Again, Dangerous Visions

by edited by Harlan Ellison

  I think it was Melville who said somewhere that nobody would ever write a decent story about a flea. Well, a tick is hardly better than a flea, and I know no one who reads this story would believe it, but sometimes you tell people things like this because, well, whatthehell else can you do?

  Afterword

  This is the first story I've ever completed. I wrote it in one sitting, but I would never have written any of it at all if I hadn't been kicked in the ass by Harlan Ellison's story A Boy and His Dog. Thank the gods for stories like that—story vs. what they call with pursed lips and corncobs up their butts—"littriture." If more people could get it out of their literary pants the way Ellison and William Price Fox do, and tell a story the way it is, they would have fewer problems in writing what they consider to be high art (artifice?).

  This particular story is not meant to have any moral or message—if it's relevant to anything, that's incidental. The story comes out of a riff I hit people with when they are ripe for it. It turns out that a lot of people believe the story, the same way they get caught up in tall tales—so why not try it in print? The reason you can con your audience with a tall tale, "suspend their disbelief," is that there is quite a bit of fact via details woven in with the fantasy. I once heard Gore Vidal say that you can usually spot the successful novelist as a kid—he is such a pathological liar. If you're a good storyteller, a good sci-fi or fantasy writer, or a good poet or novelist, you're supernaturally gifted. Putting the spell on them is what counts, not the technique you use. THE FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT, says Robert Creeley. Without the story you're dead. Once the story starts to come, IT takes over for you and fills in the refinements that you'd never be hip to on an off day. The Greeks called this force "The Muse."

  By the way, "Chuck Berry" is a true story.

  Introduction to

  EPIPHANY FOR ALIENS

  Though your editor has met ninety per cent of the writers he has included in this volume (and can call about sixty per cent of that ninety "friends"), there are those few whose stories came in unsolicited and with whom the editor has had only postal acquaintance. One of these is David Kerr.

  However, even if I can't lay out deep and meaningful comments about the writers I haven't grown to know, I always try to say something deep and meaningful about the story appearing under that writer's name. Occasionally I'm stumped on even that approach. As George Ernsberger (a very fine editor) once pointed out, there is not something to be said for every story, and frequently not for the very best. I think that's the case for "Epiphany for Aliens." Save to note that of all the stories I've read for A,DV and The Last Dangerous Visions, accepted and rejected alike, this one touched me the most profoundly. I have a great warmth for this tale; it seems to have a quality that makes one's empathy flare up. I cannot explain it, nor do I care to try. I simply mention it by way of giving Mr. Kerr his due, and I look forward more to meeting him than any of the others I've never known.

  I think "Epiphany for Aliens" is an extraordinarily fine piece of writing.

  And, as has grown our custom through these pages, here is Mr. Kerr's statement of credentials and background:

  "Born in Carlisle England (near the Scottish border) in 1942, the only son of a motor mechanic.

  "I was educated in the State system until the age of n, when I transferred to a Roman Catholic seminary, Ushaw College, Durham, considerably less horrifying than Joyce's but similarly traumatic. At the age of 18 I became disillusioned with the seminary, left it and shortly afterward the Catholic Church.

  "At about this time I started writing poetry, infrequently but intensely.

  "I read English at Newcastle University and took a B.A. degree. After graduation I travelled in Southern Europe in France, Spain, Italy, Egypt and Greece, mostly living rough. I was able to follow up an interest in archeology and antiquities. On my return to England I took odd labouring jobs for a time before settling down as a teacher at West Ham College of Further Education, a Technical College in East London; I taught English and Liberal Studies.

  "At about this time I started getting poetry published in small magazines.

  "I became assistant editor of an East London Arts magazine called Elam and wrote editorials, reviews and poetry for the magazine, and helped organise the local arts festival associated with it. In 1968 Elam published a paperback collection of my poetry called FIRSTPRINT.

  "During this period I have also given several readings of poetry in pubs and colleges in London.

  "I have spent the last year doing a postgraduate course in social and cultural studies. At present I have just taken up the post of lecturer in English at the University of Malawi in East Africa."

  EPIPHANY FOR ALIENS

  David Kerr

  Gavino offered them homemade wine in his cool stone hovel, and they looked out at the mountains, arid and dazzling in the sunlight. They listened to Gavino rambling about the attacks.

  "Everybody's got theories about them. That reporter thinks they're brigands. D'y'ever hear of brigands stealing hens when there's all these tourists camping around with fat wallets and bare arses? Beg your pardon, marm. In St. Florent they think they're bears come down from the mountains. The police think they're Arab fanatics from Porto Vecchio."

  "I still think they're wogs."

  "Racist pig," Denise said, goading Piron, as she had all morning.

  "The professor here thinks they're human beings. But I know the truth. They're ghosts, ghosts of the Muroni family, wiped out by my great grandfather in Buonoparte's time. They come from Hell through a hole in Monte Robbia smelling of sulphur . . ."

  Eventually Morrisot got Gavino to show them from the window, the direction to take to find the caves. They decided it would be better to observe from the mountain opposite before they approached the caves.

  Sliding down steep screes, staggering along the dried-up Fiume Zente—the whole gorge a lake of trapped heat—they realized it was a mistake in full daylight. Piron was no mountain guide and they feared starting a landslide. Morrisot thought of tourists at lie Rousse, only 15 kilometres away sipping chilled anisette under cool shades.

  They didn't need to reach the summit of Monte Geneva. From the northeast slope they could see the signs of human habitation they were seeking, but hardly dared hope to find. Two-thirds up the mountain, beneath the steep cliff of the summit, there were three black holes, discernible through the binoculars as the entrances to caves. There was a rough track leading down to the Fiume Zente, and another spiraling round Monte Robbia to the summit. Slight wisps of smoke from a dead fire were the only signs of life.

  Morrisot and Denise shook the sweat from their eyes and chattered like children, excitedly swapping deductions.

  "One or two of the caves may only be a storehouse or stable."

  "There doesn't seem to be any sign of cultivation, Pierre."

  "No. I suppose it's possible they used to live largely on fishing, but they've been forced to hunt only at night in recent years, because of all these launches and fishing boats wandering about the coast."

  "That would explain the attacks on the farms. This country's impossible to cultivate, apart from a few prickly pears and brambles. The poor creatures must be half-starving."

  "I think maybe the regular shape to the right of the caves is some form of storage tank for water."

  "The Fiume Zente must be full of water in the winter."

  Piron mentioned that the sun was getting low, so they stopped talking and took some photographs before leaving. When they had finished, Piron led them back.

  That evening Professor Morrisot recorded a brief talk for Provencal television news:

  "If our conclusions are correct about their eating habits it all adds up to a picture of a very simple, crude, small society of gatherers and hunters. We needn't pay too much attention to the fact that they live in caves. There are still plenty of peasants living in caves in Europe: in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Sardinia, even here in Corsica." (Denise had
insisted on the poor; peasants' plug.) "All the same, it's a very strange phenomenon, especially with tourists flocking the beaches so near. If the tribe is at a fairly primitive stage it would fit in with Giussepe Gavino's eyewitness account, allowing for narrative exaggeration. What we cannot assess until we have actually confronted the tribe, is the linguistic and cultural level of the group. It may well be that years of isolation and inbreeding have had deleterious physiological and psychological effects on the development of the phylum . . ."

  Reporters tried to interview Morrisot, but he stayed in hiding with Denise in his hotel room.

  "I managed to get permission for troops to patrol the road from St. Florent to He Rousse to prevent reporters from doing their own field-work."

  Denise was silent; she felt afraid for the innocent group of savages they were about to intrude on.

  "Will you sleep with me tonight?" Morrisot asked.

  "No. I'm going to my own room. Touch of the Electras tonight. Feel I'd shrivel and get sucked up into your balls to start again. I'd be too negative."

  "Too frigid."

  "Please yourself."

  It was still dark by the time they reached the desert. They walked for a while under moonlight, then rested, waiting for the dawn, listening to the crickets in silence. Denise thought about the chubby brown businessmen sleeping on their launches nearby with their lovely, stupid, brown mistresses. She thought about the workers and their families in caravans despoiling the Corsican coastline, duped into affluence and the pursuit of brainless pleasure. She remembered black-robed beggar women, hunched on the pavements of Tehran, suckling their babies and clutching at the trouser legs of passersby. She felt disgust at all mankind, mushrooming demographically and technologically, reaching for the moon, but spiritually degenerate, and a wave of tenderness filled her for the tribe of poor creatures who'd survived here in ignorance of the dialectic to destruction going on around them. Then she laughed aloud at her own pomposity and said: "It's Décarte's fault."

  Morrisot laughed too and said, "Not Rousseau?"

  He was with her, but she still loathed him, intellectual sugardaddy.

  As the dawn started to break Piron led them off towards Monte Robbia.

  They heard a regular tapping noise long before they saw anything. Even Piron was excited; their mouths felt dry, their legs shivery as they approached the caves. At last they sweated over the top of an escarpment and stumbled 50,000 years into the past.

  In the middle of the blazing desert they felt suddenly cold and frightened.

  Just as Giussepe Gavino had described, a hairy terrifying beast of a man sat hunched on the ground, chipping a stone axe-head.

  "Quite unbelievable," Morrisot whispered.

  "Look at the foramen magnum."

  "It must be."

  It was Neanderthal man, identical to the models in the Natural History Museum of Chicago, only living and moving. At the dozenth look through the binoculars they knew it wasn't a heat-fantasy. Like a crazed audience stepping through the screen into the film, they started to walk closer.

  The Neanderthaloid heard them and looked up. He jumped up in the air and rushed back to the central cave and chattered. Another younger savage dashed out. They both started to throw rocks and pebbles with vicious force and accuracy. Piron, Morrisot and Denise took cover behind a rock.

  A pebble had hit Piron on the knee but he was unhurt. He fingered his holster nervously.

  "Mme. Blondel," he said, "you ought not to look. He's naked. I should arrest him; it's against the law."

  The shower of pebbles stopped. Denise peeped over the top of the rock. The two Neanderthaloids were a lot closer.

  Without warning the others Denise undid her shirt, took off her bra, stood up and walked out from the cover of the rock. Morrisot told her to come back. She walked slowly up the scree, body erect, eyes fixed on the savages. They made no movement, but allowed her to approach. She stood about a yard away from the older savage and they looked at each other for about two minutes, without a gesture or noise. The savage at last raised his long, powerful arm and touched one of the girl's white breasts momentarily, then lowered his arm. Denise turned round and walked back to the rock. She buttoned up her shirt and told Morrisot and Piron to go with her down to the gorge. The three of them descended slowly, in terror.

  "What other way was there of proving I was a mammal? Our clothes must be quite scaring."

  "Fellow mammal! I'd sooner trust you with an ape. It's too dangerous. We should wait till we've built up a team."

  "We're too short of time, Pierre. Piron obviously can't keep his mouth shut. He wanted to arrest them for indecent exposure. There'll be photographers and doctors and God knows who else there soon. Anyway, a big team, full of petty interdisciplinary strife, it would only put them off. You know I could make contact on my own. That . . .creature trusts me."

  "I don't."

  "Field-work's my strong point. Remember Persia—Taboos and Authority in Tribes of the Arajon River. Brilliant you said."

  "I remember you nearly stirred up another Kurdish war."

  "We must find out everything. What happened to the incest taboo? Levi-Strauss would shit a brick. What's their linguistic level? What's their system of socialization?"

  "I know, I know. Has there been any physiological evolution at all? Did the nicks on the Krapina fragment really suggest cannibalism? Was Leroi-Gourham's burial-rights theory correct? Religions. Mythology. Everything. I go mad thinking about it."

  "You must let me have a try."

  "I wish I knew what was best."

  That evening Morrisot gave an even longer talk on television:

  "What Mme. Blondel, Chief-Constable Piron and myself saw today on Monte Robbia is of staggering importance to the entire world. It will change the whole of man's knowledge and conception of himself. I myself can still scarcely credit it. If our observation is correct these creatures are identical with Neanderthal man, a separate species of 'homo sapiens' which became extinct about 40,000 years ago. 40,000! That was during the last Ice Age, the Wurm Glaciation, when Sardinia and Corsica were still joined to the mainland. Their skulls have been found all over Europe-Italy, France, Turkey, Gibraltar. And somehow, how we don't know yet, this tiny splinter has managed to survive in the Desert des Agriates, apparently without evolving. Such freaks have been known to occur in the world of reptiles and fishes—but never with mammals, let alone primates . . ."

  Meanwhile the whole desert was being cordoned off by the army and navy, with some emergency help from the Foreign Legion.

  As the news spread, charter flights brought biologists, zoologists, ecologists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, journalists, and hopeful voyeurs from all over the world.

  Denise refused to talk further with Morrisot that night. He wished she would let him touch her. Her eyes were fanatical and kept him at a distance;

  Was it the air-conditioned hotel room or the cave entrance in the desert which was the dream?

  The early morning freshness had already evaporated. A detachment of troops under Major Sauvage faced the caves from an escarpment on the flank of the mountain. Dr. Morrisot, Professor Marmoutier, a zoologist, and other privileged intellectuals stood close to the troops, scanning the face of the mountain with binoculars. Two cameramen from French television were attaching their cameras to tripods, and a sound engineer fiddled with his tape recorder.

  Denise made a final adjustment to her walkie-talkie, and without looking at Morrisot or the packed onlookers, started a solitary walk toward the caves. Lizards flicked their tails at her and the sunlight shattered itself on the bare white rocks. She felt inhuman, like a mad priestess. The Neanderthaloids had torn the belly out of man's complacency—lord of creation, superman, smasher of atoms—man wasn't God. These creatures were more than a cul-de-sac, cornered here, they'd survived, fishing, stealing sheep and hens, passionate, incestuous, underground men, a living alternative to Homo Technologicus.

  Sweat began t
o drip down her neck, the rocks were hard through her gym-shoes, and she felt guilty at being human.

  Morrisot watched her dejectedly through binoculars. His passion had carried her around in a little moral lecture theatre. She was on her own now. She had become separate, reified through the binoculars. It was finished; she no longer needed him—pseudo-radical, inhibited egghead.

  Denise broke radio silence with dramatic intensity:

  "I may now be walking to my death and I want the world to hear my thoughts about the discovery of this family, while I make my attempt to contact them.