Vengeancy by Proxy

by John Wyndham

  VENGEANCE BY PROXY

  from THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM

  John Wyndham

  SPHERE BOOKS

  Published 1973

  ISBN 0 7221 9369 6

  Copyright© The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973

  INTRODUCTION

  AT a very tender age my latent passion for all forms of fantasy stories, having been sparked by the Brothers Grimm and the more unusual offerings in the children's comics and later the boy's adven­ture papers, was encouraged in the early 1930s by the occasional exciting find on the shelves of the public library with Burroughs and Thorne Smith varying the staple diet of Wells and Verne.

  But the decisive factor in establishing that exhila­rating ‘sense of wonder’ in my youthful imagi­nation was the discovery about that time of back numbers of American science fiction magazines to be bought quite cheaply in stores like Wool­worths. The happy chain of economic circum­stances by which American newstand returns, some­times sadly with the magic cover removed or mutilated, ballasted cargo ships returning to English ports and the colonies, must have been the mainspring of many an enthusiastic hobby devoted to reading, discussing, perhaps collecting and even writing, science fiction – or ‘scientifiction’ as Hugo Gerns­back coined the tag in his early Amazing Stories magazine.

  Gernsback was a great believer in reader partici­pation; in 1936 I became a teenage member of the Science Fiction League sponsored by his Wonder Stories. Earlier he had run a compe­tition in its fore­runner Air Wonder Stories to find a suitable banner slogan, offering the prize of ‘One Hundred Dollars in Gold’ with true yankee bragga­dacio. Discovering the result some years later in, I think, the September 1930 issue of Wonder Stories seized upon from the bargain-bin of a chain store, was akin to finding a message in a bottle cast adrift by some distant Robinson Crusoe, and I well remember the surge of jingo­istic pride (an educa­tional trait well-nurtured in pre-war Britain) in noting that the winner was an English­man, John Beynon Harris.

  I had not the slightest antici­pation then that I would later meet, and acknow­ledge as a good friend and mentor, this contest winner who, as John Wyndham, was to become one of the greatest English story-tellers in the idiom. The fact that he never actually got paid in gold was a disappoint­ment, he once told me, that must have accounted for the element of philo­so­phical dubiety in some of his work. Certainly his winning slogan ‘Future Flying Fiction’, al­though too late to save the maga­zine from foundering on the rock of eco­nomic depression (it had already been amalga­mated with its stable­mate Science Wonder Stories to become just plain, if that is the right word, Wonder Stories), presaged the firm stamp of credi­bility combined with imagi­native flair that charac­terized JBH's writings.

  John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (the abundance of fore­names conve­niently supplied his various aliases) emerged in the 1950s as an important contem­porary influence on specu­lative fiction, parti­cularly in the explo­ration of the theme of realistic global catas­trophe, with books such as The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes, and enjoyed a popularity, which continued after his sad death in 1969, comparable to that of his illus­trious pre­decessor as master of the scientific romance, H. G. Wells.

  However, he was to serve his writing apprentice­ship in those same pulp maga­zines of the thirties, competing success­fully with their native American contributors, and it is the purpose of this present collection to high­light the chrono­logical develop­ment of his short stories from those early beginnings to the later urbane and polished style of John Wyndham.

  ‘The Lost Machine’ was his second published story, appea­ring in Amazing Stories, and was possibly the proto­type of the sentient robot later developed by such writers as Isaac Asimov. He used a variety of plots during this early American period parti­cu­larly favour­ing time travel, and the best of these was undoubtedly ‘The Man From Beyond’ in which the poign­ancy of a man's reali­za­tion, caged in a zoo on Venus, that far from being aban­doned by his fellow-explorers, he is the victim of a far stranger fate, is remark­ably out­lined for its time. Some themes had dealt with war, such as ‘The Trojan Beam’, and he had strong views to express on its futility. Soon his own induc­tion into the Army in 1940 produced a period of crea­tive inactivity corres­ponding to World War II. He had, however, previously established him­self in England as a promi­nent science fiction writer with serials in major period­icals, subse­quently reprinted in hard covers, and he even had a detec­tive novel published. He had been well repre­sented too – ‘Perfect Crea­ture’ is an amu­sing example – in the various maga­zines stemming from fan activity, despite the vicissi­tudes of their pre- and imme­diate post-war publish­ing insec­urity.

  But after the war and into the fifties the level of science fiction writing in general had increased consi­derably, and John rose to the challenge by selling success­fully to the American market again. In England his polished style proved popular and a predi­lection for the para­doxes of time travel as a source of private amuse­ment was perfectly exem­plified in ‘Pawley's Peepholes’, in which the gawp­ing tourists from the future are routed by vulgar tactics. This story was later success­fully adapted for radio and broad­cast by the B.B.C.

  About this time his first post-war novel burst upon an unsus­pecting world, and by utili­zing a couple of unori­ginal ideas with his Gernsback-trained atten­tion to logically based expla­natory detail and realis­tic back­ground, together with his now strongly deve­loped narra­tive style, ‘The Day of the Triffids’ became one of the classics of modern specu­lative fiction, survi­ving even a mediocre movie treat­ment. It was the fore­runner of a series of equally impressive and enjoyable novels inclu­ding ‘The Chrysalids’ and ‘The Mid­wich Cuckoos’ which was success­fully filmed as ‘Village of the Damned’. (A sequel ‘Children of the Damned’ was markedly inferior, and John was care­ful to dis­claim any responsi­bility for the writing.)

  I was soon to begin an enjoy­able asso­ciation with John Wyndham that had its origins in the early days of the New Worlds maga­zine-publish­ing venture, and was later to result in much kindly and essen­tial assis­tance enabling me to become a specia­list dealer in the genre. This was at the Fantasy Book Centre in Blooms­bury, an area of suitably asso­ciated literary acti­vities where John lived for many years, and which provi­ded many pleasu­rable meet­ings at a renowned local coffee establish­ment, Cawardine's, where we were often joined by such person­alities as John Carnell, John Chris­topher and Arthur C. Clarke.

  In between the novels two collec­tions of his now widely pub­lished short stories were issued as ‘The Seeds of Time’ and ‘Consider Her Ways’; others are re­printed here for the first time. He was never too grand to refuse mater­ial for our own New Worlds and in 1958 wrote a series of four novel­ettes about the Troon family's contri­bution to space explo­ration – a kind of Forsyte saga of the solar system later collected under the title ‘The Outward Urge’. His ficti­tious colla­borator ‘Lucas Parkes’ was a subtle ploy in the book version to explain Wyndham's appa­rent devia­tion into solid science-based fiction. The last story in this collection ‘The Empti­ness of Space’ was written as a kind of post­script to that series, especially for the 100th anni­versary issue of New Worlds.

  John Wyndham's last novel was Chocky, published in 1968. It was an expan­sion of a short story follow­ing a theme similar to The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos. It was a theme pecu­liarly appro­priate for him in his advancing matu­rity. When, with charac­teristic reti­cence and modesty, he announced to a few of his friends that he was marry­ing his beloved Grace and moving to the country­side, we all felt that this was a well-deserved retire­ment for them both.


  But ironically time – always a fasci­nating subject for specu­lation by him – was running out for this typical English gentle­man. Amiable, eru­dite, astrin­gently humo­rous on occasion, he was, in the same way that the gentle Boris Karloff portrayed his film monsters, able to depict the night­mares of humanity with fright­ening realism, made the more deadly by his masterly preci­sion of detail. To his great gift for story-telling he brought a lively intellect and a fertile imagi­nation.

  I am glad to be numbered among the many, many thou­sands of his readers whose ‘sense of wonder’ has been satis­facto­rily indulged by a writer whose gift to posterity is the compul­sive reada­bility of his stories of which this present volume is an essen­tial part.

  — LESLIE FLOOD

  * * *

  VENGEANCE BY PROXY (1940)

  As far as Dr. Linton was concerned it began with the arrival of the messenger boy.

  Telegram from Walter Fisson, Hotel Princip, Beograd (Belgrade), Yugo-Slavia, to Dr. Leslie Linton, 84 Nelson Court, London, W.I.:

  CAN YOU RECOMMEND MENTAL SPECIALIST BELGRADE LETTER FOLLOWS

  WALTER

  Telegram from Dr. Leslie Linton, London, to Walter Fisson, Beograd:

  IF ESSENTIAL DOCTOR BLJEDOLJE BUT WHY NOT COME HOME

  LESLIE

  Letter from Walter Fisson to Dr. Linton, by Air Mail:

  Hotel Princip,

  Beograd,

  Yugo-Slavia.

  3rd May, 193-

  Dear Leslie:

  Sorry if I alarmed you with the telegram, but something had to be done quickly. It's about Elaine. Shock, I think. I wanted to get her back home at once, of course, and booked seats on a plane, but she refused and still refuses to leave here. I can't understand it at all and am worried to death about her. The only thing seemed to be to get a professional opinion at once.

  She's — well, I hardly know how to put it — but she's not herself. I don't mean that in the usual sense of the phrase. It's something much more literal than that. Heaven knows what's happened to her, poor darling, but it frightens me. And I'm cut off from her, too. I can't even talk to her properly and try to understand what the trouble is, nor she to me beyond a few essentials. She can grasp only the simplest sentences, spoken slowly and carefully, and she herself replies only with a few words in broken English.

  Leslie, it doesn't seem possible. I have heard of rare cases of loss of memory making one forget his own language. But this is worse than that — it's taught her another! Honestly, there have been times in the last few days when I have wondered whether she was not all right and I was going mad. I'd better tell you the whole thing and see what you make of it.

  It was last Tuesday that it happened. We'd come from Venice via Trieste and Fiume right down the Dalmatian coast to Dubrovnik. Instead of continuing along the coast into Greece, we decided to go up through the mountains to Sarajevo, on to Belgrade and on along the Danube towards Bucharest, giving Greece a miss altogether.

  The journey wasn't too bad, except for the roads, and we got along finely until just when we were some ten miles short of a place called Valejo, about sixty miles from Belgrade itself.

  We came round a blind corner. We weren't going fast, but the road was loose-surfaced and steep, and to make it worse there had been a light shower just before. Just round that corner was a man crawling on all fours almost in the middle of the road. I braked and pulled across.

  I think I'd have cleared him on a decent road, but as it was the back of the car swung round and hit him. Why we didn't turn over on a slope like that I don't know, but we didn't, and I was just pulling out of the skid when the front offside wheel fetched up smack on a mighty boulder.

  We got out and ran back to the man. He was lying sprawled out now, on his face. Between us we turned him over and found he was in a nasty mess, poor chap.

  His clothes were rough and covered with mud, but he was clearly a cut above the usual peasant, and his face, what we could see of it for his beard, was intelli­gent, but those were things we only noticed after­wards. What we saw first was a gash on his fore­head from which the blood had run down into his eyes, and another patch of blood which had spread about the front of his shirt and coat.

  None of that was our fault. The blood from his head had already dried and caked, and that on his clothing had soaked in for some time.

  Elaine ran to the car and came back with a flask and a bottle of water. While she bathed his head with a wet handker­chief I started loosen­ing his clothes. Suddenly she gave an excla­ma­tion which made me look up. She was staring down at his forehead.

  The wiping away of the blood had revealed no ragged gash, but a shallow cut which had now ceased to bleed. The thing was neat and clean. It reminded me of a Greek lambda more than anything. No one could have had a moment's doubt that it had been done delibe­rately.

  “That's queer,” Elaine said uncertainly.

  It was. I guessed what was in her mind. The vendetta still exists in those parts. Almost instinc­tively I raised my head to see if there were any­one around watch­ing us. I hadn't any wish to get involved in a busi­ness of that sort, but at the same time we weren't going to let a man die before our eyes if I could help it. I ripped open the man's shirt.

  We wiped off the mess, and found the blood still welling slowly from a bullet wound in the chest, one which had missed the heart by a narrow margin, I'd say.

  Elaine fetched a shirt of mine out of the car and we tore it up to make a bandage. When we'd got it fixed we gave the man a shot of brandy.

  It was a minute or more before any­thing happened, then his eyes opened slowly. At first they seemed blank and almost unconscious, but after a second or two they met mine and came suddenly alive.

  That was a most extra­ordinary sensa­tion. I felt some­how as if they had fastened on mine. Almost as though our mutual gazes formed physical rods linking us together. More than that, it seemed that the rods were being tugged, pulling me down to him.

  That sounds fanciful, but it was really a most uncanny sensation though it lasted only a few moments. It snapped abruptly, as his face contorted with a twist of agony and his eyes closed again.

  Between us we got him to the side of the road and laid him on a rug. Then there was the problem of what to do next. The car was out of commis­sion with the steering rod gone and the front axle badly bent. Either we had to wait until someone should come along, or one of us would have to go for help.

  The last hamlet was miles away behind us, and hope­less at that. The obvious course was for me to start walking on in the direction of Valejo. I didn't relish the idea of leaving Elaine in a lonely spot like that, but we could scarcely leave the man unattended in the state he was, and that settled it.

  I had to walk all the ten miles into Valejo before I could find a car. I managed to hire a machine and, with the help of my bad German and the equally bad German of a native, make the driver under­stand what was wanted. By a series of miracles we got to the place where I had left Elaine.

  I could see her as we came up the road. The man still lay where we had put him. She was kneeling beside him, looking down. It was odd that she didn't look up as we rattled into view. As soon as we stopped I got out and hurried across to her. She might have been a statue.

  “Elaine!” I said.

  The man on the rug turned his head. For a moment his eyes met mine. This time there was some­thing despe­rate and pathetic in them. Then they closed, his head rolled and his mouth fell open. Unmis­takably that was the end.

  “Elaine!” I repeated.

  She did not move until I touched her shoulder. Then it was to look up at me with a bewildered, uncom­prehen­ding expression. I took hold of her arm and helped her to her feet.

  “He's dead,” I said.

  She nodded, but said nothing. I led her to the hired car and then set about fetching our cases from our own. Finally when they were all aboard, I explained to the driver by signs that we must take the dead man as well. H
e wasn't pleased. I could understand that, but one couldn't leave the poor chap's body out on the road like that, and he reluc­tantly agreed.

  We went over together to carry him, but a couple of yards short of the corpse the driver stopped dead. I walked on, got ready to take the man under the arm­pits and looked to him to take the feet. He was standing frozen, with an expression of veritable terror on his face. As I bent down he called suddenly.

  “Ne,” and again. “Ne, ne.”

  Rapidly, he crossed himself in the manner of the Greek church. Then he stepped for­ward, caught my arm and dragged me back. He was jabbering excitedly. Of course I couldn't under­stand a word of it. But he was pointing vehemently at the mark on the dead man's fore­head and he was as genuinely scared stiff as a man could be.

  Nothing I could do would bring him to touch that corpse, and I believe he would have fought me rather than let me handle it. There was no budging him. In the end I gave in, and we set off in his car back to Valejo. It was my deter­mi­na­tion that our first call there would be on the police to clear things up. I had no wish to find myself accused of the murder of an un­known Yugoslavian.

  All the way Elaine said nothing. Mostly she sat staring ahead, though once I caught her glancing side-long at me in an odd manner, and twice I saw her look down at her hand, flexing the fingers and exa­min­ing it as if it some­how sur­prised her. I asked her what was the matter for she was some­how unlike her­self and made me feel uneasy, but she shook her head without replying.

  At the police station my driver held forth to the man in charge with what appeared to be a wealth of passionate detail while I stood by unable to under­stand a word. There were successions of concern, incre­du­lity and alarm on the police­man's face.

  Eventually he went to fetch another man in uni­form to whom I was able to give my version in stumbling German. Not until the man was asking me the name of the dead man did Elaine take any part of the conversation.