Earthworks

by Brian W Aldiss

  “Put that round you,” he said.

  When I had done what he told me, he began to speak.

  At first he asked about the Travellers, as my interrogators had done earlier. Then he asked about life in the village. Slowly, I began to talk more freely. It even came out that I could read and found books in the ruined town.

  “So occasionally you went to that ruin, where you had a secret meeting with — books,” he said.

  “I did not go there often, sir. That was why I missed seeing the Travellers before, sir, when they passed that way.”

  “But you went there as often as you dared, Noland.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll never have come across a book called ‘1984’, I suppose?”

  “No, sir.”

  “There’s a young man in that book who is regarded as an enemy by his rulers. He also goes to a secret meeting-place. There he meets another human — a woman with whom he is in love. But you met only books. Weren’t you ever lonely?”

  I did not know what he was talking about. I could not answer. He changed his tack then, saying sharply: “You’re just a fool, Noland, nothing more harmful than that. You should never have become mixed up with the Travellers. Also, I have a report from a doctor who says you suffer from a form of hallucination. Is that so?”

  Since I could not tell whether he wanted me to say yes or no, I replied that I supposed so.

  “Yes, or no, you fool? Do you or don’t you have hallucinations?”

  “Yes, sir, thank you.” My brain was numb.

  “I’m going to let you go free, Noland. If I don’t do so, you’ll spend the rest of a short life festering somewhere down under the city because nobody will know what to do with you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t suppose you do. In this case, I can intervene because you are on record as being the man who betrayed or almost betrayed Gipsy Jess. You did, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t mean it, sir. I — ”

  “Silence immediately! As his betrayer, you are entitled to a considerable reward. I am going to see that you get it, and with it will ensure that you buy a job I shall provide. Do you have a family?”

  “Yes — no, sir.”

  “Have you no parents?”

  “I come from an orphanage.”

  “Have you any idea what sort of a job you would be good at?”

  “No, sir.”

  “For God’s sake, man, I know you’ve been ill-treated, but try and get a grasp of your faculties now that someone’s trying to help.”

  “I didn’t mean to betray Jess, sir, really.”

  “The less often you say that the better. In fact, you’d be better out of the country. Ever been to sea?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  “You’ll soon get used to it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He summoned the woman again. It was then that I heard the name Trieste Star for the first time. After that, I was taken back to the Under-city. I rotted there for more uncounted days before I was dragged into daylight again, given clothes, and sent to join the freighter in a northern port.

  I never saw the Farmer again. But I kept the blanket with me that he gave me during the interview; it was still with me when, twelve years later, I ran his ship aground on the Skeleton Coast.

  Chapter Six

  Stars shone in a paling sky. Soon they would all dissolve as the light increased. I lay on the bridge of the Trieste Star, staring up at the sky. I had been dissolved myself.

  Slowly I rolled over and stood up. The freighter was sailing on, though with a heavy list to starboard, ploughing in through the heart of Africa, following the Tropic of Capricorn across the land, our keel cutting through bedrock, our screws churning deep through a sullen sea of clay. My head cleared, and I saw the situation as it really was, the wrecked ship lying in shallow water, the beach ahead — the beach that, merging into desert, was still beach a hundred miles inland.

  The instruments on the bridge still functioned, or some of them did. It was the sound of them, more than anything, that had given me the illusion that we were still at sea. I thought of the decks below me. The automatic things would be down there, crawling about their business as if nothing had happened! I looked instinctively at the gauges on the nuclear power board. Several needles were well over into the red. The delicate servometers that controlled the reactor had been put out of action when we struck; unattended, they would reach critical mass and blow the ship all over Africa.

  But that was not my worry. It would take me only a few moments to rejoin Doctor Thunderpeck and the spastic, Abdul Demone. What worried me was how I had got on to the bridge, for the last thing I remembered was settling down exhaustedly by Thunderpeck’s fire. No doubt my hallucinations had entered a new phase, and when I dreamed of the Travellers I had been impelled to travel, and had come back to the ship. But why had I thought the ship was moving?

  Then I heard it and knew I heard it. Somewhere, an engine throbbed, and not the freighter’s. I peered forward. A mist lay over the beach, the sort of mist that brings chill to a tropic morning, a mist that forecasts heat and is sucked away with the sun.

  In all the still-unlit universe, only there on that stony beach did I have friends. I could see them, Thunderpeck and Abdul. Beside them was a tracked vehicle, the throbbing I had heard coming from its engine. No doubt it had been that sound which woke me. The vehicle was a light tank, flying the flag of New Angola. Six armed men had climbed out of it. In their midst stood my two friends. Their hands were raised above their heads.

  Even as I looked, one of the Angolans stepped forward and began to search them. I saw Abdul back away. The searcher struck him across the side of the neck. Hampered by the iron on his leg, Abdul stumbled on to his knees in the sand, and was roughly hauled up again.

  I waited to see no more.

  This must have been an isolated New Angola patrol. No one else would be about in such a desolate place. Our position lay on the fringe of Angolese territory and near the newly-founded Waterberg State, if I had my bearings right. The patrol looked as if it was in a hurry — which meant that it would be ruthless. And it had something to be ruthless about: the freighter. The Trieste Star was a valuable piece of salvage. I found myself regretting that I had beached her.

  I guessed what the patrol’s next move would be. They would send a boarding party out to look over the ship.

  Although the Trieste Star was only a freighter, there was a small armoury in the captain’s cabin. I ran down on to “A” deck.

  One of the deck swabbers was at work, mopping away with a crabwise motion against the list. I hated the thing.

  My cabin was as it had been. A twinge of nostalgia touched me. I had been the lowest member of the crew when I first came aboard but, because of illness and a case of madness, it had taken me only four years to become captain; since the rank carried almost no responsibilities with it, it was little but a name. For all that, this cabin had been home, and the best I had ever known, for the last eight years. My hand went absently to my breast pocket. The love letters from Justine to another man were still there; they, too, were the best I had ever known.

  Using my key, I unlocked the armoury door. It was little more than a locker. Inside were a couple of sasers for use against ship’s robots that might go wrong and prove dangerous, and a tracer-firing gun obviously for use against men. I checked the gun over and collected a can of ammunition. I hurried back with my load to the bridge and set the gun up ready to fire.

  I had never worked a gun of this type, although I knew how to do so. What I knew I could never do was aim so that I hit the Angolese and missed Thunderpeck. I set up the gun and then sat there fuming, watching the indignity of my friends ashore.

  The tableau changed. Thunderpeck and Abdul were ushered back towards the tracked vehicle by two of the soldiers, while the others came forward. This I could not see clearly, for at that moment the sun rose almost clear of th
e low mist and shone straight into my eyes.

  Even as I cursed the sun and the planet on which it shone, an idea came to me. Shading my eyes, I made out the party of four soldiers at the water’s edge, about to launch the raft on which we had paddled ashore the previous night. As I had surmised, they were about to board the freighter. They would think only of coming to the starboard side, where a rope ladder dangled, inviting them up. Lugging the gun again, I made haste to port.

  For my idea was simple. They presented no target now, and would be out of sight in a moment, concealed by the bulk of the ship. Once I gave my presence away, they would be after me. To preserve the element of surprise, I must get ashore and lie in wait for them preferably behind their vehicle. From that point, I would be able to ambush them perfectly when they returned.

  Lashing a rope round the port rail, I tied the machine-gun to the other end, lowered it until it slithered down the steep slope of the side and dangled over the water, and then secured it there. Wrenching open one of the deck lockers — I worked in a sweat, I can tell you! — I pulled out another of the self-inflating rafts. Before it was properly distended, I flung myself down into the sea. It opened up on the surface like a grotesque water-lily. Running down the steep side, I plunged in after it, to come up panting close by.

  I heaved myself on to the raft, paddled across to where the gun dangled, unslipped the knot that secured it and laid it on the raft; then I was paddling for shore. The bulk of the Trieste Star hid me from the boarding party.

  Once I was ashore and moving up the slope of sand, danger threatened most from the vehicle ahead; but I counted on the Angolese inside being too busy keeping Thunderpeck and Abdul quiet to worry about the outside world for a moment.

  Certain men are naturally men of action. Perhaps to them my movements would have seemed a matter of course; to me, even at the time, they were a matter of wonder. I was not born a man of action; and yet, and yet — oh, there was an exhilaration, beyond the mere goad of the fear of death, in pelting across that white beach with the gun cradled in my arms! The bullets that spattered at my heels were an added savoury.

  Only as I flung myself under the vehicle, sprawling down between the two cogged tracks, did I realize that the fire came not from the vehicle itself but from the ship. My timing had not been as good, my haste not as speedy, as I had imagined. The four Angolese had climbed already on to the deck of the freighter and were sniping at me.

  This, of course, came into my head in an instant. I knew it without looking round. Just as well I did not! Goaded on with fear, I grovelled behind the light tank, burrowing my way into the sand.

  The shots attracted the alarm of the soldiers in the vehicle. The hatch slammed up, I heard an exclamation above me. At any moment, the Angolese would look down and see me.

  In that fearful moment, I knew I was not a man of action — my nerve gave. I could not rise to meet him, to challenge my fate. I could only burrow spinelessly into the sand, awaiting the fatal shot.

  It was then that the universe erupted.

  First it was light, then sound, then a terrible heat that shrivelled my skin. I died then, or if I didn’t, I knew death. Consciousness was consumed in a great crimson inferno. When I crawled, minutes later, stunned and stifled, out of my self-dug pit, the tracked vehicle was burning; over the sea, rising high into the morning air, was an ugly pall of smoke, familiar in shape, the remains of a mighty fire ball. Of the Trieste Star, little was left but scattered wreckage up and down the beach. Of the New Angolese patrol, there was no sign.

  The freighter’s nuclear heart had burst! Though by a freak it had saved me, I was now alone without provisions on the dreaded coast. I sank back into my pit of sand, trying to think, trying not to fear.

  I lay in the pit of sand until the intolerable heat of the burning vehicle drove me out. By then, I thought, much of the radiation should have passed. The cloud of smoke that hung over the shore was drifting far out to sea on the breeze, and this I took as a good sign that danger was being carried away from me. But I was terribly ignorant of radiation hazard, and could only hope that, sheltered as I had been, I had escaped a lethal dose.

  Now it seemed advisable to get away from this grim spot as soon as possible.

  Accordingly, I rose and started along the beach at a steady jogtrot. I headed south, for it was in that direction that I had seen from the bridge of the Trieste Star a tower a little way down the coast.

  Although the power of the sun was already strong, I had high hopes of finding the city and saving myself from death in the desert. In my mind I made an inventory of the things I had. But what had I but the clothes that now began to cling damply to me and, in my inner pocket, the bundle of those tantalizing letters from a woman called Justine to a man called Peter? Certainly I had no water or food. The inventory was so brief and depressing that I closed it, and concentrated on moving rapidly down the beach. It was another time for body above mind.

  I paused when I saw a GEM speeding along the foreshore in my direction. The dramatic end of the Trieste Star must have been heard and registered fifty miles away, and would surely have attracted attention. I feared that this oncoming vehicle might contain a detachment of troops from New Angola; but even if they came from Waterberg State, which lay south of here, I knew they might very well be hostile. Although Africa was uneasily at peace with itself after a succession of civil wars, it was only the very strong President, Abdul el Mahasset, who kept the nations under him from warring again, as many of them had made war on South Africa some decades ago. It might be difficult for me to establish my peaceful intent after the firework display I had just provided on their doorstep.

  So I stood on the beach, shading my eyes and watching the craft come near. It was a sledge-shaped hovercraft with a canvas hood which had been folded back, so that I could see the heads of the men inside. Everything was pearly clear in the sunlight.

  The craft executed a showy half-circle, flinging up sand, and drew to a halt facing back the way it had come, sinking on to the beach as it did so. A tall black man in a colourful silk skull cap and long robes climbed out and walked over to me as I stood there uncertainly. I was relieved to see that neither he nor his companion, the driver, were in military uniform, though it gave me no great pleasure to see the automatic weapon he held in his hand. He kept it levelled at me as he came forward.

  “Whoever you are, come with us,” he said.

  “Wait a minute — who are you? Where are you going?”

  He motioned with the gun.

  “No time for talk or argument. We are going to Walvis Bay; you come with us quickly, before there is trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble are you expecting?”

  He shook his great grey head as if in reproach. “You want Angolese to get a hold of you, man? Do as I say and hurry up!”

  On the whole, this did not sound as if they directed a deal of antagonism at me. I was, in any case, not in very good shape to argue. As I climbed up the steel ladder into the GEM, I glanced back down the beach to where the freighter had been. A figure was coming towards us, lifting a hand and waving as it came.

  Hot though I was, chill came over me. That black face, surely I recognized it, surely it was the Figure? Even here on this parched strand, it seemed I could not shake off that phantom who pursued me. Then I saw it was Doctor Thunderpeck, and sighed with relief.

  At the same time, the driver of the GEM muttered an exclamation and pointed. He pointed not at Thunderpeck but inland. A light tank was racing towards us, flying the flag of New Angola. At once the tall man pushed me into the craft, the driver revved the engine, and we lifted.

  “My friend! Don’t leave my friend!” I shouted, grasping the tall man by the arm and pointing towards Thunderpeck.

  The tall man, whose name I found later was Israt, spoke sharply to the driver. We wheeled again and scudded low over the beach towards Thunderpeck, showering grit as we went. I leant over the side of the cabin and extended an arm to him. Hoveri
ng, we stopped just long enough for him to swing himself up through the blast and noise of our air column; then we turned once more and headed in the direction from which the GEM had originally come.

  The light tank showed every sign of hostile intent. It was ploughing forward at a great rate, heading for a point where its course would intersect ours. The strategy was obvious. If they could get underneath us and spill our air, we would crash. They were already doing their best to ensure this by directing a haser at us. Once, a burn slashed across our side, narrowly missing us; but with the combined speeds of the two vehicles and the bumpiness of the going, their aim with a thin-beamed heat weapon was not good.

  They brought a loud-hailer into play.

  “That vehicle! That vehicle! Halt before we destroy you! You are violating the El Mahasset Treaty! This is New Angola territory. Stop before we knock you out the air!”

  We replied with another burst of speed. We were almost at the point where our tracks would intersect the other vehicle’s. Since our craft seemed to be a civilian machine, we had no weapons with which to defend ourselves. At the last moment, the driver swerved out to the right, skidding low over a bar of shingle, and bounced out to sea in a great sweep of spray.

  As we plunged on, I looked back. The tank, unable to kill its speed in time, ploughed across the bar of shingle and plunged into the ocean. I cheered and turned to see how pleased Thunderpeck was. But Thunderpeck had collapsed.

  For the first time, I wondered how he had survived the nuclear detonation and in what sort of shape he was. I had assumed he was immolated inside the burning tracked vehicle.

  Israt passed me a vacuum flask with iced water in. Some of this I forced down Thunderpeck’s throat, afterwards taking a hearty swig myself. He revived then, partially at least, and explained what had happened inside the vehicle during those fateful moments when the freighter’s pile blew. When one of the Angolese soldiers climbed up to see what the shouting was about, the other tried to tie up the doctor and Abdul Demone.