Enemies of the System

by Brian W Aldiss

  When the small patch of sky was entirely dark, many more people entered the cavern. They came in quietly, and paraded in little groups. All were roughly clad. There were babies and small children among them, none of whom uttered a sound. The cave-dwellers flocked in from various entrances. Opposite the cage was a tunnel mouth, down which the flow of torches could be seen for some while before their bearers reached the central chamber.

  The company made a slow promenade of the cavern, each group halting when it got to the cage to look in at its inhabitants. Instinctively, the utopians rose to their feet and stared back. The cave-dwellers appeared reserved, even respectful, but their dark faces were expressionless. Then they moved on, and went through complicated charades, almost as if performing a dumb-show; the meaning of this performance was lost on the watchers.

  Following the dumb-show came a massed entrance into the far building. The cave-dwellers could be seen among the pillars, rubbing the complex metal structures with their hands. There were strange cries. Gongs and trumpets sounded.

  After this ceremony, the atmosphere became more relaxed. Family groups assembled round the central fire. An aged woman in a flowing gown emerged from the shadows and related, with plentiful gestures, what sounded like a long dull story.

  “The father and the mother perform sexual intercourse, after which the child is born from inside the mother’s body,” said Burek, looking up from a reverie. “I saw a reconstruction of the event in a visionshow, and it must have been extremely painful, except that, as the saying has it, ‘The cow expects nothing but what happens to cows.’ You see these primitives also keep their children with them because they have no experts to teach them to grow adult properly, as with us. The whole science of adoleschematics has not been invented as far as these wretches are concerned.”

  “Some of them are eating now,” said Constanza. “At least we are not on their menu tonight. Rescue must arrive by morning. Why are the squads taking so long?”

  From a side-tunnel, platters of steaming food were emerging, carried by women in aprons. They were accompanied by a man with a big bag slung about his belly. He took tokens of some kind from everyone who accepted food. The watchers could not understand the meaning of this.

  Takeido sniffed. “Cooking smells good. Do we get any?”

  “Inevitably, they are eating animal or else their fellows,” said Kordan. “Such a diet would make us ill.”

  “I would try it,” said Takeido. “Terror makes you hungry. I must eat or sit and scream.”

  “I have eaten animal and come to no harm,” said Dulcifer. Sotto voce, he added in Sygiek’s ear. “And I fancy you had to do so as part of your USRP training.”

  She silenced him by putting her fingers over his mouth.

  When the food scraps were being cleared away, the comparative quiet of the cavern was broken by the entry of capering animals.

  Two of them rushed in, followed by cave-dwellers with whips, which they cracked vigorously. These animals were immediately recognized as carnivores. The shape of their skulls was predetermined, not by cortical development, but by the large lower jaw, to which the rest of the head appeared subordinate. Fearsome fangs were in evidence, as the creatures snarled at their tormentors. Their bodies were lean, most of the musculature and weight going into shoulders, forelegs and hindlegs. For all their animality, and their spotted hide, the basic human form was apparent—most apparent when they pranced on their hindlegs. Garments had been tied round their necks and on their heads by their tormentors, increasing the effect of cruel parody.

  The leopard-like animals were driven round in a circle by their tormentors. The onlookers, sitting cross-legged with their children, clapped their hands and chanted monotonously. The chant rose to a crescendo. Gongs sounded again. With strange automatic gestures the tormentors dropped their whips, drew long swords and rushed in on the animals. Crying piteously, the leopards tried to escape. Their hindlegs had been shackled. After one or two thrusts they collapsed, writhing, and their bodies were seized and lifted high. Blood flowed. More chanting.

  Everyone rose. The killers led a procession round the whole cavern area and then into the pillared building. They fell silent.

  A tall man dressed in what aspired to be a uniform, with gloves, long boots, and a transparent helmet over his head, appeared from the darkness at the rear of the temple. He stood silent while the dead beasts were laid upon the stone before him. He dipped his hands in their blood. Then he strode over to the shadowy blocks of metal, where several attendants, also dressed in vestigial uniforms, waited. All began to rub and prod the arrangements of rods and casings. The audience took up a low chant.

  The tall man walked to a chair placed beside the metal arrangement. Deep drums throbbed. Their beat grew more deafening. The tall man pulled a lever. Faster beat the drums. The seat tipped back, turning into a couch. The drums thundered, the audience screamed at the top of its lungs. Back went the couch, up went the arm of the rider. The noise died to a whisper, the ghost of a whisper. The finger on the end of the arm pointed up, up into the murk, to the patch of open sky. The clouds had rolled away.

  In that patch of sky, one star burned.

  The ceremony was suddenly over. The magic was done. The tall man climbed from his couch. Children started crying and running amid the throng, as everyone began to go home.

  “I never thought to see …” Kordan said. “Ritual … it was a primitive ritual—forms of conduct fixed and repeated, the satisfaction of pattern reinforcing lifestyle.”

  “You could be right,” said Dulcifer. “I’ve watched Venusian desert-skimmers performing the same meaningless acts over and over. Presumably they reinforce the image of themselves as desert-skimmers that way.”

  “Why should they put on such a performance for us?” asked Sygiek.

  “There you show your lack of that imagination I spoke of before we came in here,” said Takeido excitedly. “They are doing it for themselves—we don’t come into it. Not yet. I believe Kordan to be substantially correct. I had forgotten the word even: ritual. Performing the same acts over and over, reinforcing an image. Man’s distant ape ancestors on Earth may have had to perform such meaningless acts over many generations before they became human.”

  “But these are not meaningless acts, Ian Takeido,” said Kordan. “For us, certainly not for them. Now I ask you to exercise your imagination. Imagine that capitalist ship over one million years ago. Imagine its survivors forced into various ecological niches in order to survive, losing language and human identity. How many creatures have spread and multiplied across Lysenka, surviving the impoverished Devonian? Several million? I don’t know. But we have the evidence of our eyes that one of those unfortunate groups—and it may be small, may consist of no more than a couple of hundred individuals—has managed to maintain its humanity more or less intact, using hierarchy and ritual to reinforce its distinctness from the creatures on which it must prey.”

  “You speak almost with compassion, Jerezy Kordan,” said Burek.

  “It’s no good being sympathetic to these monsters, Utopianist Kordan,” said Constanza. “They certainly aren’t sympathetic to us. If they don’t rape or kill us tonight, they will in the morning. They are animals. They have not fed us. They have not given us water. Soon we’re going to have to use this cage as a latrine, which is disgusting.

  “Even if what you say is true—and personally I don’t give a fig what happened in the past—you are only talking about an extension of the illegal capitalist system, aren’t you? Surely our basic utopian beliefs are put to the test right here. If all the rest of the colonists went under and just this human group survived to prey on the rest, then these are the exploiter class, the bourgeois rabble of Lysenka, and there is more reason to eliminate them than all the rest. Here is the ideological enemy. When we are rescued, they will all be shot.”

  Silence fell.

  “An unexpected speech from you, Comrade Constanza,” said Burek, in his deep, rather mock
ing voice.

  “Oh, I know you think I’m just a fool. I think that you are one more élitist bore, Utopianist Burek, and I’m vexed that I am now forced to make water in your presence. Turn your backs, all of you.”

  The cavern had emptied except for two forlorn bent figures, extinguishing candles on the far steps. The crowd had disappeared into side-tunnels, stumbling off to sleep out the long Lysenkan night. The six prisoners sat in their cage.

  In a minute, Kordan began speaking again. His voice trembled at first. “I know I am a poor leader. Equally, you are poor followers. Our situation is unparalleled. I see that Rubyna Constanza is ideologically correct. I also see that Ian Takeido is right. We have to think in more than one context, and that is always uncomfortable; inevitably, such is often my duty as historian.

  “By the way, I must apologize if my earlier remarks about language-failure causing evolutionary breakdown sounded unorthodox. I did speak unguardedly. I was thinking out what I would say when I got back to the Academy …

  “We must sometimes look beyond our necessary vigilance against enemies of the system. What we have witnessed here, I believe, is a ritual which dates back to that seminal event in the generations of these debased creatures: an attempt to get their damaged ship off this planet and back into space. Over the ages, that ambition lost its force; urgency has become ceremony; the meaning is now in the means; but the means reinforces their besieged sense of identity. Though the idea of space travel has dwindled to no more than a religion, that religion helps them remain human.”

  “Remain capitalist, you mean,” said Constanza, with contempt.

  “Religion!” exclaimed Takeido. “That’s the word I was after. Jaini Regentop mentioned religion. It means a kind of faith. We have just witnessed a religious ceremony.” His eyebrows twitched again. “Religion was another of those ancient enemies of the state. Before Biocom, the internal workings of man’s nervous systems were so confused—dating back as they did to his animal past—that he was haunted by specters, one of which he dramatized as an external supernatural being of great power who ordered things randomly, to man’s advantage or disadvantage. These people have reverted to that state of superstition.”

  “Well, it’s no concern of ours,” said Burek, dismissing the subject, and yawning. “I shall follow our sagacious little Constanza’s example, and then try to sleep. May I suggest we all do the same?”

  “There may be a way of using these—hypotheses to our advantage,” said Sygiek, ignoring him and addressing Kordan. “If these religious or ritualistic ideas you advance are near the truth, then the question to ask is, do these brutes know that we are from another world? If so, what will their attitude to us be?”

  “A proper question, Millia,” said Kordan. “I already had it in mind. Tomorrow, we may get a chance to impress them. There could be a way of working on their superstitious nature to our advantage. We are weary now; as Che Burek says, it is best that we should sleep if we can and face tomorrow with fresh hope.”

  “Agreed,” said Dulcifer. “At least as far as the bit about sleep goes. Hope must look after itself.”

  They settled down uncomfortably within the confines of their prison.

  Sygiek allowed Dulcifer to put his arms about her as she curled with her blistered shoulders against the bars of the cage. Close against his ear, she whispered, “I sense a change in Kordan. He is in command of himself again. I believe he stole my gun. There was a moment when he tried to caress me after the bureaucrat Morits died—that was when he took it from me.”

  Dulcifer nodded without commenting. “Sleep, my darling,” he said. “Think of ancient peach trees and fat bare-armed women, and sleep.”

  The fires in the center of the cavern guttered in a clammy draft.

  After the slow night, a slow day.

  As soon as a faint grey light stole into the cavern, the cave-dwellers commenced various ritualistic attendances. Warriors came and went, blessed by minor dignitaries in the ceremonial building before proceeding further—presumably to hunt or patrol. Children were marshaled and taken through vigorous calisthentics. Women worked about the fires. The machine of the tribe was in action.

  Food was brought early to the six captives. It came in a thick pottery bowl and consisted of a glutinous stew, with big chunks of meat lying in gravy. It steamed. There was also a large pitcher of water, which they passed round thankfully.

  “We’d better eat,” said Kordan. They stood staring down at the bowl which he held out to them.

  “Looks good,” said Dulcifer. He dipped a hand in, brought up some meat and thrust it into his mouth. The others watched him with fascination as he chewed.

  “Eat,” he said. “Eat. It’s only our friend of yesterday, the boar.”

  One by one, they dipped in. Only Constanza refused.

  “You are cannibals,” she said. “It is against our ethics to taste this muck.”

  “You’ll be hungry,” Takeido warned. “Although it is nauseating, we need food. Never mind ideology, let me feed you, Rubyna!”

  “‘Heroes never say no,’” Burek quoted.

  “It’s not too bad,” said Sygiek, dipping in a second time. Constanza went and sat down at the far end of the cage. The others cleared the bowl between them.

  They looked at each other with guilty smiles.

  An aged crone brought another bowl. They cleared that too. Some water was left; after a brief debate, they washed their hands in it, and then emptied the pitcher on the floor. The crone brought a fresh pitcher, full of cold spring water. They said nothing. They drank till they gasped.

  After the old woman had retrieved her pitcher, Sygiek went over to where Rubyna sat with Takeido.

  “We must think positively,” she said, looking down at the other woman. “Now that these savages have brought us underground, the chances of our being rescued by the forces from Peace City may be more remote than we estimated. So it is required of us that we keep up our strength. You made a mistake not eating.”

  “Go away,” said Rubyna, sulkily. “Just because you ate that muck, you needn’t force it down everyone’s throat.”

  “We do what the system expects us to do. We must remain strong. Surely you understand that?”

  Rubyna jumped up, facing the other woman, the pupils of her dark eyes wide. “Just don’t give me orders, Millia Sygiek! You’ve done nothing but boss people around ever since you got in my bus, and I’m sick of the sound of your voice.”

  Sygiek stepped back, saying in a controlled tone, “Just behave yourself, you little Outourist girl. Some are qualified to give orders, some to take them.”

  “Well, you just make sure you know who is in which category before you open your mouth again! I haven’t forgotten that you called me a worker. When we get out of here, you’re going to have a very nasty surprise—you and those two fools who hang around sniffing your sloppy-maos!”

  “Stop it, Constanza, stop it! We mustn’t fight,” cried Takeido, pulling her back. “We’ve got enough trouble without being divided amongst ourselves.” He ran his hands over her red tunic, cupping her breasts. She turned and stared at him, as Kordan pulled Sygiek away and soothed her at the other end of the cage.

  More time passed. A group of men, eight in number, came from an inner tunnel and marched purposefully to the cage. The captives stood and looked at them.

  One of the cave-dwellers was the leader, the rest his retinue. There was no mistaking his authority. He was short, middle-aged, long-haired, dressed in a red cloak which hung from a wooden yoke at his shoulders. He wore a leather helmet. His manner was brisk, and he silenced a mutter which began among his attendants. He addressed his captives in a clattering burst of speech.

  “We do not understand what you say,” Kordan answered, “but before there can be any communication between us, we wish to leave this cage. Open the door.”

  He rattled the bars to demonstrate his meaning.

  The leader said something, the others muttered behind him. Gu
ards were called, moving up briskly with staves.

  After a curt gesture from the leader, one of his henchmen stepped forward with a key and unlocked the cage door. He flung it wide. The captives came forth, Kordan first, then Burek, then Sygiek and Dulcifer, then Takeido, and Constanza last.

  “We demand an escort to the safety of Dunderzee Gorge,” said Kordan. “We can offer you benefits in exchange. Do you understand?”

  “They are hardly likely to understand, are they?” asked Sygiek.

  “Very well, Millia—you put the message, over to them in sign language.”

  Sygiek turned to Constanza in conciliatory fashion. “You should know, Rubyna, you live on this beastly world—can anyone speak the language of these people?”

  Rubyna turned a shoulder to the other man as she replied.

  “They are not people but animals. We shoot them to kill them, like other animals. It is not even proved that they have a language; Kordan said as much. We shall be rescued soon, and then they will all be shot. Exterminated.”

  The leader put a hand on Kordan’s arm. Kordan shrank back, but the gesture, though imperious, was not hostile. He was motioning them to follow him.

  They had little choice. Despite the courtesy, they were carefully watched by guards, who hemmed them in as they walked across the rough floor, past the central fires, toward the religious building. At the steps of the building, the leader halted to harangue them again. His eye burned fiercely upon them, he spoke with fervor. He pointed frequently upward, one finger stretching to the hole in the cavern roof, through which clouded sky was visible. Then he addressed himself to Sygiek, speaking intensely to her, pointing at her and at himself.

  She studied him intently, deliberately not dropping her gaze, trying to divine, through centuries of divergence, what kind of man he was. All she saw was the dark surface of his eyes. He produced from his tunic a shard of glass. It was part of a broken mirror. He held it up to her so that she saw her own grey eyes, then he pointed to his own face.

  “What theories do you have about this?” she asked the others.