The Moment of Eclipse

by Brian Aldiss

  'What happened? Why was there change, old crow?'

  'Men ... scientists ... make understanding of the gravy of bodies and turn every person and thing and tree to eternal life. We now continue from that time, a long time long - so long we forgotten what was then done.'

  The smell of him was like an old pie. Argustal asked him, 'And why now are no childs?'

  'Childs are just small adults. We are adults, having become from child. But in that great former time, before scientists were on Earth, adults produced childs. Animals and trees likewise. But with eternal life, this cannot be - those child-making parts of the body have less life than stone.'

  'Don't talk of stone! So we live forever.... You old ragbag, you remember - ah, you remember me as child?'

  But the old ragbag was working himself into a kind of fit, pummelling the ground, slobbering at the mouth.

  'Seven shades of lilac, even worse I remember myself a child, running like an arrow, air, everywhere fresh rosy air. So I am mad, for I remember!' He began to scream and cry, and the outcasts round about took up the wail in chorus. 'We remember, we remember!' - whether they did or not.

  Their dreadful howling worked like spears in Argustal's flank. He had pictures afterwards of his panic run through the town, of wall and trunk and ditch and road, but it was all as insub­stantial at the time as the pictures afterwards. When he finally fell to the ground panting, he was unaware of where he lay, and everything was nothing to him until the religious howling had died into silence.

  Then he saw he lay in the middle of his great structure, his cheek against the Or stone where he had dropped it. And as his attention came to it, the great structure round him answered without his having to speak.

  He was at a new focal point. The voice that sounded was new, as cool as the previous one had been choked. It blew over him in a cool wind.

  'There is no amaranth on this side of the grave, O Argustal, no name with whatsoever emphasis of passionate love repeated that is not mute at last. Experiment X gave life for eternity to every living thing on Earth, but even eternity is punctuated by release and suffers period. The old life had its childhood and its end, the new had no such logic. It found its own after many millennia, and took its cue from individual minds. What a man was, he became; what a tree, it became.'

  Argustal lifted his tired head from its pillow of stone. Again the voice changed pitch and trend, as if in response to his min­ute gesture.

  'The present is a note in music. That note can no longer be sustained. You find what questions you have found, O Argustal, because the chord, in dropping to a lower key, rouses you from the long dream of crimson joy that was immortality. What you are finding, others also find, and you can none of you be any longer insensible to change. Even immortality must have an end.'

  He stood up then, and hurled the Or stone. It flew, fell, rolled ... and before it stopped he had awoken a great chorus of universal voice.

  The whole Earth roused, and a wind blew from the west. As he started again to move, he saw the religious men of the town were on the march, and the great sun-nesting Forces on their midnight wing, and the stars wheeling, and every majestic ob­ject alert as it had never been.

  But Argustal walked slowly on his flat simian feet, plodding back to Pamitar. No longer would he be impatient in her arms. There, time would be all too brief.

  He knew now the worm that flew and nestled in her cheek, in his cheek, in all things, even in the tree-men of Or, even in the great impersonal Forces that despoiled the sun, even in the sacred bowels of the universe to which he had lent a temporary tongue. He knew now that back had come that Majesty that previously gave to Life its reason, the Majesty that had been away from the world for so long and yet so brief a respite, the Majesty called death.

  Working in the Spaceship Yards

  My first job of work as a young man was in the spaceship yards, where I felt my talents and expertise could be put to the greatest benefit of society. I worked as a FTL-fitter's mate's assistant. The FTL-fitter's mate was a woman called Nellie. As more and more women came to be employed in the yards, among the men and the androids and the robots, the men became increasingly circumspect in their behaviour. Their oaths were more guarded, their gestures less uncouth, and their care for their appearance less negligent. This I found strange, since the women showed clearly that they cared nothing for oaths, gestures, or appear­ances.

  From wastebaskets round the site, I collected many suicide notes. Most of them had never reached their recipients and were mere drafts of suicide notes:

  My darling - When you receive this, I shall no longer be in a position to ever trouble you again.

  By the time you receive this letter, I shall never be able.

  By the time you receive this, I shall be no more.

  My darling - Never again will we be able to break each other's hearts.

  You have been more than life to me. My love - I have been so wrong.

  It is very good of people to take such care of their composi­tions even in extremis. Education has had its effect. At my school, we learnt only how to write business letters. With refer­ence to your last shipment of Martian pig iron/iron pigs. Since life is such a tragic business, why are we not educated how to write decent suicide notes?

  In this age of progress, where everything is progressive and technological and new, the only bit of our Self we have left to ourselves is our Human Condition - which of course remains miserable, despite three protein-full meals a day. Protein does not help the Dark Night of the Soul. Androids, which look so like us (we have the new Negro androids working in the space­ship yards now) do not have a soul, and many of them are very distressed at lacking the long slow toothache of the Human Condition. Some of them have left their employment, and stand on street corners wearing dark glasses, begging for alms with pathetic messages round their shoulders. Orphan of Technol­ogy. Left Factry Too Yung. Have Pity on My Poor Metal Frame. And an especially heart-wrenching one I saw in the Queens district. Obsolescence Is the Poor Man's Death. They have their traumas; just to be deprived of the Human Condition must be traumatic.

  Most androids hate the android-beggars. They tour the streets after work, beating up any beggars they find, kicking their tin mugs into the gutter. Faceless androids are scaring. The look like men in iron masks. You can never escape role-playing.

  We were building Q-line ships when I was in the shipyard. They were the experimental ones. The Ql, the Q2, the Q3, had each been completed, had been towed out into orbit beyond Mars, and triggered off towards Alpha Centauri. Nothing was ever heard of them again. Perhaps they are making a tour of the entire universe, and will return to the solar system when the sun is ten kilometres deep in permafrost. Anyhow, I shan't live to see the day.

  It was no fun building those ships. They had no luxury, no living quarters, no furnishings, no galleys, no miles and miles of carpeting and all the other paraphernalia of a proper spaceship. There was very little we could take as supplementary income. The computers that crewed them lived very austere lives.

  'The sun will be ten kilometres deep in permafrost by the time you get back to the solar system!' I told ball, the computer on the Q3, as we walled him in. 'What will you do then?'

  'I shall measure the permafrost.'

  I've noticed that about the truth. You don't expect it, so it often sounds like a joke. Computers and robots sound funny quite often because they have no roles to play. They just tell the truth. I asked this ball, 'Who will you be measuring this permafrost for?'

  'I shall be measuring it for its intrinsic interest.'

  'Even if there are no human beings around to be interested?'

  'You misunderstand the meaning of intrinsic.'

  Each of these Q ships cost more than the entire annual national income of a state like Great Britain. Zip, out into the universe they went. Never seen again! My handiwork. All those miles of beautiful seamless welding. My life's work.

  I say computers tell the truth. It is o
nly the truth as they see it. Things go on that none of us see. Should we include them in our personal truth or not?

  My mother was a good old sport. Before I reached the age of ten and was given my extra-familial posting, she and I had a lot of fun. Hers was a heart of gold - more, of uranium. She had an old deaf friend called Mrs. Patt who used to come and visit mother once a week and sit in the big armchair while mother yelled questions and remarks at her.

  Now I realize why I could not bear Mrs. Patt - because everything I said sounded so trivial and stupid when repeated at the top of my voice.

  'It's nice about the extra moonlight law, isn't it?'

  'You what you say?'

  'I said aren't you pleased about the extra moonlight law?'

  'Pleased what?'

  'Aren't you pleased about the extra moonlight law? We could do with another moon.'

  'I can't hear what you say.'

  'I say isn't it fun about the extra moonlight law?'

  'What lawn is that?'

  'The extra moonlight law. Law! Isn't it fun about the extra moonlight law?'

  I used to hide behind the armchair before Mrs. Patt came in. When she and mother started shouting, I would rise over the back of the chair so that Mrs. Patt could not see me, sticking my thumbs in my ears and my little fingers up my nostrils so that my nose was wrinkled and distorted, waving my other fingers about while shooting my brows up and down, slobbing my tongue, and blinking my eyes furiously, in order to make mother laugh. She had to pretend she could not see me.

  Occasionally, she would have to pretend to blow her nose, in order to enjoy a quick chuckle.

  We had a big bad black cat. Sometimes I would appear round the chair with the torn dish on my head, mewing and wagging my ears.

  The question I now ask myself, having reached more sober years - Mrs. Patt visited the euthanasia clinic years ago - is whether I should or should not be included among Mrs. Patt's roll call of truths. Since I was not among her observable phenomena, then I could not be part of her revealed Truth. For Mrs. Patt, I did not exist in my post-armchair manifestation; therefore my effect upon her Self was totally negligible; there­fore I could form no portion of her Truth, as she saw it.

  Whether what I was doing was well- or ill-intentioned to­wards her likewise did not matter, since it did not impinge on her consciousness. The only effect of my performance on her was that she came to consider my mother as someone unusually prone to colds, necessitating frequent nose-blowing.

  This suggests that there are two sorts of truth: one's personal truth, and what, for fear of using an even more idiotic term, I will call a Universal Truth. In this last category clearly belong events that go on even if nobody is observing them, like my fingers up my nose, the flights of the Ql, Q2, and Q3, and God.

  All this I once tried to explain to my android friend, Jackson. I tried to tell him that he could only perceive Universal Truth, and had no cognizance of Personal Truth.

  'Universal Truth is the greater, so I am greater than you, who perceives only Personal Truth,' he said.

  'Not at all! I obviously perceive all of Personal Truth, since that's what it means, and also quite a bit of Universal Truth. So I get a much better idea of Total Truth than you.'

  'Now you are inventing a third sort of truth, in order to win the argument. Just because you have Human Condition, you have to keep proving you are better than me.'

  I switched him off. I am better than Jackson. I can switch him off.

  Next day, going back on shift, I switched him on again.

  'There are all sorts of horrible things signalling behind your metaphorical armchair that you aren't aware of,' he said im­mediately.

  'At least human beings write suicide notes,' I said. It is a minor art that has never received full recognition. A very inti­mate art. You can't write a suicide note to someone you do not know.

  'Dear President - My name may not be familiar to you but I voted for you in the last election and, when you receive this, I shall no longer be able to trouble you ever again.'

  'I shall no longer ever be able to vote for you again. Not be able to support you at the next election.'

  'Dear President - This will come as something of a shock, particularly since you don't know me, but.'

  'Dear Sir - You have been more than a president to me.'

  The hours in the spaceship yards were long, particularly for us young lads. We worked from ten till twelve and again from two till four. The robots worked from ten till four. The an­droids worked from ten till twelve and from two till four when I began at the yards as a FTL-fitter's mate's assistant, and they had no breaks for canteen, whereas men and women got fifteen minutes off in every hour for coffee and drugs. After I had been in the yards for some ten months, legislation was passed allow­ing androids five minutes off in every hour for coffee (they don't take drugs). The men went on strike against this legislation, but it all simmered down by Christmas, after a pay rise. The Q4 was delayed another sixteen weeks, but what is sixteen weeks when you are going to go round the universe?

  The women were very emotional. Many of them fell in love with androids. The men were very bitter about this. My first love, Nellie, the FTL-fitter's mate, left me for an android elec­trician. She said he was more respectful.

  In the canteen, we men used to talk about sex and philosophy and who was winning the latest Out-Thinking Contest. The women used to exchange recipes. I often feel women do not have quite such a large share of the Human Condition as we do.

  When we first went to bed" together Nellie said, 'You're a bit nervous, aren't you?'

  Well, I was, but I said, 'No, I'm .not nervous, it's just this question of role-playing. I haven't entirdy devised one to cover this particular situation.'

  'Well, buck up, then, or the whistle will be going. You can be the Great Lover or something, can't you?'

  'Do I look like the Great Lover?' I asked in exasperation.

  'I've seen smaller,' she said, and she smiled. After that, we always got on well together, and then she had to leave me for that android electrician.

  For a few days, I was terribly miserable. I thought of writing her a suicide note but I didn't know how to word it.

  'Dear Nellie - I know you are too hard-hearted to care a hoot about this, but. I know you don't care a hoot but. I know you don't give a hoot. Give a rap. Are indifferent to. Are indifferent to what happens to me, but.

  'As you lie there in the synthetic arms of your lover, it may interest you to know I am about to.'

  But I was not really about to, for I struck up a close friend­ship with Nancy, and she enjoyed my Great Lover role. She was very good with an I-Know-We're-Really-Both-Too-Sensible-For-This role. After a time, I got a transfer so that I could work with her on the starboard condentister. She used to tell me recipes for exotic dishes. Sometimes, it was quite a relief to get back to my mates in the canteen.

  At last the great day came when the Q4 was finished. The President came down and addressed us, and inspected the two-mile-high needle of shining steel. He told us it had cost more than all South America was worth, and would open up a New Era in the History of mankind. Or perhaps he said New Error. Anyhow, the Q4 was going to put us in touch with some other civilization, many light years away. It was imperative for our survival that we get in rapport with them before our enemies did.

  'Why don't we just get in rapport with our enemies?' Nancy asked me sourly. She has no sense of occasion.

  As we all came away from the ceremony, I had a nasty sur­prise. I saw Nellie with her arm round that android electrician, and he was limping. An android, limping! There's role-playing for you. Byronic androids! If we aren't careful, they will be taking over the Human Condition just as they are taking our women. The future is black and the bins of our destiny are filling with suicide notes.

  I felt really sick. Nancy stared at me as if she could see some­one over my shoulder putting his thumbs in his ears and his little fingers up his nose and all that. Of co
urse, when I looked round, nobody was there.

  'Let's go and play Great Lovers while there's still time,' I said.

  Swastika!

  On 30th April 1945, in his bunker in the Berlin Chancellory, Adolf Hitler crunched an ampoule of potassium cyanide. Then he was shot through the head by Heinz Linge, his valet, and his body taken out into the garden of the Chancellory and burnt -or partially burnt.

  Some of these 'facts' were known almost immediately. Luck­ily, the Soviet force got to the scene of the crime first and, only twenty-three years later, rushed out the rest of the facts. The one thing that makes me doubt the truth of the whole account is that I happen to know Hitler is alive and well and living in Ostend under the assumed name - at least, I assume it is as­sumed - of Geoffrey Bunglevester.

  I was over to see him last week, before the winter became too advanced. Of course, he is getting on in years now, but is amaz­ingly spry for his age and still takes an interest in politics, sup­porting the Flems against the Walloons.

  As we usually did, we met in a cosy little bar not too distant from where he lived. We had been talking business but gradually turned to more personal matters.

  'Looking back,' I said, 'do you ever have any regrets?'

  'I wish I'd done more with my painting.' A far-off look came into his eyes. 'Landscape painting - that would have suited me. I flatter myself I always had an eye for pretty landscapes.' He started reeling off their names : the Rhineland, Austria, Czecho­slovakia, Poland.... To keep him to the subject, I said, 'I'd certainly agree that some of your early water-colours showed astonishing promise, but haven't you ever regretted - well, any of your military judgements?'

  He looked me straight in the eye, brushing his forelock back to do so.

  'You're not getting at me, Brian, are you? You're not trying to be sarcastic at my expense?'

  'No, honestly, Geoff, why should I?'

  He leant over the table towards me and glanced over one shoulder.