The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  ‘Funny,’ Laurie commented aloud, running his dusty hands down his overalls. And it was funny; it was queer; his head felt queer and his stomach queasy.

  He was suddenly glad he had no need to linger further. The illusion machine was working beautifully: these beeches looked so solid that he hesitated to walk into them. He felt his way to the door and let himself back into Mr. Esmond’s living quarters. For a moment he paused, looking back.

  The woods were irresistibly real. You could not convince yourself they were mere projections. As he closed the door, he heard a distant call: ‘Cuckoo.’

  Something would not come clear in Laurie’s mind, would not focus. He shook his head vaguely, trying to puzzle things out. For a long while he stood gazing at his little repair fly, not seeing it.

  Finally, deciding he would never solve any problem if he could not think what the problem was, he climbed into the vehicle. For a second he sat in the driver’s seat looking out at the minute hall, and then switched on the muon screen and cleared his engagement board.

  At once his thoughts were more certain. Everything was bathed in a new lucidity, as if his IQ had suddenly been stepped up.

  ‘Yes,’ he said to himself, ‘I must find out what’s happened to old Granville Esmond. Of course I must.’

  As he drifted up through the strata of buildings, he tried to remember the last time he had seen the old boy. He was not too clear on that point – possibly he had been drinking too heavily when Esmond had left. He could recall the old fellow at Betty Hulcoup’s party the week before, standing looking on as always. Esmond rarely did anything but look on, yet, when you thought about it, he was a real sociable type. Why, looking back, Laurie could remember him at almost any spot of high-life you might name.

  Even when Laurie had that wonderful three days with Pauline Dent, Esmond had been looking on. Odd they hadn’t been offended by him at the time, when you thought about it, considering how they –

  Laurie stopped with a jolt at the traffic autobeam at 12th. He was nearly home already. Thinking about old Ezzie, as they called him, made time pass quickly. Good old Ezzie!

  A warm glow of pleasure ran through Laurie as he realised he had no memory of any pleasant time in which Ezzie did not also feature, just standing by, looking on, smiling, ‘taking it all in,’ as the saying was.

  ‘Good old Ezzie!’ Laurie said aloud. ‘He must be my lucky mascot. I must look him up when I get back to the shop.’

  He shuttled along 11th until he was in his home square, dialled his number, was accepted, clicked off the muon screen and materialised.

  ‘Hullo, boss!’ a voice called, and Tom Fenwick appeared. He was a friend of Laurie’s, and only put in an hour or so on the bench when business was particularly pressing, as at present.

  ‘Hullo, Tom,’ Laurie said.

  ‘Something wrong? Client engaged? You look worried.’

  ‘I was just trying to think what I was thinking of,’ Laurie said blankly.

  ‘Oh, it’ll come back if you stop worrying about it, as Freud said to the lady who’d lost her nervous complaint. Did you find Mr. Esmond in, I asked you.’

  ‘Oh … er, Mr. Esmond?’ With an effort, Laurie pulled him self together. His brain almost seemed to be clicking. ‘Do you mean old Ezzie? I haven’t seen him for some time.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ Tom asked in puzzlement. ‘Are you ill?’

  He placed his hand in assumed consternation on Laurie’s brow and went on, ‘What about old Ezzie? Did you say you hadn’t seen him?’

  ‘Not since last week,’ Laurie said.

  ‘I went out with the Baer boys last night and we saw him then,’ Tom said.

  Laurie sat on a stool. ‘Good,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Are you sure you’re well?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Yes, fine, kid, fine. You run along.’

  ‘I will if you don’t mind, Laurie. Come to think of it, I feel rather odd myself.’

  For a long time after Tom Fenwick had gone, Laurie sat quietly on the stool. Life, somehow, seemed to have changed, although when he searched his mind for memory of any difference he could remember none.

  At last he went over to the pscreen and rolled up his sister’s number.

  ‘Hullo!’ she said as the pscreen cleared, ‘I’m just synthing lunch. It’s two months since I saw you. What have you been up to?’

  ‘I’ve been very busy, Lena,’ Laurie said apologetically. ‘Listen, I want you to try and remember a scene for me – something that happened when we were kids. It’s important to get a detail right.’

  ‘Well? Don’t sound so mysterious!’

  ‘Lena, do you remember once when you were about thirteen Father let us catch a wing and go and picnic in Berkshire woods?’

  ‘You mean the time we first met old Ezzie? Yes, I remember. What about it?’

  He faltered.

  ‘Oh, you remember old Ezzie, do you?’ he said weakly.

  His sister’s image laughed at him. ‘Well he’s always about when we’re doing anything exciting, isn’t he?’ she exclaimed. ‘Laurence Roberts, I believe you’re tiddley again!’

  He broke the connection, vexed with himself for having asked a silly question. Now that he looked back, he could picture the familiar figure of Granville Esmond wandering about whenever Lena held a party. Good old Ezzie, always the same – why, always even dressed the same, in his sneaking-jacket and green flannel shorts.

  And never looking a day older …

  ‘I’m going to have a brain storm,’ Laurie said. He began thinking furiously. But the cogitation led nowhere, except to an inane doubt as to whether or not he had actually pscreened his sister. And if he had, could he remember aright what she had said? His memory felt very odd; a headache of monster dimensions was brewing.

  ‘It’s no good, I’ve got to get this thing straight,’ Laurie muttered, and as he said it he thought of who he could turn to for expert aid: H. H. Arlestein. Arlestein was a leading psychiatrist who used a fascinating diversity of illusion cubicles to probe into the recesses of his patients’ minds; Laurie had spent a long session last winter installing new gadgets for Arlestein, and had grown to like the little man.

  Directly the decision was made, Laurie acted on it. The temporal continuum not being uniform, there is no time like the present. He climbed back into his autofly and made for Arlestein’s.

  Traffic was thick all ways at this hour of day, beams held him up at most squares. Nevertheless, snugly encased in his muon screen, Laurie relaxed considerably. When this puzzling business was over, he’d go and have a drink at Joe’s Cozy; Ezzie would be there, as he always was if anything was doing, and they would have a laugh over it all.

  Once he had disembarked at the psychiatrist’s, Laurie sobered again.

  In the waiting room his mood turned to sombre, but the delay until Arlestein came in was long enough for him to marshall his thoughts properly.

  Arlestein greeted him with warmth.

  ‘I found your help invaluable,’ the psychiatrist said, as they shook hands. ‘I only hope I can be of as much use to you. Come in and talk to me. Been overworking?’

  ‘No more than usual,’ Laurie said, following the neat little figure into its comfortable consulting room. ‘I came to you with a problem, but I believe I’ve solved it already in your waiting room.’

  ‘That hard bench does most of my work for me,’ Arlestein assented cheerfully. ‘However, let’s hear the problem, and I’ll see if I can pick holes in the solution.’

  ‘I warn you it’s fantastic.’

  ‘Only the ordinary is fantastic in this room, Laurie,’ Arlestein said.

  ‘All my life,’ Laurie began, ‘a man has kept me company whenever anything exciting was going on. At least, I think it’s all my life; I can remember the man all my life, if that’s the same thing.’

  ‘It could be a very different thing.’

  ‘That’s what I hoped to hear. At some time, and I think it may even have been tod
ay, although my mind’s a blank at just that point, I must have gone to the man’s flat to do something to his illusion room.’

  ‘A repair job?’ Arlestein asked.

  ‘It must have been, I think. Now here’s where the theory creeps in. The man must have had an old model illusion machine, one of the kind in which the actual prongs which hold the memory reels are live. Now suppose I had taken off the man’s reels, and happened somehow to stick my head between those prongs – ’

  ‘You would have been electrocuted.’

  ‘Yes, if I had been fool enough to leave the power on. And if I had switched the power off, nothing would have happened – unless the old machine was short-circuiting somewhere. I do believe I said something about the set’s needing re-earthing. And in that case, my memories would be played direct into the room, over the illusion circuits.’

  ‘I see,’ Arlestein said, making a note. ‘All your memories?’

  ‘Very probably. It would depend how long I was stuck there, because from my point of view, temporary amnesia would be formed.’

  ‘Yes. And when you broke contact, what would be the after-effects?’

  Laurie looked embarrassed.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘The after-effects are that the man, having been in my memory, remains in my memory. He’s got back there and dug himself in on all possible exciting occasions; when anything good’s going on, the man’s there.’

  He dreaded Arlestein’s next question. There was a long silence before it inevitably came.

  ‘And the man exists in actuality, apart from in your memory?’

  ‘He must do,’ Laurie said uncertainly. ‘He certainly did when I went to mend his machine.’

  ‘Yet you don’t really remember mending his machine?’

  The question was asked so gently that Laurie grew angry; it clearly implied that Ezzie might have no objective existence.

  ‘I’m just saying how it seems to me,’ Laurie said.

  ‘That is a succinct definition of reality,’ Arlestein said urbanely. ‘Now please tell me, what is your attitude to the man? Hatred? Love? Indifference?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got an attitude to him. I just accept him. He’s – well, he’s a part of me.’

  Arlestein sighed and leant back. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, realised the inner significance of the gesture, and hurriedly withdrew his finger. At length he said, ‘It is all part of the curious mechanism of confession – secrecy that we reveal the truth accidentally. When you say the man is a part of you, you unwittingly reveal the truth. He is you. For reasons we have yet to find, your ego has developed an ambivalence towards pleasure-situations which expresses itself in duality; in popular parlance, you are becoming schizophrenic.’

  Laurie jumped to his feet before the speech was ended.

  ‘Don’t give me that split-personality line!’ he said. ‘You people are all alike! Given a difficult situation, you haven’t imagination enough to do anything but interpret it in your own terms. You’re just trying to scale it down to something you think you can handle!’

  ‘I cannot handle it, whatever size it is, unless you sit down,’ Arlestein said reasonably. ‘You need not oppose me, because far from trying to oppose you, I want to help you.’

  Clasping his hands together, Laurie took a fresh grip of himself.

  ‘I’m not the only one who needs help,’ he said. ‘If I’m right, everyone in London needs it. The man threatens us all, you included.’

  Discretely, Arlestein wrote the words ‘protective megalomania’ on his pad and said, in a voice full of sympathy, ‘How does that come about?’

  ‘Have you ever thought how London is like a great brain?’ Laurie asked. ‘It’s shaped like one, it’s packed with millions upon millions of rooms, which are the cells – and drifting continually through it like thoughts are the muon screens.’

  ‘That’s a very ingenious simile,’ said Arlestein. ‘I had never thought of it like that.’

  ‘It’s in danger of becoming more than a simile. At present it is only like a brain; soon, it may be one: a gigantic, reasoning entity! All it lacked was the impulse of life! Now I believe that has been supplied.’

  ‘By the man?’ Arlestein asked, fighting to keep the incredulity from his voice.

  ‘Partly – and partly by me,’ said Laurie. ‘You see, just as the ordinary electric circuit in a flat can carry light or power, so it can carry the force we call muon. When I got my head between the prongs, I was linked by faulty earthing to the muon system.’

  ‘And?’ Arlestein prompted.

  ‘And so the man, by entering my memory, would be able to enter everyone’s memory. The constant flow of undetectable muon screens through us, due to passing traffic, would enable him to spread from one person to another. In a week, at the most, he will be in everyone’s mind. The traffic must be stopped while an investigation is made.’

  Arlestein did not reply. His finger was rubbing his nose unashamedly.

  ‘It’s frightening, isn’t it?’ Laurie said. ‘Already the man’s got to my sister and a friend of mine.’

  Now Arlestein sighed, and began to fidget.

  ‘I can see how the idea frightens you, old man,’ he said. ‘In the circumstances, the very best thing you can do is get quite away from London – right away to, say, Glasgow, which has only four strata. Relax, find yourself a different job. Understandably, being constantly involved with other people’s memories has disorientated your own natural balance temporarily. The mere idea – ’

  ‘I can’t leave! This is an emergency! You think I’m mad, don’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t say – ’

  ‘Oh yes you did!’ Laurie roared. ‘I warn you, Ezzie’ll get you too! You won’t have a mind of your own! You’ll just be a thought in a vast super-brain run by Ezzie.’

  ‘Ezzie?’ the psychiatrist echoed.

  ‘Yes, the man, Ezzie!’

  ‘You – you don’t mean Granville Esmond, do you?’

  Laurie felt a constriction in his throat.

  ‘Don’t tell me you know him?’

  ‘Know him!’ Arlestein laughed. ‘Why, I’ve known Ezzie for years. You don’t think he’s mixed up with this crackpot scheme of yours, do you?’

  Laurie backed away in horror, pointing with trembling finger at the psychiatrist.

  ‘He’s got to you!’ he sobbed. ‘He’s got to you already! Or probably I brought him with me.’

  Arlestein stood up. His face was grave now. He touched a button on his desk.

  ‘I’m afraid you may be dangerous, Mr. Rogers,’ he said. ‘I regret you will have to be temporarily restrained.’

  Before Laurie could move, two male nurses had seized him from behind.

  ‘Lobotomy job, boys, I’m afraid,’ Arlestein said. ‘Take him away!’

  ‘Wait! Wait!’ screamed Laurie. ‘You’ve given me no chance to prove the truth. Ring someone I haven’t been in contact with – someone who would be impartial – someone neither of us would know – someone who wouldn’t be prejudiced against the likeliness of my story.’

  ‘Suppose we try the Dean of St. Paul’s?’ suggested Arlestein dryly. He stretched out a finger and began calmly to dial.

  ‘Could I possibly speak to His Grace?’ he asked when the screen lit and a secretary appeared.

  The secretary said no.

  Arlestein persuaded. He pleaded urgency, he pleaded it would take only a minute. He was eloquent with all the inherited eloquence of his race. At length the secretary flashed off.

  In his place, the solemn, ascetic features of the Dean appeared.

  ‘Forgive my bothering you, Your Grace,’ Arlestein said humbly. ‘But may I just ask you one simple question – do you happen to remember a Mr. Granville Esmond?’

  The solemn features relaxed into a smile.

  ‘Old Ezzie?’ His Grace asked. ‘Do I remember old Ezzie? Why, ever since I could walk – ’

  He was still chuckling affectionately as Laurie was dragged out.


  The Flowers of the Forest

  The canoe grounded in mud. Hopkins sat where he was, hunched in his cape, looking ahead into the enchanted forest. This was the witch Subyata’s territory: Hopkins knew that without question. The surrounding vegetation was the same dreary tangle he had been passing for miles, but the call within him shrilled like a high chord of music.

  He flung the paddles into the bottom of the native boat and pulled himself ashore by an overhanging branch. It was pouring with rain, a heavy downpour even for this slice of Sumatra.

  A leopard stood in a bower of leaves awaiting him, its coat dark with the wet. Hopkins jumped back with a faint cry, then saw its eyes were deep and Chinese; he said to himself reassuringly, ‘That’s Subyata’s clouded leopard of which they told me.’ Then he felt no more fear. When the animal shook beads of moisture from its grey whiskers and turned down a narrow trail, he followed without hesitation.

  He expected nothing. He was coming to Subyata: that was all. A whole year had passed while slowly he had made up his mind to risk the journey, a whole year while his body performed the routine tasks in the ex-Dutch cannery and his heart crept up here in the highlands. He came without hope or pessimism; feeling was dead inside him.

  So it was no surprise to find a solid-built, peak-roofed native house standing serenely in the centre of a clearing. It was no surprise when Subyata’s leopard faded into thin green air and he himself walked up the creaking wooden steps into the front room.

  He was a small man, shrunken by thirteen years of the tropical heat corroding from the outside and the sense of guilt corroding from within. He stood before Subyata humbly, water pouring off his hat and cape, trickling down his cheeks and on to the floor with a sound that seemed the loudest thing in the room.

  Even Subyata held no surprise for him. She waited for him, and that was sufficient. She was younger than the furtive rumours had whispered, and she was beautiful, a point on which the cautious tongues had been perfectly silent, and she radiated power, as all the secrets had declared.

  The room was empty although her presence filled it. He took its dereliction in at a glance and said to himself, ‘If her magic’s so powerful, why doesn’t she wish herself some comfort.’ It was an old habit reasserting itself, even in these circumstances: compensation for self by denigration of others. It had become by now, by his thirty-sixth year, almost the essence of him.