Out of Nowhere

by Gerard Whelan

  Simon was confused.

  ‘But if they weren’t people,’ he said, ‘then what were they?’

  The driver’s face was a study in frustration as he tried to think of words to explain.

  ‘You have no equivalent,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe you should think of them as a kind of video camera, or tape-recorder. Biological tape-recorders.’

  ‘Biological tape-recorders,’ Simon repeated blankly. There was a very long silence. The driver looked at each of them in turn, examining each face for some sign of comprehension. He saw none.

  ‘I’ve heard all the stories about aliens from space,’ Simon said eventually. ‘I never dismissed them, but I never believed them either. I never had any proof one way or another. I suppose now I do. I’ve actually met creatures from another world.’

  The effect of his words on the stranger was shocking. The driver’s face paled, and he looked furious.

  ‘Aliens from space?’ he growled. ‘I’ll have you know I was born less than fifty miles from here! There isn’t a human on this island more native to it than me!’

  Simon blinked at him several times, taking in the man’s obvious anger.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘you should start at the beginning. Tell us the whole story.’

  ‘Now that,’ said the driver, calming down, ‘is going to be hard for all of us.’

  He was right. It was.

  34. The Driver’s Tale

  ‘A long time ago,’ the driver said, ‘there were no humans on this island. You’ll know this.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Simon. ‘You’re talking about, what, ten thousand years ago?’

  ‘Give or take a few millennia, yes. My story begins then. The sea level was lower in those days. This island was already separated from the mainland, what you now call Europe, but the neighbouring island – Britain, you call it – was still connected to Europe by a narrow land-bridge that grew and shrank over time.

  ‘There were, as I say, no humans here then, but the island was inhabited. It was home to two races which were … well, humanoid, as you’d say, but not human. Neither race was very numerous. There was much competition between them, but never anything like war. They couldn’t have conceived of such a thing. They had less violent ways of competing.’

  His eyes, which had been fixed on the table, flicked up at them as though to check whether they were listening. How he could have doubted it they didn’t know.

  ‘These races knew,’ he continued, ‘that both the neighbouring island and the mainland were inhabited, very sparsely, by other peoples. But they’d had little contact with them. The people here lived simple lives. They didn’t go in for trade expeditions and such, because this land supplied all of their needs. And traders from outside tended to avoid this island, because other peoples thought the inhabitants were … oh, monsters or witches, pick your own term of abuse. Your people have many words for such things, although none of them ever made much sense to me. At any rate, the people of this island lived here in peace, and they minded their own business.’

  ‘Ah,’ Simon said, ‘whenever I hear of a peaceful people minding their own business I get a feeling something bad is coming.’

  The driver nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s the way, isn’t it? Well, one fine day the island was invaded – just like that. No one had ever heard of such a thing before, so no one was prepared. Maybe we should have minded our own business a little bit less. If we had, we might have heard long before of the danger we faced.’

  He looked around at them again.

  ‘Some centuries before,’ he said, ‘a new people had begun to appear on the mainland. A very numerous people. They came streaming out of the east, out of the heartlands. Nothing like them had been seen before. They were primitive, tribal, warlike – actually, not to put too fine a point on it, they were complete savages. They killed without provocation, and they killed anything they met. They looted and despoiled, and when they had no one else to fight they fought amongst themselves. They easily conquered the few inhabitants of the coastal lands. And always more came, as though entire peoples had suddenly decided to move to a new land and kill everything in it.

  ‘They hadn’t even finished conquering the mainland when their first war-parties ventured over the land-bridge to the sister-island. There, the pattern repeated itself: contact, conflict, destruction. They ruined what land they took, and then they took more. They were a species which, by any known standards, was totally insane. It was as though they had no choice but to kill – as though they were machines programmed to destroy. And that was exactly what they did to every piece of land they conquered: they destroyed it, and everything in it.’

  Stephen tried to imagine these grotesque, inhuman creatures. Could the hunting things that had attacked him and Kirsten in the library be some of them? Could they somehow have come here through time? Was that the cause of all this?

  ‘Time passed,’ the driver said. ‘I’m speaking of centuries now, centuries upon centuries. The savages spread over the sister-island, killing everything they met. They grew in number and in organisation, and they grew smarter. But they grew no less savage. Eventually they came to the coast of the sister-island, and they realised that there was another land to the west. They decided to take that too.’

  His listeners were glued to the driver’s words. Simon had an odd distracted look on his face, as though he was thinking of something else at the same time that he was listening.

  ‘I should tell you that one of the old races on this island was called – more or less – the Tellene,’ the driver said. Stephen stiffened in his chair. The driver noticed. He looked Stephen in the eye as he went on.

  ‘The second race,’ he said, ‘was called – and again it’s an approximation – the Sug. They were a dull, unimaginative people, childish even – surly and given to tantrums and sulks. At least, that’s how the Tellene saw them. To be fair, the Sug saw the Tellene as flighty and impractical. Too smart by half, as it were.’

  ‘And the third race?’ Simon asked sharply. ‘The invaders? The savage species that killed and destroyed? The one programmed to kill and destroy?’

  The driver said nothing. He raised his eyebrows briefly and looked embarrassed.

  Simon’s look was oddly intense. He seemed to find something terribly important in this puzzling story of a time before time.

  ‘I know, don’t I?’ he said.

  Again, the driver said nothing.

  ‘Tell me,’ Simon said. ‘The killers were us, weren’t they? They were humans!’

  The driver seemed mortified.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said regretfully. ‘I’m afraid they were.’

  35. Agent On the Job

  The noontime sun was bright in the courtyard when I went outside. The air was fat and drowsy with riches of bee-song and flowers. I drank it in.

  The healing process in the abbot’s body had begun. It was simply a matter of time now, and out of my hands. Sometimes nothing is the most useful thing you can do. And there was another little matter to clear up before we left.

  I crossed to the monastery gates and looked out. Through the screen of trees I could see the sunshine glittering on the waters of the sacred lake. The air was full of the smell of the green growing things, and of the thing that no human could feel: the place’s nature. Humans didn’t even have words to describe that smell – a smell of wholeness, and of something more than wholeness – a smell of potential. They’d obviously noticed something special about this spot, otherwise they’d never have built here in the first place. But they didn’t have the senses to know what that something special was.

  The place’s personality had helped to heal my own wound, and it was helping the healing of the wounded monk. But it would be hurting the killing things that lurked out there now among the trees.

  No real power has any owner except itself – it has only those by whom it consents to be used. This place had never been ours; but it was a source for the powe
r we used. It had been our ally, because we’d respected it and roused it from its first, unthinking sleep. We’d revealed it to itself. We’d told it what it was. ‘Look at yourself,’ we’d said. ‘Are you not beautiful?’ Since our going the power had slept. Now it was starting to wake itself, for reasons that we couldn’t know. But when it was ready, it would tell us – that was power’s way.

  The crystal stones were still in the refectory, channelling energy to the abbot’s dreaming flesh. But I’d be fine without them. I strolled down the gravel path from the gates. Around me in the greenery birds fluttered and called, but in a place quite near I sensed the silence of their absence.

  That would be the place.

  I sent a call there, bidding the killing things to come. They didn’t move. I called them more sharply, ordering now. They came silently, nervous, from between young green branches, and stood huddled in front of me. Their shoulders were slumped, their whole stance subdued – the place terrified them. They reminded me of the humans of my parents’ day, that first killing brood whose fear was almost as strong as their bloodlust. But with these things fear had the upper hand. They were weary of this unfriendly world. They were dirty and ragged and mixed-up and mad, four boys with the too-lean look of famished hunting dogs.

  ‘Your masters didn’t mean to do this to you,’ I told them. ‘They made a mistake. But the game is over now. You can have peace.’

  One of them looked up at me. His mouth hung slack. There was a big bruise on his cheek. One of his eyes was swollen shut. In the other eye I saw a dull spark of half-understanding.

  ‘Peace?’ he said. His untrained mouth mangled the word.

  I felt angry at the Sug. It was cruel to make such unfinished things. And yet the Sug were not cruel as such, only thoughtless, which can be worse than any cruelty.

  ‘Peace,’ I said again.

  It wasn’t the word they understood so much as the tone. To my surprise, I felt pity for them. These killing things had been made to suit a purer version of this world. The humans had polluted its air, which even humanity itself knew now; but as yet they had no way of sensing what they’d done to the world’s subtler air. If they did find a way to measure it, it would probably be with a machine – humans have always loved their toys.

  The Sug could have known better than to make this mess, but they’d been too busy sulking. Their pride had left their creatures to this miserable agony in a fouled world. Still, the Sug who’d died today had behaved in a way no Tellene could have expected. The exquisite manners of his gesture would have made any of the Tellene proud. The world was full of surprises – it was one of the things my people liked most about it.

  ‘Come,’ I said to the hunters. ‘Let’s end this nonsense.’

  The one who’d tried to speak came forward first. There was a light in his eyes like something you’d see in the eyes of a trusting young animal. He bent his head as I raised my arm, and he bared his thin neck to my hand. The others jostled for places in the queue.

  When it was done I stood for a while in the shade of the green trees, listening to the singing of the birds. My friend, I presumed, was with the others. I guessed he was explaining things to them, and I wondered what lies he was telling.

  36. The Third Alternative

  Simon was quiet for a time. He seemed to have forgotten all of them. Then his eyes turned back to the driver.

  ‘Where,’ he asked carefully, ‘does this story lead?’

  The driver tapped the table in front of him.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘To this place. To this moment. To here and to now.’

  Simon gave a short nod.

  ‘And why are you telling it to me? Why not just send me to sleep, like the others?’

  The driver smiled.

  ‘I’m afraid the narration isn’t really for your benefit, Brother Simon,’ he said. ‘It’s for the other two. But I must admit, I feel a certain relief telling it to a human – our races have never exactly communicated. And to tell the truth, it doesn’t matter if you hear it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Because after we leave nobody in this monastery will remember we’ve been here. They’ll remember none of this. Your people outside will be left with a mystery, but no more. Even that much is regrettable – but we can’t make your whole species forget that part of this island became inaccessible for nearly a week. Even we’re not that good.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Simon, slapping the table. He didn’t seem terribly put out. To Stephen’s surprise he was actually smiling, and there was something like pleasure in his voice.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I really could admire you people. You have style. You come, you do your job and you go – no messing around.’

  The driver nodded acknowledgement of the compliment.

  ‘Do you still want to hear the rest?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course! You can’t stop now!’

  The driver shrugged, and resumed his story.

  ‘As I’ve said, the old peoples minded their own business. They knew nothing of what had been happening elsewhere. So when a fleet of primitive boats turned up and landed strangers on their shores, they were surprised. Actually, it was hard to know who was more surprised – the invaded or the invaders. Because the native races were, as I’ve told you, humanoid, but not human – they didn’t look like you. And when the newcomers looked at them, they seemed to see–’

  ‘Monsters?’

  ‘Yes. Monsters.’

  The driver’s cup had been empty for some time. Now he asked politely for a refill. Kirsten, who’d been listening as closely as the others, jumped up and poured. The driver took a long drink before continuing.

  ‘You can’t understand what came next unless you know a few things about the old races,’ he said. ‘For one thing, they were very advanced for their time. For another, they absolutely loathed senseless violence. It wasn’t that they were cowardly – far from it. But they knew that violence, like any powerful tool, could be very dangerous for the user. Violence taints the user. It damages his spirit to the exact degree that it is used.’

  Simon made a wordless little noise of agreement. He looked even more closely at the driver.

  ‘Another fact about the native races was that, after a fashion, their reputation as witches was earned. They had powers that would seem magical – unnatural – to humans even now. In fact, they were simply more aware of what nature allowed, and nature allows a very great deal more than humans care to know.

  ‘It was obvious from the first that the newcomers were invaders, not traders or anything else. And it was obvious too that they were … unpleasant. Their boats were decorated with human heads and hands. When they landed they sacrificed other humans on the shore, thanking their cruel gods for a safe journey. These sacrifices involved extreme pain for the victims, which the newcomers obviously enjoyed inflicting. But the old races didn’t need to see these things to understand the newcomers. You see, they could … well, you’d say they could read minds.

  ‘The invading force was large, but in itself this wouldn’t have been a problem for the natives. They were few in number, but compared to the savages they were very powerful. Their weapons weren’t physical ones, but still they could have exterminated the invaders if they’d been so inclined.

  ‘The problem was that they weren’t so inclined. Violence on that level just wasn’t their way. They found it distasteful as well as dangerous. Manners were extremely important in their society, and they found such violence ill-mannered.’

  Simon interrupted.

  ‘But you said the invaders thought they were monsters,’ he said. ‘Weren’t they afraid to attack them?’

  ‘Fear did seem to be the second strongest emotion they had – they feared everything. But the fear gave rise to something else, which was by far the strongest emotion they knew: hatred. They hated what they didn’t understand. And they understood very little.’

  Again Simon nodded agreement.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘
Yes. And they haven’t changed much, have they?’

  ‘Oh, but they’ve changed a great deal. In those days all of your race was like that all of the time – fearful and murderous, and little else.’

  ‘So what did the natives here do?’

  ‘The invaders attacked. The natives defended. They erected barriers to contain the strangers – barriers a bit like the one we’ve put up now, but much more primitive.’

  Simon gave a bitter little laugh.

  ‘The strangers,’ he repeated. ‘That’s what we’ve been calling you! Why don’t you call them by their name: humans?’

  ‘Very well. I was only being polite. The natives contained the humans while they decided what to do. This took a long time. The Sug and thTellene set out to discover who these people were. When they found out – from the minds of the humans themselves – they were horrified that such brutes could exist. The Sug in particular were appalled. They suggested that this species must be some awful mistake, that it wasn’t just our business, but our duty to annihilate them all, here and wherever they lived – to restore balance to the world.’

  ‘That’s a dangerous way of thinking,’ Simon muttered.

  ‘Indeed. That’s what the Tellene said. You must understand that these things weren’t moral questions for us, just simple logic: if you cut your hand, you bleed; if you kill, you take on the responsibility of a killer. Killing a whole species involves an enormous level of responsibility, even if that species seems to be truly vermin. But the Tellene had seen that these creatures – these humans – would simply keep coming back. It wasn’t a matter of choice for them – they were driven things. Eventually it would have come to violence anyway. If we destroyed them, then we’d become just like them. But if we didn’t destroy them, and if they kept coming, then eventually they’d swamp us through sheer numbers – we were, as I’ve told you, quite few. In either case we would be, in our own eyes, destroyed, whether in a thousand years or in a day. In many ways a day would be preferable: if we kept them at bay for a thousand years through blood and slaughter, then by the end of that time we ourselves would be brutalised beyond our own recognition, just as if we’d annihilated them in the first place. We’d be – if you don’t mind my saying so – no better than humans.’