The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  A redness crept up his face and over the shining expanse of his skull. Still talking, he plunged suddenly into motion again, leading the way back to his room, closing the door after Djjckett as the other followed in. He deliberately ignored Djjckett’s sick expression.

  ‘You see, it comes back to what I was saying about the future of Yinnisfar,’ Tedden said, ‘in which the future of the individual is naturally involved. You realise that Yinnisfar and consequently most of the Federation is threatened with a massive trade recession. Some of these newly discovered worlds at the Hub, planets with less than a million years of history behind them, are stealing a march on us. Cutaligni is a case in point.

  ‘You may have heard, Djjckett Male, that the Cutalignians now have virtually an empire of their own. Planets that once dealt entirely with us are now swamped with their goods, their executives, their ideas. Cutalignian space liners and freighters are taking up trade and shipping lines that were indisputably ours for milleniums. Of course, it’s only a drop in the ocean and gets pooh-poohed even in responsible quarters, but for me it’s a sign, an omen. We’re going downhill. Why?’

  ‘I daresay you know more about all this than I do,’ Djjckctt said morosely; his face was still grey and patchy with shock. ‘The reason generally given for this trend is that the Cutalignians are long-lived, so that training and education go further, and an experienced older man can serve longer …’

  ‘Good enough. It’s a good reason. To put it in cash terms, a thousand-purs education lasts an ordinary man, a Yinnisfarian, from the age of say twenty to ninety-five; that’s only seventy-five years. But a thousand-purs education lasts a Cutalignian about a hundred and twenty years. Imagine if everyone on Earth could spend forty-five years at the age of forty. Advantageous, eh? Here, do have an affrohale, Djjckett Male; I’m sorry if I sounded short-tempered then. My nerves are all on edge today. Nothing personal intended.’

  He extended his silver case almost with a look of pleading, rebuking himself as he misinterpreted the affronted expression of Djjckett’s face (but why couldn’t these out-spacers wear civility masks like civilised people!).

  Feebly, Djjckett again refused the case. Diurnal drugging, long fashionable on Yinnisfar, was regarded as decadent on Koramandel, like the habit of masking.

  ‘I shall be better soon, Moderator,’ he said. ‘It was the shock of seeing those wretched infants … Excuse me, I think I will take a drink.’

  He snapped his fingers. Obediently, the portcase rose from where it had been quietly lying. It was neat, small, covered with short fur, much like a bag on four legs, with a hump in the middle which would open at a word of command to reveal Djjckett’s vibros and documents. Instead of giving that word, the Transfed man clicked his tongue.

  The portcase straightened up. From under its belly, a retractable pink stalk emerged and pointed towards Djjckett’s face. Nonchalantly taking the end of this stalk into his mouth, Djjckett began to suck.

  Rising half out of his enveloper, Tedden said in disgusted tones, ‘Is that thing animal or machine?’

  ‘Previously animal but presently neither animal nor machine,’ Djjckett said, removing the nipple momentarily from his mouth. ‘It belongs to one of the group known as mammalloys now being exploited on Koramandel; no doubt we shall begin exporting to your planet shortly.’

  ‘Never!’ Tedden gasped. ‘It’s repulsive! I apologise but I do beg you to stop sucking … You mean the beastly thing is live?’

  ‘Hardly that. It has no brain, only a nervous system. This particular mammalloy is an applied mutation from camel stock. You see how much more efficient and lighter it is than any robot could be. I must say how surprised I am to see you shocked over an experiment in many ways similar to your own.’

  ‘Similar! Similar! Ye glories! This terrible mutilation of animals – ’

  ‘Oh, and how is it one half as monstrous as your own terrible mutilation of human babies?’

  For the first time, Djjckett was enjoying himself; he took a further suck before dismissing the portcase. But Tedden was gripping his desk in anger.

  ‘The gene changes made in EAMH babies occur before conception.’

  ‘Similarly with our mammalloys, of course, Moderator.’

  The Moderator stood for a minute in complete silence. When he at last sat back again, he even smiled. ‘There are two sides to every question,’ he said.

  As the enveloper took him, he rubbed his hand across his big face, appearing to dismiss all that had gone before.

  ‘Lots of worries,’ he said. ‘Forgive me if I make a vibrodo a minute.’

  He dialled the screen on his desk and the head and shoulders of a uniformed woman elaborately masked appeared immediately.

  ‘Tunnice?’ Tedden asked. ‘How is she please?’

  ‘I was just going to call you, Moderator,’ the masked face said. ‘Everything seems to be perfectly under control. She is quite comfortable, and we aren’t expecting any further developments for a while. We’ll vib you again as soon as anything happens.’

  She smiled, an official and rather strained curling of the lips that was emphasized by the mask.

  ‘Thanks, Mingra Female,’ Tedden said, cutting her off.

  He turned back to Djjckett a little blankly, as if the whole object of their meeting had gone from his head.

  ‘Yes … You see, Djjckett Male, the gap between our capabilities and the Cutalignians’ must be closed. And it can be closed. That’s what we’re doing here, or trying to do despite outside interference; perhaps that’s what you’re trying to do too, with those beastly mammalloys – I had no idea how far your experiments had gone … Everyone lives under pressure nowadays; you know what civilisation has become. It’s a rat race. Cutthroat competition. But supposing you matured at the age of five instead of the age of twenty …’

  Djjckett nodded sagely.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘For anyone who elects to compete in modern life, the competition is indeed stiff and merciless. But no provocation can ever be great enough to allow the meddling with human life that you are doing here. Animal life is different, it exists for man’s purpose. On ethical grounds, and even on biological grounds, your experiments are not permissible. Our bodies have achieved a balance … we – we blaspheme by trying to alter them. After all, there were experiments in the past; you will remember the sleepless men of Krokazoa.’

  ‘That particular experiment failed. Others have succeeded. And I particularly regret hearing a moral tone taken to EAMH attempts to ennoble human life by any group capable of degrading animal life. Allow me to say that you and I hold very opposed views on the sacredness of animal existence. Ah well … We constantly “meddle with human life”, as you call it. Every surgical operation, every anaesthetic, every dose of cough stuff you take represents such an experiment.’

  ‘What has all this to do with the babies you showed me upstairs, Tedden Male? Human gene-shift is altogether a more serious matter than a dose of cough mixture.’

  Tedden got up and thrust his hands into his swathe. He began to walk about, avoiding the vicinity of the portcase. Djjckett’s eyes never left him.

  ‘All that’s happened to those babies is this,’ the geneticist said slowly. ‘We operated on their “genetic dies”, the primal cell moulds from which all subsequent cells are modelled in the building of an individual. As you will know, the whole inheritance quota of any individual is contained in these dies. One gene was removed from their chromosomes before birth – before conception. As a result, the babies are able to stand almost as soon as they are born.’

  ‘It isn’t natural,’ Djjckett said.

  ‘It is for a baby animal.’

  ‘Moderator, these are human beings!’’

  Ignoring the remark, Tedden turned to a cabinet under the wide windows, and shuffled in a drawer. He pulled a microacath out, studied it for a moment, and passed it over for Djjckett to look at.

  Round the glossy print trailed something resembling
raffia, knotted at intervals with differently shaped knots; it formed an eccentric spiral, the middle of which was distinctly darker than the edges. Round the outside of the Knots, a tendrilled haze gathered. Djjckett gazed at it in silence, twisting the print first one way, then the other.

  ‘Is it a chromosome?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a jell taken by our infra-electronic micro-camera of a human chromosome. Those knotty points on it are the large molecules we call genes, which are the bearers of heredity, and carry certain characteristics over from one generation to another. There are one thousand two hundred and five of them. The outer ones are what we call negative or “damper” genes.

  ‘What we are doing is to shift off some of the damper genes from the chromosomes of unborn children, before they leave the gametangium of the parent. It’s a fairly simple freezing process, not even painful to the father. The operation must be far less drastic than the ones which produced the abortion at your feet.’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ Djjckett said, standing up and scratching his head in an agony of perplexity. ‘You must see that from my point of view, the more you say the worse you make matters. What reasonable man would co-operate with you to have his children – well, made abnormal?’

  Slowly Tedden pulled at his nose, as if he could control another outburst of irritation that way.

  ‘Any reasonable man,’ he answered, heavily emphasizing each word.

  He took the microacath back to the cabinet.

  ‘Any reasonable man,’ he repeated, ‘would give his child the chance to get a head start over its contemporaries. Blessed are the first come, for they shall be first served! Children don’t normally stand up till they’re about a year old, Djjckett Male; ours stand when they are a day old. That is progress, say what you will.

  ‘Knock off other of the damper genes and you get other advances.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Of course I admit we had a few failures at first – babies born covered in hair, others with fully developed – well, no matter; the point is that through a few mishaps the EAMH may have gained a bad name among the ill-informed. Unfortunately, you see, we cannot try this sort of thing on animals first. Animals haven’t got damper genes; from the few elementary jells you people have produced concerning your … er, work, I gather you work on the mammal’s stimulator genes, which is a very different matter. Strange. I suspect humans developed their damper system as a safeguard against precocity – hence, compared with animals, the long period required to mature. Now that the world is long past its adolescence, precocity is exactly what we need. Once it was wiser that we did not learn too fast; now circumstances demand that we learn as quickly as possible. As I said the world’s a rat race. Ah, it’s a burden …’

  He came and sat down at the desk again. Again he passed his hand over his face. His eyes remained blank, as if focused on something beyond the discussion, as he fingered his mask.

  ‘You claim to have the world’s interests at heart.’ Djjckett said, not without sympathy, for he found himself liking this odd man, ‘yet you think exceedingly little of it.’

  For the first time, Tedden looked deeply into Djjckett’s eyes. He saw there, not the scarecrow he had imagined he was dealing with, but a shrewd man whose awkwardness of manner did not entirely cover his firmness of purpose. Tedden looked away, drumming his fingers on the desk.

  ‘What is there but the world?!’’ he exclaimed almost in a groan.

  ‘I am a religious man, Dr Tedden, a Theorist; I have a positive answer to that question.’

  ‘Ah, To, you mean? Sorry, Djjckett, count me out. I’ve never seen him on my microacaths,’ Tedden said bleakly.

  They looked at each other again, neither much enjoying what they saw, in one of those dead moments in men’s lives when even hope seems hopeless.

  ‘You would naturally be disinclined to believe in a creator, because you are playing creator yourself,’ Djjckett said, in an apologetic tone. ‘I take it your future intentions are to knock more damper genes off, as more volunteer parents appear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But can you predict results? I mean, do you know certainly what change you will effect before the baby is born?’

  Tedden was sweating; suddenly he looked a lesser man. Seeing Djjckett glance at his forehead, he brought out a tissue and mopped it abstractedly.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not exactly. In life there are no certainties.’

  ‘Not exactly! You are madly irresponsible, Moderator, for all your talk of the common – ’

  Djjckett had risen to his feet now, shaking off the enveloper, his collar in disarray, his hands clenching. The portcase rose with him and stretched its legs. His speech was cut off by the jangle of the vibroduct. Tedden flipped it on with terrible eagerness, almost crouching over the instrument. The face of the female who had appeared before flared into view; she had one hand up to her mouth, in a sort of nervous excitement.

  ‘Oh, Moderator Senior Tedden,’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s Tunnice – your partner, I mean. She’s – the pains have started again. I think you’d better come up. Quickly, please.’

  ‘At once, Mingra, coming at once.’

  Tedden switched off. He was already out of his enveloper, apologising, moving towards the door, saying good-bye to Djjckett.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me now, Djjckett. My partner is up in the labour ward – I must go to her. There have been unfortunate complications. I’m afraid it’s an awkward case, premature … Excuse me.’

  Instinctively, Djjckett was following, out of the room, into the corridor, going through the formal and perfectly sincere phrases of regret, keeping pace with Tedden as his portcase cantered behind them.

  ‘Terribly sorry to hear … Wouldn’t have kept you if I had known … You should have told me, intruding at such a time … You’ve been so patient … It really embarrasses me to think that I … ’

  Tedden could not shake him off. Djjckett pressed into the lift with him. Tedden closed the gates, thumbed the button, and they slid upwards. The portcase was left behind.

  ‘What has brought the birth on prematurely, Moderator, may I ask?’

  ‘My wife had a fall last night,’ Tedden said abstractedly, glancing upwards, biting his thumb.

  ‘I am so sorry … I know how these things happen. It must be a great comfort to her to know her husband’s a –

  Djjckett stopped in mid-sentence as his throat constricted.

  ‘There’s no danger, is there?’ he asked, in a small voice.

  ‘Danger? What do you mean, danger?’

  ‘Tedden Male … You’ve been – you’ve carried out one of these gene experiments on your own partner!’

  The other man’s face, now pale above its partial mask, told him he had guessed rightly. They glared at each other as the lift purred up through the heart of the building, two men of different planets who would never understand each other’s viewpoints. Tedden looked away first.

  ‘You use the word “experiment” as if it were synonymous with torture,’ he snapped. ‘You’re just a superstitious layman, Djjckett, in this particular matter. My partner enters whole-heartedly and co-operatively into this great venture with me. It’s only natural we should want our child to share the fruits of our researches.’

  ‘Natural!’ Djjckett echoed, as the lift stopped. ‘It’s anything but natural, man! What’s this child going to be like?’

  The gates opened, they stepped into another soundproof corridor. Djjckett found himself shaking with a horrid agitation.

  ‘What’s it going to be like?’ he repeated, plucking at the other’s sleeve, hurrying after him. ‘You don’t know, do you?’

  A nurse stood at the far end of the corridor by an open door, her face almost covered by mask, the mask expressionless. She beckoned anxiously. Tedden was running now, his mouth open, his powerful face blank. Djjckett ran beside him, caught in a general feeling of tension. Tedden’s face terrified him; the nurse’s face terrified him; what had she seen?

/>   ‘I’m in the rat race,’ he thought. ‘I shouldn’t be running. Why am I running? I shouldn’t be running!’

  ‘We didn’t like to tell you on the vib,’ the nurse said, in a high, nervous voice. ‘The – the baby has just this moment arrived. Your wife will be all right. The baby …’

  Just for a second, Tedden paused on the threshold of the ward, as if willing himself to go in. Then he entered, floundering through the door.

  Dithering behind him, the frightened Djjckett caught a glimpse of half a dozen uniformed figures round a bed. Their backs were to him. The smell of disinfectant drifted to him.

  Then the new-born child’s cry came to him, a thin, mewling cry full of fear and rage; it was saying, ‘Let me get back! Oh, let me get back!’

  Are You An Android?

  Perhaps even readers of science fiction magazines fail to realise how rapidly science is overtaking fiction. Take the field of synthesised molecules, for instance. Over a million molecules are now known to scientists by name, if not by Christian name. Their ranks are being added to at the rate of about thirty thousand a year. Plastics which simulate human skin are already on the market.

  I am not happy about this.

  The science of cybernetics is advancing with equally rapid strides. By now it is possible to duplicate many of the functions of the human brain. Artificial eyes can be made to see, artificial limbs can be made to move, artificial hands can be made to reach out … No, it’s too much! Couple these developments with the new plastics, and you realise why I am worried.

  The day of the android has dawned.

  Already it is possible to make a robot, a horrible thing of steel and plastic, which will outwardly resemble a human being. Inside, its purposes will be alien. And tucked below the solar plexus … a bomb triggered to explode at a fatal key phrase, perhaps?

  This idea occurred to me a few evenings ago, after supper. I mentioned it to my wife. She only laughed, nodded mechanically, and went on reading.