The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  ‘This gentleman is from Security, sergeant,’ Arundall said. ‘I have been telling him about the Pit.’

  Cords grunted and put his file down on the table, not giving the grey man a second look. It was a type he was allergic to.

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Corduroy,’ said the inspector. ‘He entered the Pit last week on top of a vehicle and left later by the same means.’

  ‘We have had our men in the Pit too,’ the Security man said, speaking without emphasis. ‘It is not particularly well guarded. No doubt when pressure of hostilities slackens somewhat, an Army unit will be spared to mop it up.’

  ‘The Pit has always been regarded by the Police as rather a good thing,’ Arundall said mildly. ‘It has served as a focus for delinks and criminals, keeping other parts of London relatively free from trouble. Inside it, the delinks form their own peculiar kind of discipline.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Security agreed. ‘But in the last two years, evidence tends to show that something more serious than mere lawlessness has established itself there, even that a deliberate attempt to sabotage the war effort may be directed from this Pit. I have received notice only this morning of a stolen cache of hydrogen peroxide which has been traced from an aircraft abandoned outside Aylesbury to a removals van seen driving into the Pit. My department can hardly believe that mere delinks, however well disciplined, are capable of stealing an aircraft.’

  Cords and his immediate superior looked at each other; the inspector nodded.

  ‘I had better tell you what I discovered in the Pit,’ Cords told the Security man, picking up his file. ‘I don’t suppose the name of the Rev. Edward Mullion will convey anything to you. When war broke out, he was a parish priest working in the grimier districts of Paddington. He was presumed killed – with hundreds of others whose bodies were never recovered – on the night of the air raid during which the Pit was formed. He is not dead. Far from it. He is now the leader of one of the toughest delink tribes, who address him as ‘Ed’ and treat his word as law.’

  The Security man changed his weight meditatively onto the other leg, and asked, ‘How did you come by this information, sergeant?’

  ‘I managed to obtain a few hints from a member of a rival gang,’ Cords said blandly.

  ‘And this priest, Mullion … he surely is not still preaching the faith to these little hooligans?’

  ‘That’s what I can’t quite make out,’ Cords said. ‘That’s why I’m going back to the Pit this evening.’

  A trans-continental ballistic missile whined overhead and crumpled distantly in the direction of the White City. Cords did not even bother to look up. These missiles travelled sometimes half-way round the globe, never striking more than five yards from the centre of their targets. They were not only ruthlessly accurate: they were impossible to intercept or deflect. Air raids were nerve-racking affairs these days, with no possible defence but digging deep; searchlights and AA guns had gone the way of the zeppelin.

  Cords made his way across the Pit almost on hands and knees, dodging from one pile of rubble to the next. He was in lance corporal’s uniform. At this early hour of night, the Pit was a noisy place, full of shouts and curses, a piquant mixture of children’s playground and barrack room. In the ruins, Hide and Seek or less innocent games were being played, as for a brief hour the delinks forgot the ordeal of scrounging a living which occupied most of their thoughts.

  When Cords had made his way to a stretch of the waste he recognised as being in Ed’s territory, he stood up and flashed a torch.

  ‘Where’s Ed?’ he shouted. ‘Take me to Ed! I want Ed!’

  He was tensed for trouble, but started all the same when Sponge mate- rialised behind him pointing a Jadder gun at him. The delink seemed to sprout from the debris.

  ‘Shut yer trap,’ Sponge said, ‘or you’ll get to Ed in bits.’

  His woman, Ilford Lil, stood beside him. She carried a service revolver. Like magic, round Cords had appeared a circle of strained faces, some like babies, some like rats, ready to run or ready to kill. In the gloom, clutching guns or sticks or chains, they became a hobbledehoy parody of misery and sin. Snarling down anything further Cords had to say, they flowed round him, pressing him forward. Jostled, hacked, partly mobbed, he was pushed down filthy corridors; into a tawdry room whose windows were barricaded by timber.

  ‘Stand away from him!’ Sponge shouted. ‘I found him first.’

  Reluctantly, the others fell back a pace.

  ‘Lil, better go and get Ed here,’ Sponge said.

  ‘Send one of these here kids,’ Lil said defiantly. ‘Why should I run all the errands round here?’

  He turned an entirely blank little face to her and half closed his eyes.

  ‘Go and get Ed like a good girl, Lil,’ he whispered.

  She understood his tone of voice well enough; without another word, she pushed through the crowd and was gone.

  ‘Rest of you lot badger off,’ Sponge ordered. ‘Go on, git. Wait outside. Scram. Scarper. Bunk.’

  They left reluctantly. Sponge and Cords were alone, the former keeping a careful distance between himself and his captive, fingering the Jadder as if it were hot.

  ‘What stunt are you trying to pull,’ Sponge asked pugnaciously, ‘coming in here yelling your head off?’

  Cords did not reply. Sponge launched into a stream of threats, all of which the detective received in silence. The delink made no attempt to come nearer for fear of getting rushed. Eventually he fell into a frustrated silence, avoiding Cords’ fixed stare at him. Cords could easily have overpowered him, but that was not part of the scheme.

  When the door opened again, Sponge’s dead-pan slumped for a moment into an expression of great relief.

  With Ed were Barney, Chuck the Chucker, Tubby Turner, and one or two other stalwarts. Ilford Lil sidled up to Sponge without looking at him.

  Ed wore a plain black surplice which had acquired a pattern of burns and stains all over it. He was not a striking-looking man; Cords had been prepared for someone bigger. But in a pale face, beneath fair, bushy eyebrows, two pupils almost black stared out penetratingly at the world. When those eyes rested on you, you knew Ed was a Napoleon in his own sphere, a man who commanded by something more than logic.

  ‘What is your name and what do you want?’ he asked Cords.

  ‘My name is Joe Striker,’ Cords said, giving the story he had prepared with Arundall. ‘My son Conny came over to you while I was in the army. He got killed by a fly bomb about a month ago.’

  ‘We heard the cops had got Conny,’ Barney said.

  ‘I got a letter from the Home Office saying he was killed in Hammersmith,’ Cords said, producing the forgery and waving it at them. It had actually been the arrest and interrogation of Conny Striker which had given the police a lead on the raid on the Sherbourne Drive. ‘So I deserted and came to look you out.’

  ‘Oh? Why?’ Ed asked sharply.

  ‘Just something Conny let out once when I was on leave. He said you had an interesting little project here and I thought I’d come and help you out.’

  He met Ed’s eyes for a moment, then dropped his own.

  ‘Joe Striker, no man alive can lie to me without my knowing it,’ Ed said. ‘I have received the word of God, and He tells me who lies to me. He tells me you are lying now.’

  ‘Well …’ Cords said, with seeming reluctance. ‘I admit that’s not quite the real reason I gave you. But Conny always said you were on the up and up and … and my brigade is about to be drafted overseas to the Ukraine. I couldn’t face that, so I – I came here.’

  The delinks about him relaxed. That was the sort of explanation they could understand.

  Ed looked hard and piercingly at him.

  ‘What sort of things can you do?’

  ‘Do? What sort of things do you mean?’ Cords asked.

  ‘Could you – repair a ventilation system, for instance?’

  ‘I could have a try.’

  ‘You’re on,
Striker – provisionally. Make one silly move and the boys will tear you to pieces. Sponge, find Striker some sort of a doss for the night, and see to it he attends matins tomorrow morning.’

  If ‘matins’ had ever been a religious ceremony, all traces of its origins were now lost. Held in a large, smoky hall which had once been a restaurant, it was more of an informal roll call than anything. Ed was not there at first. Chuck the Chucker came forward and delegated various tasks to the boys and girls present. Fully half of them were ordered to pinch what they could – food, money or valuables – and assigned a pitch in which to operate.

  ‘You see, we’re organised, kid,’ Sponge said proudly, as he stood with Cords. ‘Ed’s made something of us. We’re like a ruddy little army here. All the rest of the mobs in the Pit – they haven’t got a clue. Anyone laying their hands on Ed, I tell you, they’d get the living daylights battered out of them.’

  He stopped abruptly, aware of Ed approaching, and made his face as blank as a concrete path. No doubt he had startled himself with his own eloquence. He pulled his pipe from a pocket and stuck it between the ruled line of his lips.

  ‘Striker – will you come with me?’ Ed said, nodding to Sponge. He set off at once without looking again at Cords, moving through the noisy crowd which parted at his approach. Passing a guard, they climbed down into the basement of the restaurant. Here, at one end, a tunnel had been driven underground, its sides sandbagged, its roof shored in an efficient manner.

  ‘We done this,’ Sponge said quietly, with pride.

  The tunnel continued only for some thirty feet, after which they climbed again to ground level, emerging into the boiler room of a church. Upstairs, the old pews had been cleared and an extraordinary amount of electrical equipment, some of it in use, lay about. A fuelling tractor was parked by the font; only a few days ago it had been working in North Greenland. The windows had been boarded up; the scene was lit by electricity.

  Cords looked about curiously. This was not what anyone would expect to find in the middle of the desolation of the Pit.

  ‘This was once my church,’ Ed said. ‘When the bombs fell, they could not destroy it, though everything round it was destroyed. Do not think that we have desecrated it. All we do here is done in God’s name, and what we shall do here will be to God’s greater glory.’

  Cords glanced at him quizzically.

  ‘So you still count yourself a priest?’ he said.

  A spasm of withering anger passed over the pasty face and was gone.

  ‘I serve as I have always served,’ he said, ‘among those who have most need of me. I can see you are a stolid, unimaginative man, Striker; you think of me only as a leader of a delink gang – but soon I shall be seen as a new Noah, as a saviour of man. Everyone will acknowledge me.’

  Seeing the reserved look on Cord’s face, Ed turned sharply on his heel with a curt, ‘Follow me.’ Walking down what had once been the aisle, he pulled aside the filthy curtains which cut off the belfry.

  Exclaiming involuntarily, Cords stopped dead. He stared in fascination. The original belfry had been considerably widened. Inside the tower, like a shell up a flue, stood a gigantic rocket, its nose almost touching the tarpaulins which had replaced the steeple. A couple of delinks, dwarfed, looked round from the base of the rocket at which they were working, saluted Ed, and went on with their job.

  ‘This way,’ Ed said. With Sponge and Cords following, he went over to an open lift built among the web of scaffolding which surrounded the rocket.

  ‘But …’ Cords began. He could not think of any words. He stood dumbly as the platform rose rapidly beneath them and the bulk of the rocket slid impressively past their eyes. They stopped when they were almost at the top, with only a few feet of rocket above them. On the black hull was painted a name: The Ark.

  ‘This space ship,’ Ed said quietly, ‘is going to carry us forever out of the Pit, away from Earth to Venus and a new, purer life.’

  ‘But nobody has been to Venus,’ Cords protested stupidly.

  ‘Exactly. We shall have the chance to begin again that the inhabitants of the first Ark had.’ He led the way through the port in the top stage of the rocket. Cords followed. He was too tall for the low compartment and had to bow his shoulders, but Sponge and the priest, being smaller, stood upright.

  Everything about him was trim and unbelievably shipshape. He found himself recognising many things he had seen only in films: acceleration couches, racked space suits …

  ‘This … doesn’t work, I suppose?’ Cords said. He was just making a noise with his mouth; temporarily, his brain had ceased to function.

  ‘I’ll show you the ventilation system,’ Ed said, climbing down a steel ladder. They passed through a chamber crowded with narrow, upright bunks, stacked close together.

  ‘Room for twenty-five passengers here,’ Ed said, in passing. ‘The voyage is only six weeks long, but we can’t possibly carry food, water, air for them. They’ll pass the time drugged. Sponge here was a patient in Bart’s recently, so we now have a good supply of serum. Through there is the engine room.’

  It was as cramped as elsewhere, and as orderly. One section of panelling stood on the floor, revealing a small reciprocal pump.

  ‘Here’s the vent system,’ Ed said. ‘I suppose you know your son Conny was working on this before – he left us?’

  ‘Er … yes, he told me,’ Cords said, still dazed. ‘I’ll see what’s wrong. Look, Ed, this stuns me. Can I get this straight? You mean to say you built this thing – this space ship, your gang built it, these kids … and that it’s really going to fly?’

  Sponge laughed. Ed thrust his hands under his cassock and fixed his unnerving eyes on the detective.

  ‘No, we didn’t build The Ark,’ he said. ‘It was God’s gift, and we merely worked on that. He spoke to me and I was guided. Our first stage rocket is a British trans-continental guided ballistic missile which fell into our hands accidentally; over three years ago, a trailer-driver lost his way in the fog and drove into the Pit with the missile in tow. I saw at once what God’s purpose was.

  ‘Since then, we have worked hard. None of us knew anything about space, but we have learnt, with guidance from above.’

  ‘How did you learn, when nobody’s been to Venus yet? How did you build all this?’ Cords asked, waving his hand rather wildly.

  ‘The information and the material were already in the world. All we have done is to collect them. It could almost have been done twenty years ago, back in 1955 – but there was no war on then, to cloak our activities. Whatever was needful for us, the Lord has provided; now we even have the last measure of the fuel we require, and all is almost ready. He helps those who help themselves, if they deserve help.’

  His sharp gaze saw Cord’s eyes slide over to take in Sponge, almost the typical delink, with his slick but grimy clothes and tough, dead face.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Ed said sharply. ‘You’re wrong. If anyone needs help, these poor fallen children, girls and boys, do. They have never had a chance. Here I keep little curb on them. On Venus they will be shown the true way. Nobody will stop me now – certainly not you. Put your hands in the air.’

  As he spoke, the priest brought a gun out from under his gown and pointed it coolly at Cords.

  ‘With God’s help, I’ll blow you apart if you make one move,’ he said. ‘Get your hands up above your head.’

  As he obeyed, Cords said, ‘What’s the idea of this?’

  His thoughts raced. He could rush the priest with a fair chance of knocking the gun away before it killed him – they were only ten feet apart. But this kid, Sponge, he was now swinging a padlock and chain in a hungry fashion. Two against one: no, the set-up was not so nice.

  ‘You are an impostor, sent perhaps by the police,’ Ed told him coolly. ‘You said that Conny Striker told you he was working on this ventilation system. He was not. He was only a guard, knowing nothing about The Ark at all. When you appeared yesterday, the On
e who is over us all told me you were not what you claimed.’

  ‘I hope He also told you –’ Cords said, and launched himself at the priest. He had always made up in courage what he lacked in brains.

  The gun exploded almost in his face. Its roar blinded and deafened him, spilling pain through every nerve, seeming to swill back and forth for ever in the confines of the engine room. Cords was engulfed in this mixture of agony and noise; he could not fight his way out of it. When he struggled free, it was to find himself lying face down on the floor with a useless, bleeding right arm.

  Groaning, he rolled over and looked up.

  Ed stared down at him, eyes blazing.

  ‘My Master has provided me with a quick and accurate trigger finger,’ he said. ‘I could have killed you had I wished. You must be thankful I also am merciful.’

  Sponge looked almost as shattered as Cords. The surprise of the shot had broken through his surface toughness; he was now just a frightened boy. He leant against a bulkhead, his padlock swinging idly from one hand, trying not to be sick.

  With an effort, Cords sat up, clutching his arm and cursing.

  ‘Why didn’t you kill me?’ he asked.

  For once, the priest seemed to hesitate.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘You are needed, in a small way. Everyone has their part to play in the grand scheme of things. The Ark is all but ready to launch itself into God’s heavens. Blast-off is in two days’ time – nobody but Barney and I, who have worked out the maths, know this. Now you and Sponge also know it. Our gang here numbers over sixty; only twenty-four of us can be saved; there is room for no more. We chosen ones must leave secretly, or there will be treachery and bloodshed. Some of the ungodly must perish to save the righteous.’

  ‘Where do I come in?’ Cords asked.

  Ed made a restless movement.

  ‘What I have done here is superhuman,’ he said slowly. ‘Yet I still have human weaknesses; on Venus I shall purge them with mortification. But I cannot go without a reliable witness to stay behind and tell the world that I still live and that I have achieved all this. Look on my works, ye mighty! The name of Edward Mullion must not go unremembered. You will stay here, suitably confined. When the ship goes up, half of London will hear it, and the military will invade the Pit to find out what has happened. You will be here to tell them. Sponge, tie him up – there is some wire in that locker behind you.’