The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  The interceptor had landed tail first on its buffers. Already the pilot was picking his way over the uneven ground towards Tyne: although his head was bent as he watched his footing over the lava, Tyne recognised him. Dodging behind some nearby columns of cactus, he drew Benda’s gun and waited in ambush for him.

  ‘Raise your hands!’ he said, as the man appeared.

  Startled, Allan Cunliffe did as he was told.

  ‘You don’t have to aim that thing at me, Tyne,’ he said quietly. He bit his lips and looked round anxiously.

  ‘I think I do,’ Tyne replied. ‘Until about ten minutes ago, I thought you were dead; now I want a few explanations from you.’

  ‘Didn’t Murray tell you I was still alive?’

  ‘No, Murray didn’t have time to tell me much. I worked this one out for myself, believe it or not. As soon as I knew Murray had tricked me into following him around, I guessed his tale about shooting you on Luna was a lie, the carrot that kept me going like a donkey; I had thought it unlikely to begin with. Obviously that means you’re as implicated as he. Take your belt off.’

  ‘My trousers will fall down.’

  ‘Keep clear of the cactus then!’

  ‘You’re not pleased to see me, Tyne; you’re all mixed up.’

  ‘So mixed up I trust no one. I regard you as an enemy, Allan.’

  Tyne took the belt and began to tie Allan’s hands behind his back. As he worked, Allan talked, protesting.

  ‘Listen, Tyne, you can trust me, just as you always could. Do you think I’d work for the Rosks in any way? I’ll tell you this: I was a UNC agent before I ever met you – even before I joined the Space Service. And I can prove I’m an agent. Look, the two men who caught up with you at the plankton plant, and were in the car when the fly-spy appeared –’

  ‘Dickens and the dumb fellow?’ Tyne asked. ‘What about them?’

  ‘I was the dumb one, Tyne! I had to keep masked and silent or you’d have recognised me.’

  Allan stood there helpless now, his trousers sagging down to his knees. In sudden fury, Tyne pushed him over and knelt by him, grabbing his shirt in his fist.

  ‘You bastard, Allan! Why couldn’t you have spoken? Why’ve I had to go round in the dark all the time, nobody helping me?’

  Allan tried to roll away from him, his face black.

  ‘You still had to think I was dead then, in case you gave up the hunt for Murray,’ he said. ‘Time was short; we wanted you to keep driving ahead. Don’t you see that when Dickens had given you a spot of necessary information, we were going to let you escape!’

  ‘You could be lying now!’

  ‘Why should I lie? You must have that microfilm now – you reached Murray; all that’s needed is to get it to UNC as quickly as possible. Hand it over to me and let’s get back to safety.’

  * * *

  Tyne’s heart jumped. So Allan – once his friend, now (caught in the no-man’s land of intrigue) his rival – did not know how Murray had concealed the invasion plans. Grabbing him by his jacket front, Tyne dragged him until they were behind a cactus clump, out of sight of the Rosk base, still surprisingly silent and menacing.

  ‘Tell me what happened on Area 101 when I was laid low,’ he demanded. ‘When you were supposed to have been killed.’

  ‘It’s no secret,’ Allan said. ‘You went out like a light when you were hit on the shoulder. Murray and I tried to carry you back to the ship and of course the Rosks caught us and disarmed us. There were only three of them – did you know that? – but in their far more efficient suits, they made rings round us. They told us that they and the fellow manning the searchlight were the only members of the peace faction, the RPF, supporting Tawdell Co Barr on Luna. But they’d managed to filch these plans; that was easy enough. The trouble was to get them to Earth – they were all three already under suspicion.

  ‘When we heard the facts from them, Murray volunteered to take the spool to their Padang contact. To make sure he did so, they said they would hold me hostage. I watched Murray drag you back into the ship and leave.’

  ‘How did you get away from them?’ Tyne asked suspiciously.

  ‘I didn’t. They let me go of their own accord after a while. At first I thought it was for the reason they gave, that they could not keep me concealed anywhere from Ap II Dowl’s secret police; but it wasn’t. They wanted me loose so that I could set the World Government forces on to Murray. I made full pelt for UNC HQ Luna in the stolen lunarider they gave me, and got through to Double K Four – the agent you know by the name of Stobart. By the time he picked you up in the bar of the Roxy, he had heard from me and knew roughly what was going on. Then I got back to Padang myself as quickly as possible, meeting up with Stobart and Dickens. By then –’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Tyne said.

  He could hear a whine growing louder in the sky. He had been listening for it. Other interceptors were heading this way. Allan looked up with hope in his eyes. Tyne had less than five minutes left.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said roughly to Allan. ‘You tell me these Roskian pacifists let you go so that you could set our people on to Murray, just when everything depended on his getting through? How do you make sense of that?’

  ‘The whole business was staged to look as if everything depended on Murray’s getting through. In fact, those RPF boys were clever; they wanted Murray caught with the film on him. They never intended anything but that the plans should fall into Earth hands. If Murray had double-crossed them, so much better. Of course, Tawdell’s agent here, the girl Ittai, didn’t know that; she went to meet Murray in all good faith.’

  ‘Why go such a long way round about? Why didn’t they just post the film, once they had stolen it, direct to UNC?’

  Allan laughed briefly.

  ‘And who’d have believed it? You know how the political situation stands. If the film had been sent direct to us, it would probably have been dismissed as just another of Ap II Dowl’s threats. The Area 101 RPF had even planted that strange object we had to investigate outside their dome as a bait; we happened to be the mice who came and sniffed at the cheese.’

  Tyne stood up. He could see the interceptors now, three of them flying low. At any minute now, they would see the crashed helicopter and be coming down.

  ‘You’ve made yourself clear,’ he said to Allan. ‘The whole episode has been a twist from start to finish, and I’ve had to take most of the twisting. Only one thing isn’t clear to me.’

  Hopefully Allan propped himself on one elbow and asked what that was.

  ‘I don’t know who I can trust but myself. Everyone else is playing a subtle double game.’

  ‘You can trust Stobart, even if you refuse to trust me. He should be in one of those three interceptors.’

  ‘I trust nobody, not even that fat slob Stobart!’

  Stooping, he wrenched Allan’s trousers off, tied them savagely round his ankles.

  ‘Sweat it out, feller!’ he advised. ‘Your pals will be down in a couple of minutes to put your pants on. And don’t forget to look after Benda Ittai. She’s over by the crash. Meanwhile, I’m borrowing your machine.’

  Ignoring Allan’s shouts, he ran across the lava bed to the grounded interceptor. The other planes were wheeling overhead. As he pulled himself into the swing seat, the radio was calling.

  ‘… Why don’t you answer? What’s happening down there?’ It was Stobart’s voice, harsh but recognisable.

  Puffing, assuming Allan’s voice as well as he could, Tyne flipped the speech switch and said, ‘Regret delay … fight with Leslie … I’ve got him tied up … Come on down.’

  ‘Have you got the microfilm? Murray Mumford reports that it’s in Tyne’s false hand.’

  ‘I haven’t got it. Come on down,’ Tyne said, cutting the voice off. Switching on the feed, he tensed himself and eased in the jets. Rocking skywards, the interceptor responded perfectly; Tyne had flown these machines back in his training days.

>   With joy, he thought of the indecision that must be clouding Stobart’s mind. Yes, Stobart would be suspicious. But Stobart would have to land to discover what was going on. Tyne found himself hoping that the guns of the Rosk base would open up. Just to give the agent a scare.

  He checked the fuel, finding his tanks almost full. Excellent; he could get to Singapore, centre of World Government, in one hop. He was not going to unscrew his steel fist for anyone less than Governor-General Hjanderson of the UNC.

  VIII

  IT was, and the most scrupulous person must agree, a beautiful cell; commodious, with toilet and bathroom (complete with shower and massage unit) attached, it was furnished in impeccable if uninspired taste, and provided with books, visicube and pictures; there was air-conditioning, there was concealed lighting, but it was still a cell.

  The food was excellent and Tyne had eaten well. The couch was comfortable and Tyne had slept well. The carpet was deep, and Tyne now walked restlessly back and forth upon it.

  His left hand was missing.

  He had been confined here for twenty hours. Arriving in Singapore shortly after two o’clock on the previous afternoon, he had been arrested at once, interrogated at length and shut in here. His questioners had been civil, removing his steel hand sympathetically, even apologetically. Since then, all his wants had been ministered to, his patience had been exhausted.

  A knock came at the door. They knocked! It seemed the ultimate in irony. A slender man with a face the colour of an old pocket, dressed in a faultless suit, entered and attempted to smile at Tyne.

  ‘Would you be so kind as to step this way to see Governor Purdoe?’ he asked.

  Tyne saved his wrath, carrying it almost gleefully behind the minion until he was ushered into a large, bare room where a uniformed octogenarian rose from behind a desk. This was Prison Governor Purdoe, a watchful man with a watchful smile arranged on his apple-clean face.

  ‘How much longer am I going to be locked up here?’ Tyne demanded, marching up to his desk. ‘When am I going to see Hjanderson? What the devil do you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘I am the governor of this institute,’ the old man said reprovingly, without removing his smile.

  ‘Let’s not bring class into this. All I want to know is am I or am I not a bloody hero? If I am, is this the sort of treatment you think I enjoy?’

  ‘You are indeed a hero, Mr Leslie,’ the governor said placatingly. ‘Nobody denies it. Please sit down and smoke a mescahale and let some of the blood drain out of your head.’

  Governor Purdoe came round from behind the desk. He stood in front of Tyne, looking at him until he seated himself; then he said, ‘It may console you to know that your two associates in this affair, Murray Mumford and Allan Cunliffe, are also detained here. We are not sitting idly by. Your stories are being correlated.’

  ‘All I’m saying is that there was no need to place me under lock and key to start with. I came here voluntarily, didn’t I?’

  The governor inclined his grey head.

  ‘When you arrived, there was a general UNC call out for you, dead or alive. You were fortunate, Mr Leslie, that we managed to get you and keep you safely before less enlightened parties reached you. An agent whom I believe you know as Stobart had reason to fear, when you tricked him yesterday, that you might have turned traitor. He merely took the precautions expected of him.’

  ‘Don’t mention Stobart to me, Governor! It brings me out in a rash. Just tell me what you wanted me for. Can I have my fist back?’

  Governor Purdoe smiled a little bleakly. Seen close to, the smile was not attractive.

  ‘Shortly,’ he said. ‘I summoned you here because I wanted in general to tell you that you are in the best place here – that far from being neglected, you are the prime mover in a lot of intense activity, most of which necessarily remains secret, even from you – and in particular to tell you that Governor-General Hjanderson will come to thank you personally as soon as possible. We believe you acted with excellent intentions, you see.’

  Snorting, Tyne stubbed out his mescahale on the shiny desk top and jumped up. He topped Purdoe by a head, but the latter never moved.

  ‘Governments!’ he snapped. ‘You people are all alike! Diplomacy and suspicion – nothing but! Nobody trusting anybody! Don’t you take anything that happens at its face value?’

  ‘You have run into a lot of trouble because you did just that,’ the governor said. He turned away, walked round behind his desk, sat down with a hint of tiredness. His manicured right hand performed a gesture of contempt. ‘There is no trust anywhere, Leslie. I regret it as much as you, but I face the fact. None of you young men are realists. These plans for the invasion from Alpha Centauri II – not a word about them must escape; that is just one good reason for your continuing to stay with us. Try – please try to think less of yourself, and reflect instead on the grave issues looming behind these plans. Sithers, conduct our guest back to his – room.’

  The man with the dirty linen face came forward. Tyne shrugged his shoulders, making hopelessly towards the door; he knew he would get nothing out of Purdoe even if he squeezed him like a sponge. He had met the institutional type before.

  In the doorway he paused.

  ‘Just tell me one tiny, weeny little state secret, governor,’ he begged. ‘All that tale Allan Cunliffe told me about the Rosks really manoeuvring to get the microfilm in our hands – was that true or false?’

  An odd expression – it might have been another smile – passed over the governor’s face and vanished.

  ‘Cunliffe has been an excellent agent for a number of years,’ he said, ‘and, though I grant you it does not necessarily follow, everything he told you was perfectly correct. The RPF wanted us to get the invasion plans. However, there was one minor point he missed, because he could not possibly have known it. The invasion plans themselves are probably false.’

  * * *

  The rest of the day passed with intolerable slowness for Tyne.

  He reflected, as the governor had urged him to do, on the grave issues behind the Rosk invasion plans. One issue at least stuck out a mile. There had been no proof as yet that Alpha II’s technology was far in advance of Earth’s in this last decade of the twenty second century: even the construction of a gigantic interstellar ship was, in theory at least, not beyond Earth’s resources. But an interstellar invasion implied many things. It implied, surely, some form of faster-than-light communication between Ap II Dowl’s force and Alpha II. It implied, too, a drive a good deal faster than the one professedly used to get the first ship here, for no invasion would be feasible between planets a two-generations’ journey apart. It implied, undoubtedly, an integration of planetary resources vastly superior to anything Earth dreamed of, split as it was into numerous fractious nations. It implied, above all, an overweening confidence in success; as vast an undertaking as an interstellar invasion would never get under way unless the powers behind it considered it a fool-proof scheme.

  The picture was not, Tyne admitted to himself, anything but gloomy. The role he had played in it shrank into the mere prologue to a whole volume of catastrophe.

  But if the plans were false?

  What did that mean? Had the RPF been tricked, perhaps, into believing that the belligerent forces would do one thing, whereas actually they intended to do another? Tyne, sitting hour after hour in his so comfortable, so commodious cell, could invent many such unhelpful questions to ask himself. Only the answers were beyond him.

  If he disliked not knowing the answers, he disliked knowing the question even more.

  On the third day of Tyne’s imprisonment, he was summoned again to the governor’s presence. He appeared in chastened mood before the old man.

  ‘I’ve had no news,’ he said. ‘What’s the general situation? Are the Rosks making a move?’

  ‘The situation has changed very radically since we last met,’ Purdoe said, his face crumpling into innumerable pleats as he smiled. ‘And may I
say, Mr Leslie, how glad I am that you no longer come into here clamouring for release. You have been thinking, I take it?’

  Tyne sighed.

  ‘I’m not really a man of action, governor, but that doesn’t mean you have to be avuncular with me. What have you brought me here for this time?’

  ‘Take a mescahale, young man. The Governor-General of the UNC, Mr Hjanderson, is here to see you; and I should advise you to watch your tongue for the occasion. Now please excuse me for a minute.’

  He disappeared through a rear door with his sprightly old man’s gait. To kill time, Tyne stared at the linen-faced attendant who had brought him here; the attendant fingered his tie and coughed.

  Hjanderson, when he appeared, was instantly recognisable: dapper, fifty-ish, a little like a wolf with an expense account, smelling agreeably of the most fashionable shaving soap. He shook hands briskly with Tyne and sat down facing him, palms pressed on knees.

  ‘I promised to come and see you,’ he said, ‘and I have kept that promise. I regret it has taken me so long to do. These have been days of crisis. Very grave crisis.’

  ‘I’m pleased if I have been of any service. Perhaps I can have my hand back now, sir.’

  Handersen brushed most of this aside.

  ‘Service? Yes, Leslie, I think you played your part as you saw it. You were never more than partially in the picture, you know. We have received a great deal of help from the Roskian girl, Benda Ittai, whom you left for dead beside her crashed helicopter.’

  With an effort, Tyne swallowed this blatant misrepresentation; his term with the UNC had accustomed him to such gambits.

  ‘Apart from the fact that I did not leave her for dead, how is she? Where is she?’ he asked.

  ‘She is radiant; she is here,’ Purdoe said, interrupting, coming up from behind his desk. With his thin, veined hand he touched – for whatever privately submerged reason of his own – the arm of the fur coat Benda wore, as he ushered her through the rear doorway and into the office.

  ‘Benda!’ Tyne exclaimed. Forgetting the Governor-General of the UNC, he went over to her and took her hands. Hot; 105.1; alien; but beautiful, and smiling in most tender fashion. He couldn’t let her get away with it so easily.