The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  Breakbane in this happy year 1982, when the Treaty of Everlasting Peace was finally signed by all the world’s nations, was twenty-five – an aged and gnarled twenty-five. With his squint eye and shock of hair (and one felt the shock even after one’s first meeting) Breakbane was proceeding across the Inner Quad with the curious retrograde movement of a confirmed dwarf.

  Observing this, Dr Weaver, even though he conferred telephonically with the Chancellor of the University, muttered under his breath to that figure through his window, ‘For heaven’s sake, do not come bothering me today of all days!’

  His plea went as unregarded as it went unheard. Breakbane came stamping up Staircase VI and irregular plonking noises filtering through Dr Weaver’s door told of his progress towards it.

  The Usher of Marlborough set down his phone and turned to the two people, the man and the woman, who had been waiting for him to complete his conversation.

  ‘Miss Crisping,’ he said to his secretary, ‘the Chancellor says that the Hebdomadal Council will meet at 5.30.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘An hour and a half till then. You may make me a pot of tea if you will. And please find Professor Price and ask him to see me directly his parapsychology lecture finishes.’

  As Miss Crisping left, the Usher turned to the man who stood smoking by his desk.

  ‘Martin, I don’t know what we can do about your problem. Would you be kind enough to go to the police station and tell them what you told me? Give them a statement. Ask for Detective Inspector Parkinson – I’ve lunched with him once or twice. He’s a nice, sympathetic man.’

  ‘But in this case – ’

  ‘Please, Martin. You know I’m overloaded today.’

  ‘Of course, Dr Weaver,’ Graham Martin said, brushing up his little moustache like a cat washing its whiskers. As he moved to the door, his superior added, ‘And Martin – you will, I suspect, meet Mr. Carroll Breakbane outside my rooms. If you possibly can, head him off. Explain how busy I am.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  As Martin left, the Usher sat down at his desk and phoned his wife. He had scarcely terminated that call when the door opened and, with a fascinating and noisy display of silence, Breakbane entered.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come in, I know I shouldn’t,’ he said, rushing forward, arms extended. ‘I met that nice cybernetics man outside and he said you were frightfully busy, but I thought that if you could just listen for five minutes …’

  His voice died away, he looked wretched. His lower lip trembled. This was a typical Breakbane ploy. This was one fool the Usher had to suffer gladly: Breakbane’s grandfather, Edwin Breakbane, the inventor of Breakbane’s Slotted Corners had endowed several chairs at Marlborough; Breakbane’s father, head of what was now a tidy little industry with four factories and an annual sales sheet of something like six million pounds, was expected to lash out with a new wing for Marlborough at any moment. In the circumstances, Carroll Breakbane had to be tolerated.

  Although these strategic factors undoubtedly weighed with the Usher of Marlborough, it was a small thing that prompted him to ask Breakbane to sit down: Breakbane’s hands were shaking. That at least was no artifice.

  ‘I can certainly listen for no more than five minutes, Carroll,’ Dr Weaver said. ‘My affairs are extremely congested today.’

  ‘You’ll never believe me when I tell you,’ Breakbane said, totally unaware of what a poor preface this made to his remarks, as he plunged his face into his hands with an extravagant gesture more suited to one taking the first bathe of the season.

  ‘I am prepared to reserve judgement until you finish, if you are not too long. Please proceed.’

  This remark seemed to be all Breakbane needed by way of encouragement. Leaping from the chair as if gravity meant nothing to him, he burst round the desk, seized his startled head of college by the wrists, and exclaimed as he sank onto one knee, ‘Dr Weaver, sir, I have reason to fear for my own sanity, very grave reason.’

  To that, Dr Weaver felt, there were several witty answers, but he said merely, ‘I must ask you to relate the facts to me, my boy.’

  ‘Facts! Are they facts or hallucinations?!’ exclaimed Breakbane, clutching his head and wrenching it distractedly this way and that. After many more such perplexed and perplexing exclamations, Breakbane embarked upon the stormy seas of his narrative.

  My elder brother Everard returned from South Africa last week (Breakbane said in a strangled voice). As he is now taking charge of our Northampton branch, I drove over there yesterday to see him and fetch him down here for a little reunion – it’s a year since we met. I have a particular affection for Everard; in him, I always say, all the most loveable Breakbane qualities combine to the best advantage.

  He was rather tight when I met him – this would be about three o’clockish, so I took him down to the canteen to sober up. I did say we met at the factory, didn’t I? Of course at that time the canteen was absolutely deserted. In one comer stood a pin table that my father had imported cheap from Venezuela during the trouble with President What’s-his-name – the firm has interests out there.

  Anyhow, I don’t want to take up your time and that’s beside the point. The point is, I explained to Everard how I was up here working for this thesis on the Subsidiary Functions of a Non-Functioning Complex variable, so that naturally things like games of chance interested me. The pin table was the customary type: five balls bouncing off springs, as they descend the board lights up numbers which have to reach 100,000 before you win a prize. I estimated by following the course of the balls as Everard played, that one would be unlikely to win more than once in two thousand games. Then I looked up and saw that he had notched up 100,000 and won.

  Of course I know this doesn’t sound much now. I can tell the incident bores you, sir. I’m sorry, sir; I do realise there is no type of narrative more tedious than the faintly unlikely. All the same, the anecdote is necessary. If I am mad, then that is the point at which I began to go mad, because it was because of that that something far more extraordinary happened, Oh Lord, Dr Weaver, life is hell!

  Everard by now was sliding back into the realms of sobriety. All he needed to be absolutely right was a breath of fresh air. Behind the factory is a field of knee-high grass; there I took him and walked him about despite his protests.

  Ignoring him, I discussed the coincidence of his winning the pin table prize.

  ‘It reminds me,’ I said, as we pushed through the grass, ‘of an odd coincidence which happened to Father when he was a boy. I don’t know if you remember this, Everard, but one day he was walking with his Uncle Spindexter in a field that must have been much like this. Uncle Spindexter was a nature man and happened to be discoursing at the time on some of the less embarrassing habits of rabbits. He was saying how these creatures if surprised will often squat down in the grass where they are, so that a man may almost tread on them before they run away.’

  Everard indicated to me that the topic had no interest for him, but I continued.

  ‘Father was surprised at this, apparently,’ I said. ‘As a child he must have been somewhat naive. His Uncle Spindexter assured him it was true, adding, “In fact, if you knew where the rabbits were, you could just put your hand down into the grass as you passed” – and he demonstrated to Father as he spoke – “and pull up a fine fat specimen by the ears”.

  ‘And listen, Everard! – as Great-uncle Spindexter spoke, he suited the action to the words and pulled from the grass – to his astonishment as much as to Father’s – a fine fat specimen of a rabbit up by the ears.’

  You may imagine, sir, and I have not forgotten how precious your time is, that while I related this somewhat complex little anecdote to brother Everard I had been illustrating it myself with suitable actions. As I demonstrated my Great-uncle’s surprise at lifting up a rabbit just where the climax of his story demanded it, I too raised my hand from the grass – and lo and behold! I too had in my grasp a fine fat specimen of a rabbit. Wordlessly, Everard and I carried
it kicking back to the factory.

  From the look on your face, Dr Weaver, I see I strain your credulity. What can I do but swear by the honour of the Breakbanes that I think – think, ha! – myself to be telling the truth of what happened? Even as I reassure you, I know I must immediately strain your credulity even further.

  We took, as I say, the rabbit back into the factory, and proceeded slowly up to Everard’s office, he leaning somewhat heavily on my shoulder. I have already explained that he had been inebriated. As. a consequence, he had not visited his office since the previous day. All that time an unfortunate monkey he had smuggled back with him from South Africa had been confined to the room. Happily it had ample food and water there, and thus lacked nothing but company.

  Producing a key, Everard opened the door and we stepped in. His office was in total disorder. The contents of every file had been distributed in casual fashion over the room. Such furniture as was moveable had been moved. The curtains and blinds had been torn from the windows. The monkey itself sat nonchalantly on top of a wall fan. I thought it looked pleased with itself.

  While Everard contented himself by standing there hurling imprecations and, almost, the rabbit at it, I attempted a hasty tidy-up before ringing for my brother’s secretary. Thus it was I who made the terrible discovery.

  No doubt you are familiar, sir, with that intriguing pronouncement of Sir Arthur Eddington’s that if twenty-five apes – was it twenty-five? – were set to pound away randomly on typewriters they would eventually type out the entire works of Shakespeare by accident. My reason accepted this as true if hardly demonstrable, although I knew that the time element would have to be very long, even if you had a billion apes on a billion typewriters.

  Imagine then my utter surprise when I picked up Everard’s discarded typewriter from the floor and looked at the pile of paper lying beside it. The monkey, who had been provisionally christened Silvanus, had passed its time by randomly typing, and had produced, after some preliminary doodles, Shakespeare’s play The Two Gentlemen of Verona even down to the stage directions.

  Here, sir, let me allay a conjecture that must at once arise in your mind. Silvanus had absolutely no education at all. Only two months ago he was sporting happily in the forests of Basutoland among his friends.

  He had achieved something against which the odds were astronomically incomputable.

  With trembling hands I took the manuscript to the window and studied it. Here and there, I admit, a misprint had crept in. By and large it was word perfect; Silvanus, banging the keys in blind indifference, had by chance copied the letter order of one of Shakespeare’s plays. I knew that if every electron in the world were a randomly typing monkey, the chances of them pulling off this particular feat made it unlikely the job would get done in the next billion years.

  Let me pass lightly – for I see you glance at your watch, sir – over the next few hours. Suffice it to say that my brother was far less impressed with the miraculous typescript than I was, although he agreed that no one but Silvanus could have typed it. His mind, I supposed at the time, was clouded by the fading of his inebriation and the dawn of his hangover. As for me, my mind was clouded by the shock of this incident. I drove him back here in the Healey – did I tell you he was staying with me last night? – and neither of us spoke a word all the way.

  We had been proposing to dine at the Mitre with Everard’s old tutor, Obadiah Smith. Everard decided to call this off – Obadiah can be very tiresome if one is feeling under the weather – so I sent a note round to Corpus excusing us and we spent a quiet evening in my flat. I will not go into details except to say that at about nine o’clock we decided to have a game of cards – Everard dealt. When I picked up my hand, I found I had all the diamonds and clubs – and they fanned out in order, ace, two, three, right up to the king.

  By a yet stranger coincidence, Everard’s hand had fallen the same way for hearts and spades. Chance had arranged them in numerical order! We abandoned the game, and shortly thereafter my brother retired to bed.

  And so, Dr Weaver, I come to this morning and the strangest incident of all. My brother had expressed a wish to meet you. Knowing that you have some affection for our family, 1 brought him along. In the Broad, he asked me to stop the car for a moment. Of course I complied; he got out and walked back to the nearest tobacconist’s to purchase some of those little cigars he favours.

  Leaning back in my seat, I saw him come out of the shop a moment later. Then I noticed that a Healey just like mine happened to be stopped behind me.

  My brother, making a very natural mistake, strolled across the pavement, cigars in hand, and climbed into the other car. Almost at once, to my consternation, it began moving. As it came out from the kerb and passed me, I had a clear glimpse of the driver. He was my double! Absolutely my double, even down to a cast in his eye.

  Now I have never believed in doppelgangers before, perhaps because Everard and I and our other brothers Edmond and Desmond, are all so dissimilar in appearance. But now it seems feasible that a face might well be duplicated now and again. What is less likely is that the owner of such a face should have a car similar to – no, identical with! – one’s own, and that he and it should happen to be so close in time and space.

  Such reflections naturally took only a moment to cross my mind. Then I had my foot down and was pursuing the other car. As luck would have it, it slid across the traffic lights as they changed; I jammed on my brakes in order to spare the life of a particularly courageous cyclist, and had the grief of watching the other car whizz up the Corn and disappear.

  In my brain, mounting confusion almost overcame me. I realised something else that makes the situation yet more horribly unlikely. Why did my doppelganger not immediately inform Everard of his mistake and make him get out of the car? To my mind, for only one reason: because my doppelganger has a brother who looks just like Everard and who happened to be in that tobacconist’s or an adjacent shop at the same time. In other words, he thought Everard was his brother …

  The whole prospect completely unnerved me. I came straight on here to you, Dr Weaver. You see before you a creature almost out of his senses, his mind distraught, his reason shattered.

  At the end of this pitiful recitation, a silence fell. Carroll Breakbane sat dismally with his chin cupped in his hand staring across the desk at the Usher of Marlborough; the Usher, his chin cupped in his hand, stared dismally back.

  In an uncertain voice, Dr Weaver asked at last, ‘And why exactly do you believe yourself out of your senses?’

  Breakbane spread his hands wide.

  ‘Consider the five incidents I have related, the incidents concerning the pin table, the rabbits, the monkey’s typescript, the arrangement of the cards, the appearance of my doppelganger. I believe them to have happened.

  ‘Yet each one of them is in itself almost so unlikely that the chances of them happening at all in the whole universe is abysmally remote. My field, you remember, lies in the mathematics of likelihood. So I know these incidents cannot all have happened within twenty-four hours. I am suffering from hallucinations. I am insane!’

  He rose. He began pacing the room, muttering to himself. Ineffectually, his authority gone, Dr Weaver also rose.

  ‘Another explanation exists,’ he said tentatively, ‘though I admit it strains credence to the uttermost. Ask yourself how much we know about the laws of the universe. Some of the laws we regard as immutable are only so-called because they have remained the same for at most ten thousand years. How long is that? Obviously, no time at all on a cosmic scale. Supposing once in a while the framework shifts – you come down in the morning to find a new value for pi, shall we say?’

  ‘This is all theory,’ Breakbane protested.

  ‘Ask yourself, my dear Breakbane, how much is understood about the laws of chance. Say those laws are themselves subject to chance? We have only negative definitions of chance: an absence of design, etc. we have formulae to cover its workings, but there are no form
ulae to cover why it works as it does. The coincidences you experienced may be evidence that chance as we know it – or knew it – collapsed yesterday afternoon, like a coal fire settling into a new position! Its effect might not be immediately evident to everyone; eventually our entire notion of possibility will have to be revised.’

  For a moment hope gleamed on Breakbane’s unprepossessing features. Then slowly he shook his shaggy head.

  ‘Not plausible,’ he said, ‘though ingenious, I grant you that. No, why should the universal laws change and affect just me? I cannot accept that. The more obvious explanation is that I murdered my brother Everard in the field of long grass yesterday. All that I think has happened to me since is merely the product of a guilty deranged mind in full retreat from its own guilt.’

  He was talking rapidly now, his words hardly intelligible. He shook off Dr Weaver’s outstretched hand, shouting him down. ‘Guilty of murder, don’t you see? I murder my elder brother so as to inherit most of the family fortune, and then I seek refuge in insanity. Everard’s disappeared, hasn’t he? And I have imagined up a crazy explanation to cover his disappearance. I’m mad, Dr Weaver, sir, stark, staring, mad, and so take your dirty hands off me. Ah, that such a brilliant intellect as mine should be lost for ever to the world!’

  Before Dr Weaver could stop him, he turned towards the open window overlooking the Inner Quad. Breaking into a shambling canter, he dived through it head first. The sound of his hitting the paving stones a moment later was clearly audible in the Usher’s office.

  Scarcely had Breakbane disappeared before Miss Crisping entered with a pot of tea on a tray.

  ‘Miss Crisping, get onto Detective Inspector Parkinson and the Chancellor of the University again, will you,’ Dr Weaver said faintly. ‘Tell them that poor young Breakbane – ’ he gestured in despair towards the open window.

  ‘The fourth today!’ she exclaimed, slopping tea. ‘Dr Weaver! Whatever did the poor boy say?’