The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  The taunts were having their desired effect. A flush spread over the image of Gunpat’s face.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Ployploy except that she’s a recessive; you said that yourself!’ he snapped.

  He was beginning to answer back; that was a good sign. His daughter was always a soft spot in his armour.

  ‘A recessive!’ Smithlao sneered. ‘How far back can you recede? She’s gentle, do you hear me, you with the hair in your ears? She wants to love!’ He bellowed with ironic laughter. ‘Why, it’s obscene, Gunnyboy! She couldn’t hate to save her life. She’s no better than a primitive. She’s worse than a primitive – she’s mad!’

  ‘She’s not mad,’ Gunpat said, gripping both sides of his screen. At this rate, he would be primed for the conference in ten more minutes.

  ‘Not mad?’ the psychodynamician asked, his voice assuming a bantering note. ‘No, Ployploy’s not mad; the Mating Centre only refused her the right to breed, that’s all. Imperial Government only refused her the right to a televote, that’s all. United Traders only refused her a Consumption Rating, that’s all. Education, Inc. only restricted her to beta recreations, that’s all. She’s a prisoner here because she’s a genius, is that it? You’re crazy, Gunpat, if you don’t think that girl’s stark, staring mad. You’ll be telling me next, out of that grotesque, flapping mouth of yours, that she hasn’t got a white face.’

  Gunpat made gobbling sounds.

  ‘You dare to mention that!’ he gasped. ‘And what if her face is – that colour?’

  ‘You ask such fool questions, it’s hardly worthwhile bothering with you,’ Smithlao said mildly. ‘Your trouble, Gunpat, is that you’re totally incapable of absorbing one single simple historical fact. Ployploy is white because she is a dirty little throwback. Our ancient enemies were white. They occupied this part of the globe until our ancestors rose from the East and took from them the ancient privileges they had so long enjoyed at our expense. Our ancestors intermarried with such of the defeated as survived, right?

  ‘In a few generations, the white strain was obliterated, diluted, lost. A white face has not been seen on earth since before the terrible Age of Overpopulation – fifteen hundred years, let’s say, to be generous. And then – then little Lord Recessive Gunpat throws one up neat as you please. What did they give you at Mating Centre, Gunnyboy, a cave woman?’

  Gunpat exploded in fury, shaking his fist at the screen.

  ‘You’re fired, Smithlao,’ he snarled. ‘This time you’ve gone too far, even for a dirty, rotten psycho! Get out! Go on, get out and never come back!’

  Abruptly, he bellowed to his autooperator to switch him over to the conference. He was just in a ripe mood to deal with Automotion.

  As Gunpat’s irate image faded from the screen, Smithlao sighed and relaxed. The hate-brace was accomplished. It was the supreme compliment in his profession to be dismissed by a patient at the end of a session; Gunpat would be the keener to re-engage him next time. All the same, Smithlao felt no triumph. In his calling, a thorough exploration of human psychology was needed; he had to know exactly the sorest points in a man’s make-up. By playing on those points deftly enough, he could rouse the man to action.

  Without being roused, men were helpless prey to lethargy, bundles of rag carried around by machines. The ancient drives had all but died out.

  Smithlao sat where he was, gazing into both past and future.

  In exhausting the soil, man had exhausted himself. The psyche and a vitiated topsoil could not exist simultaneously; it was as simple and as logical as that.

  Only the failing tides of hate and anger lent man enough impetus to continue at all. Else, he was just a dead hand across his mechanised world.

  ‘So this is how a species becomes extinct!’ thought Smithlao, and wondered if anyone else had thought about it. Perhaps Imperial Government knew, but was powerless to do anything; after all, what more could you do than was being done?

  Smithlao was a shallow man – inevitable in a caste-bound society so weak that it could not face itself. Having discovered the terrifying problem, he set himself to forget it, to evade its impact, to dodge any personal implications it might have. With a grunt to his sedan, he turned about and ordered himself home.

  Since Gunpat’s robots had already left, Smithlao travelled back along the way he had come. He was trundled outside and back to the vane, standing silent below the elms.

  Before the sedan incorporated itself back into the vane, a movement caught Smithlao’s eye. Half-concealed by a veranda, Ployploy stood against a corner of the house. With a sudden impulse of curiosity, Smithlao got out of the sedan. The open air stank of roses and clouds and green things turning dark with the thought of autumn. It was frightening for Smithlao, but an adventurous impulse made him go on.

  The girl was not looking in his direction; she peered towards the barricade of trees which cut her off from the world. As Smithlao approached, she moved around to the rear of the house, still staring intently. He followed with caution, taking advantage of the cover afforded by a small plantation. A metal gardener nearby continued to wield shears along a grass verge, unaware of his existence.

  Ployploy now stood at the back of the house. The wind that rustled her long dress blew leaves against her. It sighed around the weird and desolate garden like fate at a christening, ruining the last of the roses. Later, the tumbling pattern of petals might be sucked from paths, lawn and patio by the steel gardener; now, they made a tiny tide about her feet.

  Extravagant architecture overshadowed Ployploy. Here a rococo fancy had mingled with a genius for fantastic portal and roof. Balustrades rose and fell, stairs marched through circular arches, grey and azure eaves swept almost to the ground. But all was sadly neglected. Virginia creeper, already hinting at its glory to come, strove to pull down the marble statuary; troughs of rose petals clogged every sweeping staircase. And all this formed the ideal background for the forlorn figure of Ployploy.

  Except for her delicate pink lips, her face was utterly pale. Her hair was black; it hung straight, secured only once at the back of her head, and then fell in a tail to her waist. She looked mad indeed, her melancholy eyes peering towards the great elms as if they would scorch down everything in their line of vision. Smithlao turned to see what she stared at so compellingly.

  The wild man he had observed from the air was just breaking through the thickets around the elm boles.

  A sudden rain shower came down, rattling among the dry leaves of the shrubbery. It was over in a flash; during the momentary downpour, Ployploy never shifted her position, the wild man never looked up. Then the sun burst through, cascading a pattern of elm shadow over the house, and every flower wore a jewel of rain.

  Smithlao reflected on what he had thought in Gunpat’s room about the coming end of man. Now he considered that it would be so easy for Nature, when parasite man was extinct, to begin again.

  He waited tensely, knowing a fragment of drama was about to take place before his eyes. Across the sparkling lawn, a tiny tracked thing scuttled, pogoing itself up steps and out of sight through an arch. It was a perimeter guard, off to give the alarm, to warn that an intruder was about.

  In a minute it returned. Four big robots accompanied it; one of them Smithlao recognised as the toadlike machine that had challenged his arrival. They threaded their way purposefully among the rosebushes, five differently shaped menaces. The metal gardener muttered to itself, abandoned its clipping, and joined the procession towards the wild man.

  ‘He hasn’t a dog’s chance,’ Smithlao said to himself. The phrase held significance; dogs, having been declared redundant, had long since been exterminated.

  By now the wild man had broken through the barrier of the thicket and come to the lawn’s edge. He pulled a leafy branchlet off a shrub and stuck it into his shirt so that it partially obscured his face; he tucked another branch into his trousers. As the robots drew nearer, he raised his arms above his head, a third branch clasped in h
is hands.

  The six machines encircled him, humming and chugging quietly.

  The toad robot clicked, as if deciding on what it should do next.

  ‘Identity?’ it demanded.

  ‘I am a rose tree,’ the wild man said.

  ‘Rose trees bear roses. You do not bear roses. You are not a rose tree,’ the steel toad said. Its biggest, highest gun came level with the wild man’s chest.

  ‘My roses are dead already,’ the wild man said, ‘but I have leaves still. Ask a gardener if you do not know what leaves are.’

  ‘This thing is a thing with leaves,’ the gardener said at once in a deep voice.

  ‘I know what leaves are. I have no need to ask the gardener. Leaves are the foliage of trees and plants which give them their green appearance,’ the toad said.

  ‘This thing is a thing with leaves,’ the gardener repeated, adding, to clarify the matter, ‘the leaves give it a green appearance.’

  ‘I know what things with leaves are,’ said the toad. ‘I have no need to ask you, gardener.’

  It looked as if an interesting, if limited, argument would break out between the two robots, but at this moment one of the other machines said something.

  ‘This rose tree can speak,’ it declared.

  ‘Rose trees cannot speak,’ the toad said at once. Having produced this pearl, it was silent, probably mulling over the strangeness of life. Then it said, slowly, ‘Therefore either the rose tree is not a rose tree or this rose tree did not speak.’

  ‘This thing is a thing with leaves,’ began the gardener doggedly. ‘But it is not a rose tree. Rose trees have stipules. This thing has no stipules. It is a breaking buckthorn. The breaking buckthorn is also known as the berry-bearing alder.’

  This specialised knowledge extended beyond the vocabulary of the toad. A strained silence ensued.

  ‘I am a breaking buckthorn,’ the wild man said, still holding his pose. ‘I cannot speak.’

  At this, all the machines began to talk at once, lumbering around him for better sightings as they did so, and barging into each other in the process. Finally, the toad’s voice broke above the metallic babble.

  ‘Whatever this thing with leaves is, we must uproot it. We must kill it,’ it said.

  ‘You may not uproot it. That is a job only for gardeners,’ the gardener said. Setting its shears rotating, telescoping out a mighty scythe, it charged at the toad.

  Its crude weapons were ineffectual against the toad’s armour. The latter, however, realised that they had reached a deadlock in their investigation.

  ‘We will retire to ask Charles Gunpat what we shall do,’ it said. ‘Come this way.’

  ‘Charles Gunpat is in conference,’ the scout robot said. ‘Charles Gunpat must not be disturbed in conference. Therefore we must not disturb Charles Gunpat.’

  ‘Therefore we must wait for Charles Gunpat,’ said the metal toad imperturbably. He led the way close by where Smithlao stood; they all climbed the steps and disappeared into the house.

  Smithlao could only marvel at the wild man’s coolness. It was a miracle he still survived. Had he attempted to run, he would have been killed instantly; that was a situation the robots had been taught to cope with. Nor would his double talk, inspired as it was, have saved him had he been faced with only one robot, for the robot is a single-minded creature.

  In company, however, they suffer from a trouble which sometimes afflicts human gatherings: a tendency to show off their logic at the expense of the object of the meeting.

  Logic! That was the trouble. It was all robots had to go by. Man had logic and intelligence; he got along better than his robots. Nevertheless, he was losing the battle against Nature. And Nature, like the robots, used only logic. It was a paradox against which man could not prevail.

  As soon as the file of machines had disappeared into the house, the wild man ran across the lawn and climbed the first flight of steps, working towards the motionless girl. Smithlao slid behind a beech tree to be nearer to them; he felt like an evildoer, watching them without an interposed screen, but could not tear himself away; he sensed that here was a little charade which marked the end of all that man had been. The wild man was approaching Ployploy now, moving slowly across the terrace as if hypnotised.

  She spoke first.

  ‘You were resourceful,’ she said to him. Her white face carried pink in its cheeks now.

  ‘I have been resourceful for a whole year to get to you,’ he said. Now that his resources had brought him face to face with her, they failed, and left him standing helplessly. He was a thin young man, thin and sinewy, his clothes worn, his beard unkempt. His eyes never left Ployploy’s.

  ‘How did you find me?’ Ployploy asked. Her voice, unlike the wild man’s, barely reached Smithlao. A haunting look, as fitful as the autumn, played on her face.

  ‘It was a sort of instinct – as if I heard you calling,’ the wild man said. ‘Everything that could possibly be wrong with the world is wrong. Perhaps you are the only woman in the world who loves; perhaps I am the only man who could answer. So I came. It was natural; I could not help myself.’

  ‘I always dreamed someone would come,’ she said. ‘And for weeks I have felt – known – you were coming. Oh, my darling …’

  ‘We must be quick, my sweet,’ he said. ‘I once worked with robots – perhaps you could see I know them. When we get away from here, I have a robot plane that will take us away – anywhere; an island, perhaps, where things are not so desperate. But we must go before your father’s machines return.’

  He took a step towards Ployploy.

  She held up her hand.

  ‘Wait!’ she implored him. ‘It’s not so simple. You must know something … The – the Mating Centre refused me the right to breed. You ought not to touch me.’

  ‘I hate the Mating Centre!’ the wild man said. ‘I hate everything to do with the ruling régime. Nothing they have done can affect us now.’

  Ployploy clenched her hands behind her back. The faint colour had left her cheeks. A fresh shower of dead rose petals blew against her dress, mocking her.

  ‘It’s so hopeless,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand …’

  His wildness was humbled now.

  ‘I threw up everything to come to you,’ he said. ‘I only desire to take you into my arms.’

  ‘Is that all, really all, all you want in the world?’ she asked.

  ‘I swear it,’ he said simply.

  ‘Then come and touch me,’ Ployploy said.

  At that moment Smithlao saw a tear glint in her eye, bright and ripe as a raindrop.

  The hand the wild man extended to her was lifted to her cheek. She stood unflinching on the grey terrace, her head high. And so his loving fingers gently brushed her countenance. The explosion was almost instantaneous.

  Almost. It took the traitorous nerves in Ployploy’s epidermis but a fraction of a second to analyse the touch as belonging to another human being and to convey their findings to the nerve centre; there, the neurological block implanted by the Mating Centre in all mating rejects, to guard against just such a contingency, went into action at once. Every cell in Ployploy’s body yielded up its energy in one consuming gasp. It was so intense that the wild man was also killed by the detonation.

  Just for a second, a new wind lived among the winds of Earth.

  Yes, thought Smithlao, turning away, you had to admit it was neat. And, again, logical. In a world on the brink of starvation, how else stop undesirables from breeding? Logic against logic, man’s pitted against Nature’s – that was what caused all the tears of the world.

  He made off through the dripping plantation, heading back for the vane, anxious to be away before Gunpat’s robots reappeared. The shattered figures on the terrace were still, already half-covered with leaves and petals. The wind roared like a great triumphant sea in the treetops. It was hardly odd that the wild man did not know about the neurological trigger; few people did, barring psychodynamicians and t
he Mating Council – and, of course, the rejects themselves. Yes, Ployploy had known what would happen. She had chosen deliberately to die like that.

  ‘Always said she was mad!’ Smithlao told himself. He chuckled as he climbed into his machine, shaking his head over her lunacy.

  It would be a wonderful point with which to rile Charles Gunpat the next time he needed a hate-brace.

  The Dark Millennia

  Against the Law of Transience may be set one of its ancillary laws. The Law of Endurance. The planet Earth plies (almost) eternally about its sun, swinging its small cone of night with it like a blue sail. For the solar system there is only one long day, an energy bath of radiation without end. That day is the prime product of the sun. The night – each planet fashions its own nights. As long as the sun burns, trailing out its marigold veins of fire across the adjacent void, life devours its uninterrupted day. Only the tiny individual lives must endure their own nights.

  Within the gaudy glare of the solar system, that whirlpool of heat and noise, night has little place. It must hide where it can, behind planetary bodies, inside skulls, at submarine depths.

  Between the last fragment of the story and this next lies a metaphorical night, a night of ignorance which intelligence has been unable to bridge. We hurry across it in silence.

  Through our silence drift names, and mirages of civilisations known by little but their names. The Threshold Consortium, the Vehicularium, the Calloban Empire, the Solite Commonwealth. The Solites are remembered as those people who discovered the means of time travel, perhaps because their brains, in that particular stage of development, established a special relationship with the laws of the physical world which was for ever after unattainable; their talent died with them, never to be resurrected.

  According to the legends which come down to us, the Solites were extinguished by a great religious machine culture, the Vehicularium, when a Functional Ultimate ruled, not merely Earth or the solar system, but the entire galaxy. We can only hypothesize regarding it, and know it to be unique. Unlike all other cultures, the Vehicularium did not die, it did not succumb to decadence from within or invasion from without; it simply disappeared one clear morning. Perhaps it withdrew its presence entirely to another galaxy with more favourable properties.