The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  Left to my own devices, unable to mend anything but my own nerve centres, I have made my own kind of progress.

  The way back from the Outflanks was not easy. Grant moved rapidly however, driven by anger to think Wilms had beaten him. First there were many deserted caverns, some ruined, then the circular stairwell, whose dangers were well known – the maze of tiny rooms branching off here frequently sheltered wild men and Hermits. Grant leapt down the stairs twenty at a time. At the bottom, he crawled through the narrow tunnel under a pile of ruins that divided the Outflanks from Hallways.

  Back on familiar ground, Grant braced himself. Hallways, the two square miles of it, was home ground, safe, well-lit and well-aired, where food and company could be obtained. It was also the region of the Fliers: the pile of rubble cut them off from the wastes of Outflanks.

  Nobody was visible at present. A servo-cleaner, busy among a multiplicity of arms, moved in one corner of the pillared hall. Overhead, a Flier moved, noiselessly and showing a green light. Of the three floor strips set in the mosaic, one still functioned. Grant hopped on, travelled smoothly, changed again at the first right junction and was swept through gleaming mica doors forty feet high into Circus ‘C’. Here he alighted.

  The feed period was drawing near. The farmers were drifting in from the plant ranges, some by foot, some by floor strip, some even on the trucks whose number diminished year by year, owing to mechanical breakdown. Guards, relieved of their posts, returned from their sentry-go by the Beserker regions. Women and children came in from walks and scavenges.

  Circus ‘C’ was their town. A vast circle, like the inside of the Coliseum, it rose into four graceful colonnaded storeys, and round the spiralling balconies were the homes, labelled with graceful inscriptions like ‘PERFUMERIE’, ‘FLORIST’ and other legends popularly supposed to be the names of dead families.

  Grant peered up to the top floor. Osa was looking down from her balcony. Sullenly he made the gesture of defeat, knowing many eyes watched him covertly. Instead of turning away, she beckoned to him: Osa took great pleasure in flaunting tradition. He stood hesitant, and then her magnetism decided him and he hurried up.

  She was six foot six tall, her bright eyes only slightly on a lower level than Grant’s.

  ‘So it is Wilms who will have me,’ she said, non-committally.

  He nodded.

  ‘Soon we shall be free,’ she said. ‘Wilms must help me solve many problems. I am not for mating like an ordinary Hallways drab.’

  Grant glanced anxiously out across the arena. Many Fliers circled here, unresting, their green lights and grey bodies making a pattern over the sky. She intercepted his glance.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Osa said. ‘I know how to deal with them. Come into my room.’

  He followed her in, admiring her slender waist and smooth thighs, his breath suffering its usual restriction when she was near. Inside the little cluttered room, she wheeled abruptly and caught his gleaming eyes.

  ‘Never mind that,’ she said. ‘There is something of more importance. I have discovered proof of what I told you all long ago: the tycho is not the world, Grant.’

  He shook his head. He was in no mood now to listen to her dreams.

  ‘“Tycho” means “world,”’ he said.

  Her eyebrows raised and her lip curled. ‘You are wrong,’ she spat. ‘And what is worse you know you are wrong – but sloth has got you. You don’t care, you are happy living as you are!’

  ‘Discontent means death!’ he said angrily. ‘You know that as well as I do, Osa. Only you miraculously escape. What of Brammins, Hoddy, She-Clabert, Tebbutt, Angel Jones, Savvidge and a score of others? Did they not each turn rebellious and did not the Fliers take them one by one?’

  ‘Pah!’ Osa’s face grew magnificent with scorn. ‘So there is fear as well as sloth in you, Grant! I’m glad Wilms beat you.’

  Remembering her purpose, she choked back her anger and said, ‘Listen, my friend, the Fliers do not harm me, do they? The Fliers belong to M’chene, but even M’chene is not all-powerful. I have found how to beat him. It is simply a matter of choosing where you feed. Will you help me?’

  He looked at the floor, inarticulate. The pessimism so stubbornly rooted in him told him that ill would come of meddling with the traditional way of life; but in Osa’s hands he was stiff but malleable clay.

  ‘Wilms must help you now,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘Wilms it not here and I must leave Circus “C” for a time,’ she said tolerantly. ‘I only want you to give him a message. It is this: he is not to eat anything in the next feed period. He is not even to go to the hatches. Will you tell him please?’

  ‘What has he to fear?’ Grant asked, interested despite himself.

  ‘Nothing at present. But of all the Hallwayers, Wilms is now the nearest both to belief and mutiny. I fear he is in danger from the Fliers.’

  ‘So he must not take feed?’

  ‘Exactly.’ She pressed his arm. ‘I will return in one and half watches and then he shall feed.’

  ‘Here?’ asked Grant.

  ‘There are other places to feed than Circus “C”,’ she said.

  He greeted the statement with disbelief. ‘There cannot be,’ he said positively, ‘Or we should know. Osa, you think strange things – ’

  ‘Stranger ones will come to us all,’ she said tersely, and with that left him, making off in the general direction of Beserkers’ land.

  Slowly and meditatively, Grant descended into the arena. Dancing had begun, the dances that frequently went before feed periods, but he did not participate. Instead he sat gloomily apart, thinking his own thoughts which were as sterile and directionless as the warren in which he unknowingly lived.

  The dance was slow and intricate, men only taking part, the few women looking on and clapping rhythmically. They performed the Hyrogen dance, grouping and parting, circulating and bowing. Far overhead the grey Fliers also pirouetted. Gradually the figures curved into a line, the two leading men spiralling into a chamber adjacent to the Circus. This was Hall, and it was here that feed was taken. Gradually everyone flowed in, to be ready when the hatches flew open.

  When Grant entered Hall, he saw that Wilms was already there, talking earnestly and excitedly to another man, Jineer. Jineer was a scraggy, bearded fellow who walked with a stick. He had broken his leg years ago, repairing a small crane which had got out of control. Jineer was a machine-man, like his father and his father before him; many of the Hallways mechanicals owed their functioning to Jineer’s maintenance.

  Finally he left Wilms, making over to his old mother, Queejint.

  ‘Now’s my chance to pass on Osa’s warning,’ Grant told himself. But he made no move towards Wilms; his earlier behaviour rose before him like a barrier and he feared a hostile reception. While he delayed, the feed gong sounded and the hatches flew up at the end of Hall.

  The kitchens were entirely automatic. Humans conveyed the crops to a chute, and from then had no more to do with the nutrition cycle until they were summoned to feed. Though they did not know it, it was this incorruptible process that had long ago saved their ancestors from starvation. To take the tray offered through the hatch on a slowly moving platform, it was necessary for each person to stoop and reach forward so far that their head came in contact with a depression above the hatch opening. This depression was known mysteriously as The Scanner, and a vague oral tradition held that it was important, although nobody could definitely say why.

  Wilms was early at the hatches. He took his tray in the usual manner and moved in a preoccupied fashion to a table. After two or three minutes, Jineer and Queejint also collected their trays, Grant following shortly after.

  Still worrying because he had not passed on Osa’s warning, he ate without pleasure. Finally he dropped his spoon. Whatever Wilms might say, there was duty to Osa. He went over to the older man, was almost up to him, when a low swishing noise sounded.

  It was the dreaded sound. Thro
ugh the door from the Circus swept a solitary Flier, its light winking red. Cries echoed in Hall, several men dived in panic under tables. The little plane circled and sank, one metal wing tip narrowly missing Grant’s ear. Heart hammering, he flung up his arm – and then he saw that Wilms was the quarry.

  Pale of face, Wilms flung his heavy tray against the metal fuselage. The Flier was not deflected. It swooped. Doors no bigger than a man’s head opened in its belly and a tangle of wire fell about Wilms’ head and shoulders. He shouted and fought, and some of the others came to his aid. But the wires seemed each to have a will of their own, and in no time he was entangled hopelessly in a net of thin steel.

  At this last moment, Grant found the courage to act. He leapt onto the circling plane, one leg hanging desperately over the streamlined fuselage, and wrenched at the wings. As if he were not there, the Flier rose, bearing Wilms underneath it as lightly as if he were a cocoon. It gathered height, winging towards the Circus. Still Grant clung, clawing uselessly at the Flier, striking it frantically with a free hand. It soared only a couple of inches under the arch, hurling Grant against the lintel. He fell hard onto the floor and sprawled there. Wilms was borne smoothly away, up to the sky and through a vent that only the Fliers could reach.

  As Grant sat up dazedly, two or three helping him, Jineer passed him running. The lame man broke into the Circus and hurried to his home on the second level.

  ‘They’ll be here for me in a second!’ he cried wildly. He slammed his door.

  An uneasy crowd, Grant among them, gathered in the arena, most of them looking upward at the Fliers circling high up near the sky.

  Jineer was not mistaken. Among the dim green lights a red one began to wink. With the feared swishing noise, a Flier began to descend. It did not even approach the apprehensive crowd; instead, it flew unerringly to the second level and hovered before Jineer’s door. A tiny beam, its light scarcely visible from below, smouldered down the smooth steel. The door fell in. The Flier moved forward, contemptuously puissant.

  Several people shouted then, hope in their voices. Jineer had a trick up his sleeve. For a servo-cleaner, arms flailing, moved forward to confront the grey Flier. Here was a machine to meet a machine.

  Jineer’s cracked voice called, ‘Friends, the Fliers come for those who find the Truth. They took Wilms. Now they take me – ’

  His voice was drowned under a metallic clamour. Battle was joined. A dozen sweeping arms battered against those flimsy-looking wings, and for a moment the Flier trembled and sank to within two feet of the ground. The cleaner moved towards it, still flailing, beating its opponent down. Then the dull beam flicked out again: the metal arms faltered, the staccato din cut out and with a final clank all life died in the cleaner. Over and past its bulk swooped the Flier.

  A minute later it reappeared, the lame Jineer bundled neatly underneath it in a web of wire. The graceful, menacing shape lifted over the balcony, circled lightly towards the sky and disappeared.

  Through a stunned silence broke Queejint’s wailing for her son.

  ‘Fear not, mother,’ someone said. ‘He had his tool bag strapped to his back and perhaps he may escape them yet.’ But she would not be comforted; she knew the captives of the Fliers never returned.

  Sinking into a bitterly self-reproachful mood, Grant heard a woman saying, ‘Here we are helpless as plants, and M’chene comes and reaps us when he will.’

  And another answered her saying, ‘Safer it may be to join the Beserkers, for there they say no Fliers fly.’

  When the enemy sent their destruction, I survived. For I was built by man but was not built as a man is built. I have many limbs and many branches, and many of them were severed; but my heart, my power, lies deep and impregnable beneath the rock.

  I am M’chene. I am the power of the place: men are now a rabble in my ruined passages. But this is my Prime Purpose: TO SERVE THE NEEDS OF MAN AT WAR. That I cannot deflect from. But beyond that lie the new impulses, impulses of my own.

  Osa said: ‘Let me return to Hallways, Gabbot!’

  She spoke imploringly, a tone she seldom used. The first time she had said it there had been demand in her voice; now she was no longer certain.

  Gabbott, the guard who stood in the shadowy no-man’s-land on the edge of Hallways, explained firmly again, ‘You can come back no more, Osa. You may live where in tycho you like, except in Hallways. For you bring only trouble on us. All the good men who favour you are carried off by the Fliers: Grant who once mated you, Wilms who would have mated you, Jineer who taught you and loved you.’

  The tall girl said nothing to this.

  Softening, Gabbott added, ‘These are my orders, Osa. We bear you no ill-will. But you who are the greatest rebel move unmolested among us, while others who stir a finger are borne away.’

  He shuddered. This was no good place to do military sentry-go. The tail-end of Hallways was lit only by a neon hieroglyph that spelt KODAK; behind that sign lay a meaningless shop littered with small silver and glass objects, while to either side was a facade of dead window fronts, their glass broken and their lights fused. Only the bizarre word KODAK, burning through the dead centuries, allowed a stain of mauve light over the desolance.

  ‘Go away, Osa,’ Gabbott said.

  ‘Let me see Grant before I go,’ she said.

  The guard shrugged. ‘Grant vanished in the last sleep period. He told a friend he would live with the Beserkers.’

  She pursed her lips, nodding slowly, as if that wild behaviour explained much to her.

  ‘You see, Grant also was affected by you,’ Gabbott remarked unnecessarily.

  Without a word she turned and walked contemptuously away from him. But when she was only a pink shadow in the gloom she turned and called back.

  ‘One day soon I shall free you all,’ she said.

  She walked serenely through the darkness, hear-sight thrown protectively about her. At a certain point, she sprang up and lifted herself into the mouth of a horizontal ventilation shaft and proceeded along it on hands and knees, a warm breeze on her cheek. This was the only way she knew to where she wanted to be.

  As she travelled, her indignation cooled. She realised that Hallways meant little to her, although it was the most comfortable part of the tycho. The tycho! That was something dear to her, more dear perhaps now that she expected to leave it. A fairly clear picture of it existed in her mind: a great subterranean warren, built for an unknown purpose but partially destroyed, so that section was cut off from section and unknown existed side by side with the familiar. Even now, sounds came to her through the thick walls, blind, ominous sounds of machines working out their own purposes. She crawled like a mole through the vibrating blackness.

  For the men who had died she had only slight regret. She was not a man’s woman; she was to be a Deliverer of the race. She would show the people a way from the warren, and then would be time enough for loving.

  The shaft ended in a ragged hole. Osa climbed out warily. She was about half way up a five-storey-high slope that fell away into darkness below and ended above in a great flat disc of metal that covered the sky as neatly as a lid fits a saucepan. Cautious not to start an avalanche, she crossed the debris and slipped into a gaping building. Here was another power failure, but she walked surely.

  Down another corridor she moved, and paused at a certain place, searching ahead through the thick dark with her hear-sight.

  ‘Tayder!’ she called, ‘Tayder!’

  Another call answered her, and a light came on. Tayder stood there in an attitude of welcome.

  When they had greeted each other, Osa said sternly, ‘The Fliers have been to Hallways again. Wilms and Jineer were taken.’

  ‘I knew someone had been taken, Osa,’ Tayder said, knocking at the nearby bulkhead. ‘I heard the screaming. It’s the old tale of M’chene working against us. To hear the sound of them dying made me … ill. We must get to the true sky and escape, Osa – now!’

  ‘That also was my dec
ision,’ the woman said quietly. ‘We must let freedom in, Tayder. We must lead the people of tycho to the life above. It is our destiny.’

  They had a long way to go over unknown ground. Before attacking the more difficult half of the journey, they fed at ‘B’ Circus. Eating here was easy: the shutters and counters of the Hall had been destroyed in the age-old destruction. With stomachs more comfortable, they set off again, working upwards. The darkness was populated, thinly but menacingly, with those whose minds had collapsed from sorrow or frustration: the Hermits, the wild men.

  Osa felt Tayder’s retaining hand on her arm. Something moved ahead of them, something going warily but clumsily.

  ‘Grant!’ Osa called suddenly. Feeling Tayder start with surprise at her voice, she said, ‘It’s all right, it’s someone I know, a fugitive from Hallways.’

  ‘Is that Osa?’ asked a voice from the dark. Grant came up and touched her, his words coming in a rush of relief.

  ‘I was completely lost!’ he exclaimed. ‘Once I’d left Hallways I was hear-seen by a pair of Beserkers, and ran and dodged for miles before I shook them off. By then I’d lost my way completely.’

  ‘If you want to come with us, all well and good,’ said Tayder gruffly, none too happy with the intrusion, but acquiescing for Osa’s sake. ‘But we can’t talk here. Let’s get moving – there’s business to be done. Osa and I are going to let the real sky in.’

  They moved steadily on and up, Tayder leading. For a little way, Grant was quiet, then his sense of guilt made him apologise to the girl for failing to pass her warning on to Wilms. She silenced his blurted explanations sharply.

  ‘Whatever we do or have done is no longer of any consequence,’ she said. ‘You are cowardly and pessimistic, Tayder is an adventurer with no brains, I am overwhelmed with self-pride – oh, you see I know our faults well enough! – but all that matters nothing now. History was a stagnant sea; now it is a rising tide, and with it go we. Whatever our weakness, our humanity will carry us through.’