‘Suitable,’ I said flatly.
Her manner changed. She stopped being a nice old lady.
‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘You are a very intelligent boy, Timothy. “Suitable.” I wonder how many of my own sons – I have a great number, far too many – would have understood so much from a single word.’
‘It wasn’t from a single word,’ I said. ‘It was from all kinds of things.’ I was going to say more – to mention her fear of electricity, her speaking ‘Grinnish’, her worried look when we pretended we had been seeing UFOs for years – but shut myself up in time.
‘But it all comes down to one word now, doesn’t it?’ I went on. ‘We’re “suitable” so it’s game, set and match.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You have won. And nothing can stop you.’
‘That is right, Timothy,’ she said. ‘Nothing can stop us.’
She settled back in her bed and said, ‘Look, my finger is almost healed. You may go to bed now, Timothy. Goodnight.’
I went to bed and thought. I thought about how to kill her. But then I thought, ‘What difference would it make?’
April 20
I see that I have failed to make myself clear in what I wrote yesterday so this time I am going to put down all my conclusions in an orderly manner,
SITUATION
Our so-called Great Aunt Emma is an alien being from another planet, sent to find out how suitable this planet may be for invasion by her species. She is advance guard of an invasion. Her job is to evaluate and understand us – to find out how much opposition we would be likely to offer the invaders, how ‘suitable’ we are. The thing has been tried before – but other places weren’t ‘suitable’. Our planet is.
METHOD
To enter our home, Grinny hypnotized all adults she met by using the phrase ‘You remember me’. She used this phrase on adults only. She took the children as she found them because she thought that (a) children could not offer effective opposition and (b) because she needed to observe human beings in their natural, unhypnotized condition.
RESPONSES
The children soon discovered that there was something ‘wrong’ with Grinny and tried to find out what was wrong by laying traps for her. While they were doing this, they felt they were making important and progressive discoveries. What they failed to realize was, that Grinny did not very much care one way or the other. If the children had said, ‘There! We have found you out! You are an alien!’ she could have replied, ‘Yes, quite right – and what are you going to do about it?’
POWERS
Any adult Grinny meets, she can control instantly. Presumably she could do the same with children if she wanted to (she nearly hypnotized me).
She can communicate with her superiors or allies or whatever they are – the beings in the spaceship. But she cannot do this at very long range. If she could, why should the spacecraft have to come within sight of our planet?
She has great physical strength in her non-human body but I do not think this important. Certainly not to her. Her body has been made to measure for the job of posing as a human being. When she has no further use for it, she will assume her own shape and body.
She seems to have great mental powers. Her memory is inhumanly good, for instance. But it does not seem that she has comic-strip, superhuman powers; she has to speak a language, she cannot project thoughts or anything like that. She has to talk ‘Grinnish’ to communicate with the spacecraft. Sometimes she says things that indicate that all is not well on her own planet. She told me that she has far too many children, for instance. I suppose you could say she is capable of being indiscreet. But then, she is so sure of her powers and the powers of her race that she feels free to say anything she chooses.
I do not know what powers she and her race can bring to bear on us. If her race is capable of equipping Grinny with such a good ‘human’ body, they can probably make anything they need in the way of weapons. We could never construct a Great Aunt Emma – a walking, talking, cigarette-smoking machine. They can. So presumably they’ve got the technology to invade us.
WEAKNESSES
Grinny has quite often made mistakes. She even has built-in mistakes – no human smell, skin cannot change colour, many gaps in her programming or ‘education’ about Earth things and ways. But as I have said, these mistakes cannot be of importance to her or her race.
PROBABILITIES
She told her contacts in the spacecraft that we are ‘suitable’ (for invasion). She told me that we humans have got to come to terms with ‘new facts of human life’ – in other words, with the things the invaders will do to us. She was not at all upset when I overheard this.
So presumably the invasion will come soon.
April 22
This evening the showdown came. She started it as much as we did, but we were perfectly willing for it to happen. It was about nine o’clock. The parents were watching the news on TV in the little sitting room and we were alone with Grinny. She sat in the big armchair and we were sitting about uneasily, waiting for things to start.
She said, ‘Well. Well, well, well. The time, the place and the loved ones all together. Do you know, Timothy, I think one could conduct the whole range of human affairs solely at the level of quotations! What a wordy lot you humans are!’
‘That was a misquotation,’ I said.
‘Oh, I know, it should be “loved one” – the singular, not the plural.’
‘What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry,’ said Mac. He had been doing Blake at school.
‘That’s very apt, Mac,’ Grinny said. ‘William Blake, isn’t it? You are referring to monstrous old me, of course. Well, I cannot pretend to be symmetrical, but I admit to being rather fearful. And also fearless, quite fearless. For what have I to fear from you children?’
None of us could think of anything to say.
‘We mustn’t waste time, must we?’ she said. ‘I’m sure you are all bursting with questions – what is going to happen, when, where, what it will be like when it has happened … Do feel free to ask anything you wish.’
‘Why don’t you go away and leave us alone, you beastly old witch?’ burst in Beth.
‘A good beginning!’ said Grinny. ‘Why don’t we leave you alone? Because we need the space, my dear. Your space. And your amenities – your foods, minerals, water, lands, everything. Yours is by far the nicest planet we have seen.
Ours is quite horrid – rather as yours will become not so many years from now, when you are all standing on each other’s shoulders. But we will not permit that situation to arise, of course. You see, Beth, you have come to the end of your time; you humans have had a very long history, far too long. You have done too much, made too many mistakes –’
‘While on your infinitely superior planet –?’ Mac interrupted. He was twitching with anger.
‘But it isn’t infinitely superior,’ said Grinny. ‘As I say, it is quite horrid. Our problem is just the same as yours – over-development and much too large population. The difference is that we can do something about it and you cannot.’
‘We won’t be allowed to be troublemakers,’ I said.
‘What happened to the peoples we invaded in the past?’ said Grinny. ‘They went to the wall (what a strange expression! What wall?). They served their new masters and were punished if they did not serve well enough. They were allowed to continue living if their lives were useful. The majority accepted their conquerors – as I hope you will. But those who caused trouble were punished or removed. I trust you children will not grow up to be troublemakers.’
‘We won’t be allowed to be troublemakers,’ I said. ‘You’ll hypnotize us all, or whatever it is.’
‘Certainly not!’ exclaimed Grinny. She sounded quite shocked. ‘That would be folly! How could mere robots – people living in a trance – learn to serve us as we wish to be served? Oh no, Timothy! The adults, yes, they will be hypnotized … just like your mother and father. Th
ey are past training, they hardly matter. It is merely a matter of keeping them quiet for a while. But you young people – by which I mean those that have not reached adolescence – you must be encouraged to expand and blossom and grow –’
‘Into what?’ said Mac.
‘Into truly efficient servants! Servants with their own will and intelligence and ability to learn and even invent. But servants who can be formed in the necessary pattern, the pattern we require.’
‘It sounds lovely,’ said Mac, staring at her. ‘Just lovely.’
‘If you mean that – but of course you don’t – you are greatly mistaken,’ said Grinny. ‘We will need a great number of things in a very short space of time if we are to survive on your planet. Our own resources will be quite inadequate. Even our machines will not be enough to build what we need. So it will be up to you humans for the first hundred years or so. Two generations, say …’
‘One and a half,’ Mac said rudely. ‘A human life is three score years and ten. That’s a quotation.’
Grinny looked at him for a moment or two and said, ‘A human life will be two score years from now on. You may quote me.’
I could see it all clearly enough. When the invaders came, we would be their slaves. Little children would be ‘educated’ to serve. Older children would begin doing their work as soon as they were strong enough. An adult would work until he dropped at the age of forty or so. And if he didn’t drop, he would be done away with. There would be no place for ageing humans under the new order. No place for the sick, the weak or the brainworkers. No place for my own mother and father.
Beth had not understood all this. She was looking from Grinny to me and Mac with wide, worried eyes. Her face was twisted with fear and hatred into an expression that came out as sheer spite.
She got up from the cushion on the floor where she had been sitting and said, ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Mac. Goodnight, Tim.’
She walked over to Grinny in the big chair and said, ‘Goodnight, dear Grinny-granny.’
Then she slapped Grinny as hard as she could, right in the face.
There was a complete silence until Mum spoke. We hadn’t noticed her, she had been standing in the door with a cup of coffee in her hand. She had seen it all, of course.
Mum said, ‘Oh, are you off now, Beth? Well, goodnight, darling.’
And Grinny looked at Mac and me with eyes that were expressionless before she said, ‘Goodnight, Beth dear. Sleep well.’
April 23
We met in Mac’s house because we wanted to get away from our own house and the feeling of Grinny being all around us.
‘Meeting of the GCG called to order,’ said Mac. ‘Somebody start us off …’
Beth made a vulgar noise and Mac said, ‘What’s that for?’
‘For being bloody wet,’ she replied nastily.
‘You shouldn’t say “bloody”! Girls shouldn’t swear –’ Mac began.
‘Bloody, bloody, bloody-blood BLOODY,’ Beth said. ‘The GCG … you make me sick!’
‘I second that,’ I said. ‘It makes me sick too. We’ve had enough about GAE and GCG and Grinny-Granny. There’s nothing for us to be funny about any more, so let’s talk seriously. Mac?’
‘I want to start,’ said Beth.
‘All right. Well?’
‘I vote we kill her. Tonight.’
‘I suppose you’re feeling bloody-minded enough,’ said Mac, emphasizing the Bloody as a way of ticking Beth off, ‘to do it yourself?’
‘Yes,’ said Beth. She said the one word in a way that stopped anyone else from speaking. She sort of punched it at us. It made me feel sorry for Mac, feeling as he does about Beth. If he thinks she’s some sort of fairy princess, that ‘yes’ must have changed his mind.
‘All right – how would you do it?’ he said, rather feebly.
She said, ‘I’d get the big hammer and a poker and bash it through her head when she’s asleep.’
Mac said, ‘For heaven’s sake!’
‘Or I’d push her against an electric fire, that radiant one, the one with the live wires,’ she continued. She did not speak at all loudly. Obviously she had been thinking about how to kill Grinny, and these were her answers. Mac and I couldn’t think of anything to say. She suddenly noticed the silence and said, sounding like an ordinary little girl again, ‘It isn’t as if she were human, is it?’
Mac started to say stupid things to her, calling her vicious and so on, until I cut in and said, ‘Beth’s right. She’s been right all along. Mac, you’d better shut up.’
He said miserably, ‘All right, then. What are we going to do?’
‘First,’ I said, ‘we’ve got to make up our minds to it – Grinny isn’t just some fairy-tale ogre, she’s here and she’s real and she means what she says. We’ve got to win against her. But that’s not the same thing as killing her.’
‘Why not?’ said Beth.
‘Several reasons. Killing her proves to Them, whoever They are, that we’ve got a limited amount of power – but only limited. I mean, suppose Mac failed an exam at school, and he managed to get to the man who marked the papers, and did him. All right, the man’s clutching his nose and saying, “Don’t hit me again! You win!” – but it makes no difference, does it? Mac still hasn’t passed the exam.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Beth.
‘Tim means we’ve got to win a moral victory,’ said Mac. ‘But I don’t suppose you understand what that means,’ he added bitterly.
‘I do understand, I’m not stupid. Tim means it’s no good just bashing her, that’s not enough. But I’d like to bash her all the same. Anyhow, there might be more of her.’
‘What was that?’ I said. And Mac’s mouth dropped open. ‘You mean, more Aunt Emmas? Ours isn’t the only one?’
The idea stopped us cold. We hadn’t thought of it before, I can’t think why. Then Mac, having thought for some time, broke the silence. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, just think of the difficulties. I don’t mean the sort of production difficulties, you could just as easily make three of her as one for all we know. But think of the risk! The risk for Them! Think what a chance they’re taking planting just one Aunt Emma among us! I mean, we’ve already found out all about her, and we’re not overbright. Suppose they picked someone stronger than us, or cleverer. Suppose, for instance, they planted an Aunt Emma in the right house but the wrong neighbourhood – where there was some stroppy and inquisitive character in the place who wouldn’t let go – who’d keep probing and asking questions and – well, someone like Mrs Thrupp was.’
We had a Mrs Thrupp a few houses away and you couldn’t stop her. Not only did she know all about everyone, she was quarrelsome with it. She liked picking quarrels about overhanging branches or children playing because in that way she could poke herself into other people’s business.
‘Or suppose you’d listened to me earlier!’ said Beth. Everything she says nowadays seems to have a nasty edge to it, but here again she was right. If Mac and I had been different people and Beth had been the same person, by this time, we’d have done something about Grinny.
Mac said, ‘I don’t think they’d take the risk of making more than one Grinny. And when she was showing off to us the other night, she didn’t give the impression that she had any friends except Them, the spaceship lot. Besides, there’s yet another thing.’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter either way. It doesn’t matter at all how many Grinnies there are. It’s beside the point as long as we don’t kill her. Killing her doesn’t prove anything. Her masters would just write her off and say, “All right, a pity, but we’ll go ahead. Anyway, we don’t need her any more now!” No, what we’ve got to do is – make her surrender.’
‘Make her surrender!’ Mac repeated. ‘That’s it. She’s got to tell them that we’re not suitable. It won’t do any good coming from anyone else.’
‘And once she�
��s told them,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t really matter if there are other Great Aunt Emmas. As far as They are concerned, one single failure is enough. Just one voice saying “Not suitable!” is all we need.’
We were feeling quite pleased with ourselves at this point, having done our little logical exercises and come out with full marks. But then Beth said, ‘All right. Now what?’ and we were back at the beginning again.
We thought for some time and Mac said, ‘What about your parents? Couldn’t we make an attempt to get through to them – to break through the hypnosis or whatever it is?’
Beth and I both said, ‘No,’ at the same time. ‘I bet we couldn’t, however hard we tried,’ Beth said. ‘And anyhow, it would take too long. I mean, even if we broke through, we’d still have to explain. It would take weeks.’
‘We’ve probably got weeks,’ Mac pointed out.
‘No we haven’t,’ Beth said sharply.
‘Why not? How do you know?’
‘Because I know. And because she’s told us so much. Something’s going to happen soon, I know it is.’
Neither Mac nor I felt like arguing this point.
‘Well, what can we do?’ said Beth.
‘What weapons have we got?’ said Mac.
‘Only one,’ I said. ‘The only thing we’ve ever pulled on Grinny is the Eyes Right trick. I think she still doesn’t really understand it. I mean, she knows what it is, and what’s been done to her –’
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