by Brian Aldiss
The enemy was moving more slowly now, creeping north across the demiworld. It would be easy to destroy the enemy at once, if only the supply of rocket missiles were not depleted. The range of the magnapult hurler was only twenty-five kilometres. The small spitters would reach, but their accuracy was close to zero at such range. It would have to wait for the enemy to come closer. It nursed a brooding fury on the hill.
‘Listen, Sawyer, if Grumbler’s IFF isn’t working, why hasn’t he already fired on this runabout?’
‘That’s what sucked us in too, colonel. We came into zone Red and nothing happened. Either he’s out of long-range ammo, or he’s getting cagey, or both. Probably both.’
‘Mmmp! Then we’d better park here and figure something out.’
‘Listen… there’s only one thing you can do. Call for a tele-controlled missile from the Base.’
‘To destroy Grumbler? You’re out of your head, Sawyer. If Grumbler’s knocked out, the whole area around the excavations gets blown sky high… to keep them out of enemy hands. You know that.’
‘You expect me to care?’
‘Stop screaming, Sawyer. Those excavations are the most valuable property on the Moon. We can’t afford to lose them. That’s why Grumbler was staked out. If they got blown to rubble, I’d be court-martialled before the debris quit falling.’
The response was snarling and sobbing. ‘Eight hours’ oxygen. Eight hours’, you hear? You stupid, merciless –’
*
The enemy to the south stopped moving at a distance of twenty-eight kilometres from Grumbler’s hill – only three thousand metres beyond magnapult range.
A moment of berserk hatred. It lumbered to-and-fro in a frustrated pattern that was like a monstrous dance, crushing small rocks beneath its treads, showering dust into the valley. Once it charged down towards the pain perimeter, and turned back only after the agony became unbearable. It stopped again on the hill, feeling the weariness of lowered energy supplies in the storage units.
It paused to analyse. It derived a plan.
Gunning its engines, it wheeled slowly around on the hilltop, and glided down the northern slope at a stately pace. It sped northward for half a mile across the flatland, then slowed to a crawl and manoeuvred its massive bulk into a fissure, where it had cached an emergency store of energy. The battery-trailer had been freshly charged before the previous sundown. It backed into feeding position and attached the supply cables without hitching itself to the trailer.
It listened occasionally to the enemy while it drank hungrily from the energy-store, but the enemy remained motionless. It would need every erg of available energy in order to accomplish its plan. It drained the cache. Tomorrow, when the enemy was gone, it would drag the trailer back to the main feeders for recharging, when the sun rose to drive the generators once again. It kept several caches of energy at strategic positions throughout its domain, that it might never be driven into starved inability to act during the long lunar night. It kept its own house in order, dragging the trailers back to be recharged at regular intervals.
‘I don’t know what I can do for you, Sawyer,’ came the noise of the enemy. ‘We don’t dare destroy Grumbler, and there’s not another autocyber crew on the Moon. I’ll have to call Terra for replacements. I can’t send men into zone Red-Red if Grumbler’s running berserk. It’d be murder.’
‘For the love of God, colonel –!’
‘Listen, Sawyer, you’re the autocyberman. You helped train Grumbler. Can’t you think of some way to stop him without detonating the mined area?’
A protracted silence. Grumbler finished feeding and came out of the fissure. It moved westward a few yards, so that a clear stretch of flat land lay between itself and the hill at the edge of the pain perimeter, half a mile away. There it paused, and awoke several emissary ears, so that it might derive the most accurate possible fix of the enemy’s position. One by one, the emissary ears reported.
‘Well, Sawyer?’
‘My leg’s killing me.’
‘Can’t you think of anything?’
‘Yeah – but it won’t do me any good. I won’t live that long.’
‘Well, let’s hear it.’
‘Knock out his remote energy storage units, and then run him ragged at night.’
‘How long would it take?’
‘Hours – after you found all his remote supply units and blasted them.’
It analysed the reports of the emissary ears, and calculated a precise position. The enemy runabout was 2.7 kilometers beyond the maximum range of the magnapult – as creation had envisioned the maximum. But creation was imperfect, even inside.
It loaded a canister on to the magnapult’s spindle. Contrary to the intentions of creation, it left the canister locked to the loader. This would cause pain. But it would prevent the canister from moving during the first few microseconds after the switch was closed, while the magnetic field was still building towards full strength. It would not release the canister until the field clutched it fiercely and with full effect, thus imparting slightly greater energy to the canister. This procedure it had invented for itself, thus transcending creation.
‘Well, Sawyer, if you can’t think of anything else –’
‘I DID THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE!’ the answering vibrations screamed. ‘Call for a telecontrolled missile! Can’t you understand, Aubrey? Grumbler murdered eight men from your command.’
‘You taught him how, Sawyer.’
There was a long and ominous silence. On the flat land to the north of the hill, Grumbler adjusted the elevation of the magnapult slightly, keyed the firing switch to a gyroscope, and prepared to charge. Creation had calculated the maximum range when the weapon was at a standstill.
‘He he he he he –’ came the patterns from the thing in the cave.
It gunned its engines and clutched the drive shafts. It rolled towards the hill, gathering speed, and its mouth was full of death. Motors strained and howled. Like a thundering bull, it rumbled towards the south. It hit maximum velocity at the foot of the slope. It lurched sharply upwards. As the magnapult swept up to correct elevation, the gyroscope closed the circuit.
A surge of energy. The clutching fist of the field gripped the canister, tore it free of the loader, hurled it high over the broken terrain towards the enemy. Grumbler skidded to a halt on the hilltop.
‘Listen, Sawyer, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing –’
The enemy’s voice ended with a dull snap. A flare of light came briefly from the southern horizon, and died.
‘He he he he he –’ said the thing in the cave.
Grumbler paused.
THRRUMMMP! came the shock-wave through the rocks.
Five emissary ears relayed their recordings of the detonation from various locations. It studied them, it analysed. The detonation had occurred less than fifty metres from the enemy runabout. Satiated, it wheeled around lazily on the hilltop and rolled northward towards the centre of the world. All was well.
‘Aubrey, you got cut off,’ grunted the thing in the cave. ‘Call me, you coward… call me. I want to make certain you hear.’
Grumbler, as a random action, recorded the meaningless noise of the thing in the cave, studied the noise, rebroadcast it on a longwave frequency: ‘Aubrey, you got cut off. Call me, you coward… call me, I want to make certain you hear.’
The seismitter caught the longwave noise and reintroduced it as vibration in the rocks.
The thing screamed in the cave. Grumbler recorded the screaming noise, and rebroadcast it several times.
‘Aubrey… Aubrey, where are you… AUBREY! Don’t desert me, don’t leave me here –’
The thing in the cave became silent.
It was a peaceful night. The stars glared unceasingly from the blackness, and the pale terrain was haunted by Earthlight from the dim crescent in the sky. Nothing moved. It was good that nothing moved. The holy place was at peace in the airless world. There was blessed stasis.
O
nly once did the thing stir again in the cave. So slowly that Grumbler scarcely heard the sound, it crawled to the entrance and lay peering up at the steel behemoth on the crag.
It whispered faintly in the rocks.
‘I made you, don’t you understand? I’m human, I made you –’
Then with one leg dragging behind, it pulled itself out into the Earthglow and turned as if to look up at the dim crescent in the sky. Gathering fury, Grumbler stirred on the crag, and lowered the black maw of a grenade launcher.
‘I made you,’ came the meaningless noise.
It hated noise and motion. It was in its nature to hate them. Angrily, the grenade launcher spoke. And then there was blessed stasis for the rest of the night.
The Country of the Kind
DAMON KNIGHT
The attendant at the car lot was day-dreaming when I pulled up – a big, lazy-looking man in black satin chequered down the front. I was wearing scarlet, myself; it suited my mood. I got out, almost on his toes.
‘Park or storage?’ he asked automatically, turning around. Then he realized who I was, and ducked his head away.
‘Neither,’ I told him.
There was a hand torch on a shelf in the repair shed right behind him. I got it and came back. I knelt down to where I could reach behind the front wheel, and ignited the torch. I turned it on the axle and suspension. They glowed cherry red, then white, and fused together. Then I got up and turned the flame on both tyres until the rubberoid stank and sizzled and melted down to the pavement. The attendant didn’t say anything.
I left him there, looking at the mess on his nice clean concrete.
It had been a nice car, too; but I could get another any time. And I felt like walking. I went down the winding road, sleepy in the afternoon sunlight, dappled with shade and smelling of cool leaves. You couldn’t see the houses; they were all sunken or hidden by shrubbery, or a little of both. That was the fad I’d heard about; it was what I’d come here to see. Not that anything the dulls did would be worth looking at.
I turned off at random and crossed a rolling lawn, went through a second hedge of hawthorn in blossom, and came out next to a big sunken games court.
The tennis net was up, and two couples were going at it, just working up a little sweat – young, about half my age, all four of them. Three dark-haired, one blonde. They were evenly matched, and both couples played well together; they were enjoying themselves.
I watched for a minute. But by then the nearest two were beginning to sense I was there, anyhow. I walked down on to the court, just as the blonde was about to serve. She looked at me, frozen across the net, poised on tiptoe. The others stood.
‘Off,’ I told them. ‘Game’s over.’
I watched the blonde. She was not especially pretty, as they go, but compactly and gracefully put together. She came down slowly, flatfooted without awkwardness, and tucked the racquet under her arm; then the surprise was over and she was trotting off the court after the other three.
I followed their voices around the curve of the path, between towering masses of lilacs, inhaling the sweetness, until I came to what looked like a little sunning spot. There was a sundial, and a birdbath, and towels lying around on the grass. One couple, the dark-haired pair, was still in sight farther down the path, heads bobbing along. The other couple had disappeared.
I found the handle in the grass without any trouble. The mechanism responded, and an oblong section of turf rose up. It was the stair I had, not the elevator, but that was all right. I ran down the steps and into the first door I saw, and was in the top-floor lounge, an oval room lit with diffused simulated sunlight from above. The furniture was all comfortably bloated, sprawling and ugly; the carpet was deep, and there was a fresh flower scent in the air.
The blonde was over at the near end with her back to me, studying the autochef keyboard. She was half out of her playsuit. She pushed it the rest of the way down and stepped out of it, then turned and saw me.
She was surprised again; she hadn’t thought I might follow her down.
I got up close before it occurred to her to move; then it was too late. She knew she couldn’t get away from me; she closed her eyes and leaned back against the panelling, turning a little pale. Her lips and her golden brows went up in the middle.
I looked her over and told her a few uncomplimentary things about herself. She trembled, but didn’t answer. On impulse, I leaned over and dialled the autochef to hot cheese sauce. I cut the safety out of circuit and put the quantity dial all the way up. I dialled soup tureen and then punch bowl.
The stuff began to come out in about a minute, steaming hot. I took the tureens and splashed them up and down the wall on either side of her. Then, when the first punch bowl came out, I used the empty bowls as scoops. I clotted the carpet with the stuff; I made streamers of it all along the walls, and dumped puddles into what furniture I could reach. Where it cooled it would harden, and where it hardened it would cling.
I wanted to splash it across her body, but it would’ve hurt, and we couldn’t have that. The punch bowls of hot sauce were still coming out of the autochef, crowding each other around the vent. I punched cancel, and then port wine.
It came out well chilled in open bottles. I took the first one and had my arm back just about to throw a nice line of the stuff right across her midriff, when a voice said behind me:
‘Watch out for cold wine.’
My arm twitched and a little stream of the wine splashed across her thighs. She was ready for it; her eyes had opened at the voice, and she barely jumped.
I whirled around, fighting mad. The man was standing there where he had come out of the stair-well. He was thinner in the face than most, bronzed, wide-chested, with alert blue eyes. If it hadn’t been for him, I knew it would have worked – the blonde would have mistaken the cold splash for a hot one.
I could hear the scream in my mind, and I wanted it.
I took a step towards him, and my foot slipped. I went down clumsily, wrenching one knee. I got up shaking and tight all over. I wasn’t in control of myself. I screamed, ‘You – you –’. I turned and got one of the punch bowls and lifted it in both hands, heedless of how the hot sauce was slopping over on to my wrists, and I had it almost in the air towards him when the sickness took me – that damned buzzing in my head, louder, louder, drowning everything out.
When I came to, they were both gone. I got up off the floor, weak as death, and staggered over to the nearest chair. My clothes were slimed and sticky. I wanted to die. I wanted to drop into that dark furry hole that was yawning for me and never come up; but I made myself stay awake and get out of the chair.
Going down in the elevator, I almost blacked out again. The blonde and the thin man weren’t in any of the second-floor bedrooms. I made sure of that, and then I emptied the closets and bureau drawers on to the floor, dragged the whole mess into one of the bathrooms and stuffed the tub with it, then turned on the water.
I tried the third floor: maintenance and storage. It was empty. I turned the furnace on and set the thermostat up as high as it would go. I opened the freezer doors and dialled them to defrost. I propped the stair-well door open and went back up in the elevator.
On the second floor I stopped long enough to open the stairway door there – the water was halfway towards it, creeping across the floor – and then searched the top floor. No one was there. I opened book reels and threw them unwinding across the room; I would have done more, but I could hardly stand. I got up to the surface and collapsed on the lawn; that furry pit swallowed me up, dead and drowned.
While I slept, water poured down the open stair-well and filled the third level. Thawing food packages floated out into the rooms. Water seeped into wall panels and machine housings; circuits shorted and fuses blew. The air conditioning stopped, but the pile kept heating. The water rose.
Spoiled food, floating supplies, grimy water surged up the stair-well. The second and first levels were bigger and would take longer to
fill, but they’d fill. Rugs, furnishings, clothing, all the things in the house would be waterlogged and ruined. Probably the weight of so much water would shift the house, rupture water pipes and other fluid intakes. It would take a repair crew more than a day just to clean up the mess. The house itself was done for, not repairable. The blonde and the thin man would never live in it again.
Serve them right.
The dulls could build another house; they built like beavers. There was only one of me in the world.
The earliest memory I have is of some woman, probably the crèche-mother, staring at me with an expression of shock and horror. Just that. I’ve tried to remember what happened directly before or after, but I can’t. Before, there’s nothing but the dark formless shaft of no-memory that runs back to birth. Afterwards, the big calm.
From my fifth year, it must have been, to my fifteenth, everything I can remember floats in a pleasant dim sea. Nothing was terribly important. I was languid and soft; I drifted. Waking merged into sleep.
In my fifteenth year it was the fashion in love-play for the young people to pair off for months or longer. ‘Loving steady,’ we called it. I remember how the older people protested that it was unhealthy; but we were all normal juniors, and nearly as free as adults under law.
All but me.
The first steady girl I had was named Elen. She had blonde hair, almost white, worn long; her lashes were dark and her eyes pale green. Startling eyes: they didn’t look as if they were looking at you. They looked blind.
Several times she gave me strange startled glances, something between fright and anger. Once it was because I held her too tightly, and hurt her; other times, it seemed to be for nothing at all.
In our group, a pairing that broke up sooner than four weeks was a little suspect – there must be something wrong with one partner or both, or the pairing would have lasted longer.