New Writings in SF 23 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  The man with the spear frowned, fingering the shaft of his weapon, ingrained pride struggling with the novel concept that he could be so lightly regarded. Before he could decide on a course of action Karsov stepped forward, contemptuously brushed him aside and stepped towards the king.

  He heard the sharp catch of indrawn breath from the watching guards, Haljan’s instinctive gasp of warning, and turned to catch the glint of sunlight on polished stone. He had expected the attack and was prepared for it. His left hand swung up and to one side deflecting the point stabbing towards his face and, stepping forward, he swung his bunched right fist in a hard cross to the exposed jaw.

  Snatching up the fallen spear he held the point against the wizened throat of the king.

  ‘Hail, brother,’ he said. ‘Call off your guards or our father the sun shall watch the spilling of your blood.’

  ‘You would kill me?’

  ‘What is the penalty paid by those who break the taboo of violence to the All High? Your man attacked me. The penalty of death is yours. Unless your guards drop their spears they and you will die together.’

  Behind him Karsov heard the sharp bark of Haljan’s command and could guess at the reaction of his men, the lifting and aiming of weapons which held power enough to destroy the town. But the guards didn’t know that and even if they had it wouldn’t have stopped them. Only their supreme chief could do that and, watching him, Karsov knew that he wouldn’t. Inbred pride made it impossible for him to beg for his life. He would die as he had lived, supreme in the eyes of his people.

  And killing him was the last thing Karsov wanted to do.

  For a moment he felt that he held a tiger by the tail, a product of civilisation faced with the bafflingly different mores of a primitive, and then did the only thing left for him to do. Throwing aside the spear he opened his arms.

  ‘Brother! You are indeed a man! I, the eldest of our mother’s womb, salute you!’

  He smelt the reek of oil as he embraced the withered figure, the sudden easing of tension within the aged frame. To one side the priest lifted his rayed disc, his voice sharp with suspicion.

  ‘You, man of a place far away? You claim to be a child of the sun?’

  ‘What else?’ Karsov released the king and whipped off his uniform cap, the sun shining on the red hair beneath. ‘How can you doubt? Can you not see this sign?’

  * * * *

  ‘You were lucky,’ said Susan. ‘Damned, lucky. What if that spear had taken your life ?’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘But it could have done. Lieutenant, you are a fool!’

  But a lucky one, he thought, relaxing on the soft grass. Very lucky indeed. The more so because he and the ethnologist had taken a walk together to discuss what had happened and, somehow, had wound up among the trees in a tiny glade well out of sight of both natives and ship. He didn’t think it was wholly an accident.

  ‘You broke every taboo they had,’ she mused. ‘All except spitting at the sun. How come you didn’t do that as well?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have paid to alienate their religion. I went as far as I dared when I grabbed the king. Don’t forget he is their living personification of their god. Not that it matters now that we are friends. Equals, rather,’ he corrected. ‘Coworkers in the common cause.’

  ‘To lift his people into the sun and share unimaginable loot.’ Susan shook her head with mock despair. ‘How could you lie to them like that? Don’t you realise that they’ll learn the truth eventually?’

  ‘Truth is relative,’ he said. His throat felt dry from hours of talking, explaining, lying, but he was satisfied. The breach had been made and the rigid structure of the local culture would soon fall apart. The Terran League had been accepted as guides, mentors and friends. Susan could chalk up her first real success.

  “Thanks to you,’ she said when he pointed it out. ‘But how did you know what to do ? At college they-’

  ‘Talk a load of guff,’ he interrupted. ‘Textbook theorising unbacked by actual experience. The biggest mistake they made was in teaching you to treat primitives as if they are equals. They aren’t. As far as they are concerned they are immeasurably superior. To gain their respect you have to prove that you are as good if not better than they are. And that includes lying, stealing, fighting and anything else they set high value on. In this case it was fighting, arrogance and divine descent via the sun.’

  ‘Red hair,’ she smiled, and ruffled it. ‘I should keep you around to advise me. Did you know that I was staying here until things are under control ?’

  ‘I’d heard about it.’ He turned to look up into her face. ‘I could get a transfer to the planetary service if you think it’s a good idea. Do you ?’

  She coloured a little. ‘You’re forgetting something. Lieutenant. I’m of superior rank and it’s against the rules of the service for a man of lesser rank to make a proposal to a female of a higher.’

  ‘I’m due for promotion.’

  ‘Even so-’

  ‘Regulations,’ he said. ‘Taboos. To hell with them.’ Reaching for her he held her close. ‘They’re only made to be broken.’

  <>

  * * * *

  THE ETERNAL THEME OF EXILE: THREE ENIGMAS II

  Brian W. Aldiss

  Here are three more of Brian Aldiss’s Enigmas— glittering dominoes masking the faces of human experience and exile and the agony of eternal farewell. Brian Aldiss has recently completed his mammoth investigation into science fiction. The Billion Year Spree, and its publication marks an important stage in the evaluation of sf.

  * * * *

  The Eternal Theme of Exile

  Anna Kavan believed that I was persecuting her. Rather, she believed that she was being persecuted and that I was in some way responsible for the persecution. Sometimes, I was the chief agent of it; sometimes, I was no more than an innocuous bystander who acted as a focal point through which some insidious form of vengeance was channelled.

  In order to prove to her that I was entirely innocent, I decided one morning to travel to the Outer Zodiacal Planets. My secretary informed me that an ion-jet was leaving for OHG 3RL in an hour’s time. I registered with the Ministry of Slavery and checked aboard the I. J. ‘Silence’ as a Propulsor.

  We arrived at OHG 3RL, a distance of sixteen point four light minutes, fourteen minutes later. Resuscitation took a little over half-an-hour, and then I was allowed on to the face of the planet.

  One never becomes used to the changes in metabolism which take place as one treads ground which is not Earth’s, not even when one has travelled to as many exotic scenes as I have. On OHG 3RL. I was burdened with the miseries of an entirely imaginary past, details of which, crowding in on my senses, almost drowned out what I thought of as my normal personality.

  The impressions were so evanescent that, once I left the planet, they could never be recaptured. I retain a memory of them only because, as it happens, I stopped at a booth offering narcissistance and made a cassette of my troubles.

  ‘Father, I still grieve that the state closed down your business just at a time when, in middle age, you were at last making a success of your life. We were so proud of you, your ailing family. We too felt the bitterness of an edict pronounced just because our skins were of a different colour from our neighbours. Our hearts bled for you—mine particularly, because Erik and Franz had their own jobs, whereas I, your youngest, worked only for you.

  ‘Now that you are dead, I realise how bitter you were that you could no longer provide as head of family. Perhaps it was a mistake that we left the country and went to start life anew in K— in Africa. We always held the move against you, hating K— as we did. Only now do I see how truly you hoped for a freer life for your sons, unable to understand how your bitterness was imprisoning us all in your old European world we seemed to have fled.

  ‘The constant journeying broke Mother’s health. First the slow boat down the East Coast, calling in at all those squalid ports. Then the a
ttempt to settle in Johannesburg. Well, we were happy there for a while. That was where I first saw Anna. Then the two-year trek north, the succession of horrible vehicles...’

  So the catalogue went on, always with the eternal theme of exile—one perhaps nearer to the human heart even than love and hate. All the while, I earned a slender living working in the great earth kilns of Kubanjitully, the capital of OHG 3RL. I knew I had to live there for a year. Then I could return to my native planet. So great were the relativity gradients on OHG 3RL, owing to the Black Class sun, that when I set foot again on Earth, Anna would be an old lady, and no longer in fear of me—if indeed she remembered at all.

  The year passed. I laboured through it with many lifetimes on my back—not only mine but those of a bedridden mother, rambling on about her idyllic childhood in the Ukraine, and of my brother Franz and his wife and two children, all of them completely imaginary. Franz lost his job because of his inability to master the complex atonal language of OHG 3RL; he drank and soon became unemployable. His wife, Hettie, a wan and consumptive girl, more and more sought my company.

  At last, I returned to the space port and registered for passage to Earth. As I was boarding, Hettie ran up and begged me to take her with me. Compassion and lust made me agree. In a moment, she was crowding into the cryobunk by my side. Our joint decision was to settle in New Zealand, there to forge a happier life together.

  Earth again. My old personality hardly fitted me. I came down the ramp alone, conscious of irredeemable loss. What had I dreamed? I looked up, but heavy cloud covered the night sky. Every star was a life, so they said.

  Well, at least there was Anna. She would be old. She would be at my mercy. To all my old armoury of tortures, I could now add the fact of my youth.

  I bought a pale flower for my buttonhole.

  * * * *

  All Those Enduring Old Charms

  To escape the attentions of Anna K—, my master journeyed to the Remade Planets, where he served his time as a demographer in the state of Aphos, on Caphoster. He took on to his staff two beautiful young females, whose names were Vittoria and Venice; their job it was to classify data and tend my master’s Madagascan Indris.

  The Remade Planets had been in existence in their present form for many thousands of years. They had been set in orbit about Profabdos; there were sixteen of them, most of them burnt-out cores of old suns. On Caphoster, most of the states specialised in one predominant emotion. My master had chosen the state of Aphos because its predominant emotion was severity, which was congenial to him.

  ‘Tomorrow, we visit Hostas, the city beyond the Tiger Glacier,’ he told me. ‘You will accompany me. Vittoria and Venice will remain here with the animals.’

  The Tiger Glacier was so called because of the stripes that ran along much of its length, painted by moraines brought down from the mountains. We crossed it in a day and found ourselves in Hostas, a strange city where one sailed over magma to get from house to house. No windows were built into any of the buildings, in order to keep out the permanent drifting smoke. It proved a congenial city to my master, he sinking quickly into its vices and duties, investing in its fashions and obsessions.

  During our second year there, he came across his own name carved on a memorial. After extensive enquiries, he discovered that Hostas was the city of his family’s origin, or had been, several thousand years earlier.

  ‘Send a message to Vittoria and Venice to come at once,’ he told me. ‘We will reside here for a term. There are connections I must explore.’

  No sooner was the message sent than he made another discovery. The cryotomb of his ancestors stood in another part of the city. Indeed, it had been added to within recent date. After application to the city fathers, my master entered the cryotomb; there he found his grandmother in DSA, clutching to her side an immense lily as she endured phases of minimum biological activity.

  Busy although he was, he decided to fall in love with her and have her reanimated. No doubt he was attracted by the perversity of the idea, while the fatal disruptions in his family, dating from early in his father’s lifetime, probably encouraged his intentions.

  By the time the necessary papers came through, and the tomb was set to Regeneration, Vittoria and Venice had arrived in Hostas. Celebration was in order. All my master’s new friends came to see how beautiful the girls and their animals were, so that other projects were forgotten for a while. The Festival of Enshrouding Smoke was held, commemorating the original programming of the city.

  My master was in a tavern on Culpice Street when he saw his grandmother on the other side of the room.

  ‘My faith, but she resembles Anna,’ he said. She was haggard but still possessed charm, despite her advanced years. She had been endowed with a fine bone structure; it was simply that this same bone structure was now more prominent than formerly. Unfortunately, she took offence at the sudden amorous advances of a hitherto unknown grandson, and would have nothing to do with him.

  Daily, my master sent her one lemuroid after another, hoping to win her heart. One by one, the animals were returned, decapitated. My master sent her flowers, mathematical disputations, five-dimensional objects, sweetmeats, metaphors, plumes, plums, live jewels. All were returned. Grandmother was not to be moved.

  ‘How vexatious,’ said my master to the girls, ‘that I should leave one planet to escape the attentions of a woman, only to find myself on another planet where another woman plainly wishes to escape my attentions!’ He besought Vittoria to go to his grandmother and present his case personally. Vittoria was not returned.

  Venice now begged my master to forget his madness, relinquish his exile and head back to Earth. Such were the charms of his grandmother—in his eyes at least—that my master would agree to this only if Venice would go first and make one final attempt to convey his feelings to the romantic old lady. Resignedly, Venice went. She was never returned.

  Overwhelmed by amusement as well as remorse, my master wrote an elaborate suicide note to the elusive charmer; he then relinquished his post as demographer, and we left the Remade Planets.

  But he remained attached to his beautiful suicide note, which seemed to embody for him many of the eternal truths of love. On the voyage home, he recast it as a love letter, posting it to Anna K— as soon as we docked in Tellus City.

  * * * *

  Nobody Spoke Or Waved Goodbye

  No, I was never in love with the man I still call ‘my master’, not even during those few months when we were married to each other. Differences in ages, temperament, position—especially the fact that we had been born on different planets—all such things make us completely incompatible.

  Why, then, am I never free of him ?

  Only today he was here, as ever more keen to be clever than kind, bringing with him that blank-faced clone-serf of his.

  ‘Anna, I’m leaving tomorrow. I came to say goodbye.’

  ‘Where are you going? Back to Caphoster?’

  ‘Ten years in DSA. I’m hiring out my personality while I’m gone. If you have patience, life can teach you a lot about the human condition you’d never understand in any other way.’

  Always those baffling remarks of his. I would not kiss him. He left me his silver coffee service, many volumes of Anna Diary, some anatomical studies, gutta percha figurines, foils, veils and an eidetic dream-memoriser. Despite which, I felt myself alone.

  Consolation was something I always found in the melancholy Masked Gardens of Santarello. I chose a lemur mask and walked along the wall.

  The eternal conspiracy had penetrated even there. Among the crowd, someone spoke my name. Soon it was taken up on all sides. I ran among the trees, dropping one of the volumes of Anna Diary as I went. Someone would find it with all its vile explicitness; their life and mine would be ruined.

  I sank under a chestnut tree. A short-haired man stood there, smiling.

  ‘I can tell you are a hunted being,’ he said. ‘But at least you live at the centre of your world; peo
ple find you worth persecuting. I live only on the outer perimeters of my existence, a nomad unfit for persecution. My spirit is grey, yours cerulean.’

  Faintly, I said, ‘Please go away; I can tell your personality is hired.’

  Although I absorbed myself in my work, and in particular in a town I was redesigning in Wildgreif, my emotional life was empty. Some months later, I met the smiling man again.

  ‘Are you still on the perimeters of your existence?’ I asked boldly.

  ‘Working towards the outer suburbs. I find you in my subtopia, in uncertain light.’

  ‘Cerulean no more?’

  ‘The human face is the most spectacular of all objects, fours includes much of the sky.’ ‘

  We became lovers before I discovered that, in his double life, he was famous. Wherever he went, crowds of short-haired men and women followed him, all more handsome and youthful than I could tolerate. I asked him what he could possibly find in my small pale being on which to nourish himself.