospel according to St Matthew, St Mark, St Luke and St John.

  From the comparison of these two, the objective historical perspective of the world is obtained.

  A brief word concerning their acquisition. My tiny pocket copy of the New Testament, Authorised Version, was given to me by a kindly English lady on her way to perform missionary work in India, and has been with me for many years. The more bulky Socratic Dialogues present a greater problem and therefore I lack a complete collection. They are, however, a lesser counterpoint to the Christian theme, so the gaps do not matter so much.

  One volume that I do have is worth comment: a collection of some of the dialogues, including the Apology of Socrates, it was given to me rather offhandedly by a brash, untidily dressed young man of about eighteen who I remember for his piercing blue eyes. The book is entitled Plato’s Divine Dialogues and is a very old one, being published in 1841 by Cornish & Co, 126 Newgate Street, London. Its pages are yellow and brittle, held together by sticky tape.