The Complete Short Stories

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘Get them yourself, as quickly as possible,’ the secretary ordered. As he spoke, the phone gonged. He grabbed it and listened, barking every now and again.

  ‘Damned incompetence,’ he remarked, putting the receiver down as if he were lowering an enemy into a cobra’s hole. ‘That was Computer Central. They say that Bert itself has shut down. They are at a loss to account for it, but are working on the problem. No faults detected as yet. I’m going over there. See that this fellow Wyvern does not die.’

  He left.

  The white coats promptly lit cigarettes. They looked quizzically at Wyvern, then gave him one.

  ‘Thanks,’ Wyvern said.

  ‘Think nothing of it. Smoke while you can.’

  ‘I mean thanks for realising I was still human.’

  ‘Oh that.’ They laughed uneasily, and lapsed into silence.

  Wyvern was not letting them off so lightly. Confidence had returned to him. For one thing, it was clear that the machine was not going to kill him: it had to learn from him, and therefore there was the possibility that he could enlist it on his side. For another thing, the knowledge that had been, so to speak, drawn from him and put back now showed itself to contain an item he had overlooked. For another, nobody had a thing on him legally, and when Bert had finished its task Wyvern should again be a free man – provided he could engineer himself free of the Colonel’s house party.

  ‘Answer a straight question, will you,’ he said to the technicians. ‘Just what do you think I’ve done that squares your consciences with this inhuman job you are carrying out on me?’

  They exchanged looks.

  ‘Do you think we don’t know about you?’ one asked. ‘The whole Sector knows about you!’

  ‘Knows what about me?’ Wyvern said.

  For answer, the other fished a copy of ‘Lunareview’ from his pocket. It was the latest edition. It bore Wyvern’s photograph and headlines which ran:

  MURDER BY EX-CRUXTISTICIAN

  DUMB MAN DIES IN BRAWL OVER BLONDE

  VI

  Now Wyvern was alone in the room except for a guard. The guard called himself a male nurse; his name was William. He was very big and pale, and had been born on the moon; his father was dead, his mother worked in the Imbrium Dyes Factory and he had three sisters, Katie, Joyce and Joy, all of whom were married except Joy, and she was engaged.

  This Wyvern had learnt when William first arrived. Now the big fellow settled down in a chair beside the couch and absorbed himself in part three of a four part serial entitled ‘Shall Love’s Affairs Be Hushed?’ contained in a magazine Joy had lent him.

  Wyvern lay back, glad of a chance to collect his wits. So much had happened, he found himself marvelling he was still whole and hopeful. Part of the hope lay in the fact that he realised he knew the identity of Dorgen’s murderer.

  During the disorienting periods of ego-union he had spent with Parrodyce and Dorgen, many impressions had soaked in on him. He had scarcely heeded them at the time, and had shrunk from trying to sort them later, so unprepossessing had most of them been. Yet hidden information lay in them; he might, for instance, have discovered in them the severing of Dorgen’s tongue, had he attempted the analysis.

  An analysis was precisely what Big Bert had performed in the few moments before its mysterious breakdown. It had coupled like with like, and this orderly process inevitably left an imprint on Wyvern’s mind; indeed it might almost be said to have altered the whole organisation of his mind. It left two hitherto separate facts significantly side by side: Dorgen’s mental picture of his killer; Parrodyce’s mental picture of his assistant. The pictures dissolved and merged; they were one: Parrodyce’s assistant was Dorgen’s killer.

  Why? Wyvern asked himself Why? How? But the truth had lain there undeniably in his mind waiting to be developed, like a film in a dark drawer. He was able even to piece together a name with the portraits: Joe Rakister; for though the name had never actually been formulated to him in the state of ego-union, face and name were one symbol.

  If only Wyvern could get that knowledge through to a neutral authority, he would be cleared of the spurious charge H had framed him with. That meant getting himself clear of the Sector. Of a sudden, he longed for a free, straightforward life again. He was not dead yet: and better be dead than waiting here for he knew not what.

  He slid his legs off the table.

  ‘Here, you’ve got to stay on there,’ William said, looking up from his magazine.

  ‘I’ve got cramp in my legs. Let me try and have a walk round.’

  ‘That machine’s supposed to look after your cramp.’

  ‘My dear William, science has not yet invented an antidote to pins and needles. You get on with your reading; I can’t go far.’

  William grunted uncertainly and returned to the love story. Wyvern found his legs were a good deal stronger than he had expected; the trolley had indeed looked after him well. He walked slowly towards it, feigning weakness and groaning, dragging the cable with him. When he was up to the trolley, he called out.

  ‘I think I’m going to faint, William!’

  The big guard was on his feet at once. Wyvern bent double, grabbed the cable, and wrenched its multi-point plug out of its socket on the trolley base. Thus armed, he swung about, whirling the cable over his head. The heavy plug caught William hard behind one ear. He went down on his knees, crashing into the trolley. Wyvern snatched up a urine bottle and crowned him with it.

  For a moment Wyvern paused to wonder if he was going to survive being disconnected. Although his blood pounded heavily, he felt well enough, despite the overhead mirror’s assurance that he looked horrible. He went rapidly to work.

  He slipped William’s white overall and slacks off and assumed them himself. He peeled the man’s shirt off and tied his hands behind his back with it. He stuffed the woman’s magazine into his mouth. There was adhesive plaster in a roll on the trolley; with this Wyvern stuck the magazine in place and wound a couple of twists round wrists and ankles.

  The result was not artistic but it would hold for a bit.

  Bundling the loose cable, which was still attached to the terminals on his body, into a pocket, Wyvern made into the corridor. There was no light or sound anywhere. He could vaguely discern two doors in the corridor, one at each end. He went to one, hesitated, opened it.

  It was a hospital-type wash room and lavatory, without windows. ‘This is probably a mile below surface,’ he thought, heart sinking. The only outlets, apart from the flush, were a small ventilator grill and a large refuse disposal chute. He opened the latter; it evidently did not function properly, being choked with rubbish: bloody bandages, newspaper, cigarette cartons. A grey human finger caught his eye. Good old Grisewood, he thought grimly; or was it Grimshaw?

  He went back down the corridor, glancing in at the recumbent William, and tried the far door.

  Stairs went up on his left, another door stood just ahead. He took the stairs, ascending easily in the low gravity.

  A light burnt at the top. This looked like part of a regular hospital. Someone was talking somewhere.

  A row of closed doors faced him, all identical and uninviting. One of them said ‘Private’. Wyvern could feel panic beginning to mount in himself; the business of taking pot-luck at closed doors quickly becomes wearing in such sinister establishments.

  At least he would have the element of surprise on his side, and this might be considerable in view of the contraption on the back of his skull. He barged into the door marked ‘Private’, determined to bear down anyone inside.

  Nobody was there. It was an office. Neat white furniture. Synthetic flowers on the table.

  Quite an anti-climax, he thought. There was a far door. Wyvern opened it casually, expecting a cupboard.

  An old lady dropped a cup of tea and began to scream. Perhaps she was the almoner, he thought later. In a moment he had his hand clapped over her mouth.

  ‘I’ll throttle you if I hear another peep,’ he li
ed. Now what do I do? he asked himself; I should have brought that damned adhesive tape along from below.

  ‘Got any adhesive tape?’ he demanded.

  She rolled her eyes and made signs. He brought his hand an inch away from her mouth and said, ‘What was that?’

  ‘I only asked if you had cut yourself,’ she said timidly.

  ‘Never mind that! Where is the tape?’

  ‘Just next door. It’s a store, a medical cupboard, don’t you know. You’ll find some in there.’

  Wyvern didn’t want to risk going into the corridor again.

  ‘How do I get out of here?’ he asked.

  ‘To where?’

  ‘To anywhere!’

  ‘Well if you turn right and go down the corridor, you get into the male nurses’ quarters –’

  ‘And left?’ he prompted.

  ‘There’s a side entrance down that way.’

  ‘Which door?’

  ‘The last – no, the last but one on the right.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Now let’s go and get that tape.’

  He hustled her through the outer room, paused to peer round the door, took a firmer grip round her mouth, pulled her out into the corridor and opened the door of what she had described as a cupboard.

  It was a staff room, with three women in it. The old lady was no fool, Wyvern thought, curing her quick-wittedness.

  He pushed her into the room, slammed the door and ran like mad down the corridor, hoping furiously she had at least not lied about the staff entrance.

  She had. This was a dingy waiting room. Again no windows.

  He tried the next door. The corridor echoed with shouting behind him, and he burst out of it with his only weapon, the cable, swinging in his hand.

  He was in a dark side hall. It contained a staircase and two other doors, one with frosted glass, through which he could see the blur of an approaching figure. He could hear someone also approaching the second door, steelshod boots ringing on tile. And two pairs of legs appeared at the head of the stairs and began to descend even as he paused.

  It was too late to double back into the corridor, where the women were no doubt marshalling male help. Wyvern was cornered!

  At the last possible moment, he spotted a cupboard door under the stairs and dived into it. As he did so, he recognised the voice of one of the men coming down the stairs; it was Colonel H, and in a foul temper by the sound of it.

  Mops and brooms filled Wyvern’s perilous hiding place. He stumbled against them, but the clatter went unheard, for by this time the pursuers had gained the side hall and run into the two men entering by the other doors. The women from the staff room were all trying frantically to explain at once, the men were trying to calm them.

  The high voices were silenced by H’s bull-like roar. His anger scattered them like pollen on a wind, and in no time they had all dispersed; a siren wailed distantly, insistently indicating that an organised search had now started.

  Colonel H came down into the now empty hall with his companion. Through the thin partition, Wyvern could hear every word he said.

  ‘You see what happens,’ he was saying. ‘Nobody can be relied on. I tell you the whole set-up must be reorganised from top to bottom. Once I’m Leader –’

  ‘But we haven’t time,’ replied the other voice. It was H’s secretary, his tones full of spinsterish annoyance.

  ‘After this crisis, yes, by all means. But we can’t change horses in midstream.’

  ‘You argue too much,’ H bellowed. ‘I’ll ask when I want your advice in future. It’s done me no good so far. Now we’ve lost Wyvern –’

  ‘No,’ said the secretary, ‘we haven’t lost him. He must be in the building.’

  ‘He’d better be!’

  ‘Personally I rather admire Wyvern; he is what a century ago, would have been called a good all-rounder. But we have allowed ourselves to be diverted from our original topic,’ said the secretary icily, ‘which was the question of the disposal of Parrodyce and his assistant, Rakister.’

  ‘How can we dispose of them when we can’t lay our hands on either of them?’

  ‘That is a question merely of time.’

  ‘Time, time!’ shouted the Colonel. ‘Too many of the underground – these so-called wretched Democratics – have seeped into the military for it to be merely a question of time! There’s got to be a reorganisation. There’s got to be a purge. Bull had to have one when he came to power.’ Abruptly, he controlled himself and said in a lower voice, ‘Give orders that they are both to be shot on sight. Parrodyce is a traitor.’

  ‘Rakister is not,’ the secretary said.

  ‘Then why didn’t he report back to us when he’d done the job? I told you long ago, never trust a man who prefers a knife to a gun – they’re always neurotics. Anyhow, he knows too much about Dorgen. He must go.’

  Their conversation grew indistinct. They had moved off into the corridor. Wyvern heard the door click behind them. He could not stay where he was: doubtless the building was now being combed. One obvious avenue of hope lay open to him.

  He came out of the cupboard and ran up the stairs which H and his secretary had just descended. As he reached the first landing, he heard a door open on the level he had left. Double doors stood on the landing; he tried them, and they were locked. Softly, he hurried up another flight.

  The stairs ended here in a single door. It was of clear glass, and also locked. The whole building below Wyvern was housed beneath the lunar rock, for gazing out he could see he had just reached ground level. In a tiny square, a helicopter waited. This, no doubt, was the VIP entrance to the hospital.

  Urgently, he pushed at the door. It did not budge. The glass was dauntingly thick. He was praying in the cavern of his dry mouth. Now footsteps were ascending the stairs behind him, rapidly, confidently.

  If he could not get out of here, he was trapped in a dead end. Abandoning any idea of secrecy, Wyvern struck at the glass with his cable and point. It starred, but did not shatter. He was still battering when a voice behind him said, ‘You’d need dynamite to make a go of it, Wyvern.’

  He turned to stare into the muzzle of the secretary’s revolver.

  A long, tasty silence. Wyvern dropped his cable.

  ‘I suddenly had this thought, you see,’ the secretary explained. ‘I left the Colonel to do all the shouting and doubled back on our tracks. It occurred to me that you might somehow have sneaked past us. Come on down.’

  ‘Listen,’ Wyvern said. ‘I don’t even know your name, but you’re not cut out for this sort of stunt. The régime’s doomed anyway, so why not help me out of this? You should have enough intelligence to recognise a moral stink when you smell one.’

  ‘A puzzling and illogical appeal,’ commented the secretary, ‘with a lot of rich ingredients: an argument of necessity, a moral argument, something which sounded suspiciously like an appeal to the old school tie, and a yen to be formally introduced to me. My name’s Bottom, if you must know; for obvious reasons I use it as little as possible. Now we must get you back on your couch.’

  ‘H would shoot you as soon as look at you!’ Wyvern exclaimed.

  ‘Won’t wash, old boy – too obvious a ruse, and a lie anyway. Oh, granted he’s a bit boorish. But stick by him and he’ll stick by you; I don’t pretend to understand that type of idealism, but there it is. Now come on down.’

  ‘Look here –’

  ‘Come on down before I shoot your foot off. Don’t you believe me when I ask you nicely?’

  There was no alternative. Wyvern started slowly forward. Then he stopped, shaken by a vast strangeness. Almost at once – it seemed intuitively – he knew what was happening: Bert the Brain had come back into action.

  The secretary fired deliberately at his captive’s legs. But it was too late. Wyvern’s figure grew blurred, shadowy, and then disappeared.

  The ricocheting bullet spanged dismally down the stairwell.

  VII

  From the orange-tin
ted windows of the ‘Single Z’ bar there was a fine view of one of the Sector’s airlocks, Trafalgar Gate. For the price of a drink, anyone with nothing better to do could sit all day and watch the traffic in and out of the big dome. Eugene Parrodyce sat and watched it now, from a concealed seat, wistfully.

  A deal of military activity was taking place. There had been a demonstration here the evening before, and a home-made bomb thrown. Now a light tank stood by the gate, with new and military police reinforcing the usual lunar guard.

  The sectionalised glass of the dome began fifteen feet from the ground, and rested on reinforced steel. The entire gate consisted of three pairs of double doors, two of them wide and full fifteen feet high for freight, and one much smaller for personnel. There was also a guard room which contained a door into the outside wall of the dome.

  Behind all these doors stretched a vast, compartmented hangar containing decontamination rooms, showers, first aid posts, an isolation ward, a fire station and a repair base, besides the runways which terminated at the double airlocks leading to the lunar surface. A large team of men worked in this complex hangar, so that a stream of people moved in and out of Trafalgar Gate whether or not spaceships happened to be on the landing ramps outside.

  Parrodyce knew that besides the actual airlocks at the far end of the hangar, there were also emergency locks in the sides. The knowledge was of no use to him. He did not know whereabouts they were; he had no spacesuit; he could not get into the hangar without at least four special passes. And to cap it all, he was tied to his seat with funk and indecision.

  In his heart, he blamed it all on Wyvern. It was Wyvern’s fault. Now he, Parrodyce, was a hopeless fugitive. The only element of comfort in the matter was that nobody was likely to betray him to the detested police if they recognised him; and the police seemed to have more urgent matters afoot. He thought longingly of his snug little questioning chamber below Norwich barracks, and of the timid friendship he had felt for his assistant until that amiable giant had disappeared.