Cryptozoic! (12 page)
Authors: Brian Aldiss
Four hours later, almost every man in the barracks room was in a sodden
stupor. Pond had staggered away into the night, and the squaddies had
either fallen into bed or been thrown there by hearty companions. One
man stood alone at the far end of the room by a window flung wide,
still clutching a bottle, and singing a lewd song.
"But the way he caught the butler
Was the dirtest way of all . . ."
Finally there was silence, and darkness. Bush lay on his bed, wakeful
under a feeling of terror that had an illusive familiarity about it.
"I'm not dying, am I?" he whispered. He could hear voices. There seemed
to be four men round his bed, two in white coats, two in black. One of
them said, "He can't understand a thing you say; it's all turned to his
own needs. He imagines himself in another place, perhaps another time.
Isn't he a committed insect?"
The thought of insects goaded Bush into sitting upright. The gaunt bleak
room full of insensible bodies stretched away in all directions. The four
men still stood at his bedside. Humoring his fantasy, he said, "Where do
you fellows think I am?"
"Quietly!" one of the phantoms admonished. "You'll wake the others in the
wardrobe. You're suffering from anoxia, with ordinary hallucinations."
"But the window's open," he protested. "Where is this, anyway?"
"The Carlfield Mental Hospital. We are looking after you; we believe
you are an amniote egg."
"Your meeting's scrambled," he said. He sank down again, overwhelmed by
sensations of drunkenness and futility. These men could do nothing for him
or to him. On his pillow, a yawning pit of sleep awaited him.
He made it to the lecture hut on time next morning, despite a throbbing
head. Howes and Stanhope arrived in a few minutes. They were in civilian
clothes. The course was over -- until the next one began. In the square,
the disbanded Ten Squad was moving about in unfamiliar clothes, heading
away from home or duty, bawling final ribaldries at each other.
The officers sat down on the bench next to Bush, and Stanhope began to talk
in a business-like way.
"We know you will be honored by the mission the government has in mind
for you. However, before we tell you what it is, we feel it necessary
to give you some of the wider background.
"This is a time of great uncertainty, nationally and internationally,
as you are by now aware. The new theory of time has upset the status
quo. This is particularly so in the West -- America and Europe, which have
for historic reasons always been very time-conscious areas. In the East,
things are much as they ever were. Duration means a different thing to
a Chinaman or Indian than it does to us.
"General Peregrine Bolt had to step in and take over because this country
of ours was on the brink of economic ruin. A strong hand is going to
be needed for a long while, until we adjust to the new conditions --
meanwhile, we are in the paradoxical position of having to accept aid
from the East."
Bush's aching head prompted him to say, "Hence the Black Wombat Special,
I suppose."
He observed that Stanhope looked blank, whereas Howes caught the reference.
"You will see that it is imperative that no new disruptions come along
to upset the order we are trying to build."
"What sort of disruptions do you mean?"
Stanhope looked embarrassed. Howes said, "Ideas are sometimes worse than
armed uprisings. As an intellectual, you should know that."
"I'm not an intellectual."
"I'm sorry. Suppose a conflicting idea should now arise about the nature
of time? It might throw us back to where we were a few months ago."
Understanding began to creep over Bush. These two men seemed so harmless,
so marginal (and Stanhope was really not particularly bright); but they were
sitting here like two evil uncles at a sick child's bedside, telling him
bad fairy stories -- stories that might reveal the whole secret of . . .
of the regime's, and consequently Bolt's, fears; of the neuroses of the
age. . . . It was something in Howes' face that prompted this feeling;
he was being as frank as he dared, he was also hiding something; the
classic dilemma of an intelligent man in a totalitarian society.
Howes told Bush, "It's the question of time, you see. All that man is,
all that he has built -- although, as Captain Stanhope says, this is
more true of the West than the East -- has been founded on the idea that
time is unidirectional: like the flow of water through a sluice gate,
shall we say? But this was man's invented idea, and the little he knew
of the truth he kept suppressed down in the dark basements of his being,
the undermind, as we call it. Occasionally, intimations of the truth have
leaked through, to frighten him. Precognitive experiences or dreams,
extra-sensory perceptions, the sense of déjŕ vu, and so on -- almost
anything that could ever be dismissed as magical or superstitious --
were such leakages and directly contradicted the precious theory of
unidirectional time. Which was why they were so passionately laughed
out of court."
"And your alternative to unidirectional time?"
"Co-continuous time. You know that. You believe it. You went through the
Wenlock discipline. Space-time being what it is, past and present are at
par in terms of energy. Imagine a featureless world without day or night
or organic processes: we'd have no basis there for any concept of time,
even an incorrect one like unidirectionalism, because there would be
no way of establishing time differences from a human point of view.
The error, the very concept of time-flow, is in the human consciousness,
not in the external universe: the creed that causes us to speak of
mind-travel rather than time-travel, as some would originally have
preferred.
"Such is Wenlock's discovery and it gives us something to work on. Any other
rival theories must be squashed, in case they throw us back into chaos
again."
And I take it there are rival theories?"
He knew what was coming even before Stanhope answered (this was Stanhope's
domain, the world of security, so much simpler than the realm of
speculation): "You know there are rival theories. The renegade Silverstone,
once a colleague of Wenlock's, is uttering dangerous and misleading
nonsense."
"Heresy, eh?"
"Don't joke, Bush. Not heresy but treason. Silverstone is guilty of treason
by uttering ideas calculated to upset the security of the state. He must be
eliminated."
Bush guessed what came next. The madmen who visited him in the night could
have guessed. By the very nature of his thinking, Silverstone would be an
accomplished mind-traveler. The regime would require another such to go
and eradicate him -- and Bush was another such.
Howes must have read Bush's expression, for he said, "That is your mission,
Bush, and I hope you prove worthy of the honor. You have to hunt down
Silverstone and kill him. We know he is somewhere at large in time,
probably under an assumed name; we shall give you every assistance."
Snapping open the case he was nursing, he produced a bulky file and held
it out to Bush.
"You are going to be given forty-eight hours' leave and then you will be
equipped and required to mind-travel until you find the traitor Silverstone.
We shall see that your father is provided for; he will appreciate the
Black Wombat. You will study these documents and make youself familiar
with Silverstone's case in every way possible . . . except that of
inflicting on yourself the man's treasonable theories."
Catching an edge of irony in Howes' voice, Bush glanced up, but the officer
stared at him blank-faced, and Bush dropped his gaze to the dossier.
On the top of it lay a photograph of Silverstone, one of the rare ones.
It showed a man with long straggly white hair and an untidy grey moustache.
His nose was long and curved. Although his eyes in the photo were serious
and abstracted, a half-smile lurked about the lips. When Bush had last
seen him, his hair had been cut and dyed and his moustache shaved off,
but he had no difficulty in recognizing Stein.
"I'll see what I can do, gentlemen," he said. "I shall enjoy the assignment."
The captains rose and shook his hand.
Chapter 8
A WORD FROM WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
A battered truck drove Bush from the barracks and deposited him at his
father's house. Besides his kit, he carried half a case of Black Wombat
Special, a present from a grateful government.
He stood on the pavement, watching the truck out of sight. Spring had sunk
into dusty summer. The truck seemed hardly able to chug up the road for
dust. If the municipal services did not get organized again, the whole
road would eventually silt up. Grass and thistles were growing along the
gutters. In the dentist's garden, the cherry tree stumps were hidden by
a riot of cow parsley and nettles, like tokens of unidirectional change.
Bush stood and sampled what it felt like to be away from the horrible
life of Ten Squad. It was rather like escaping from a straitjacket. He
could not enter the little house just yet; it looked too confining, and
he needed time to breathe. He needed time to breathe. . . . He stood and
laughed, thinking of a mobile he could construct, with glittering metal
shards representing minutes and seconds being pumped through a pair of
bird cages. It would be a small thing to work on until his gift came back.
Hiding the case of whisky among the cow parsley, he began to walk down the
road in the direction the truck had taken. No one was about. The scene
was colorless. He thought about sex. He tried to remember Mrs. Annivale
and Ann, but could hardly conjure up their faces. Over the last month,
he had been so hard-driven that all sexual urges had left him; even the
vision of an hospitably crooked leg and thigh had ceased to torment him.
The madness of military discipline he had taken as a sign that mankind was
sick in some deep way; otherwise, how could the generations have tolerated
that stifling of the individual will? But now he was experiencing one reward
that came from such harsh monasticism.
He walked in the by-streets, found an old pond at the end of one, marveled
that he could not remember it. He stood staring into its muddy shallows,
cluttered with derelict things, drowned boots and wheels and tins.
Voices came from near at hand. A ruined building stood by the pond;
the voices seemed to originate there. Bush started listening when he
caught the name Bolt.
"We'd better step up the treatment, hadn't we?"
"Before Bolt does!"
"The sooner the better. This afternoon, if we can get the message through;
we were only held up for lack of Ł.s.d. I'll provide the contact."
They mentioned another name. Treason? Or maybe it was Gleason.
Bush moved cautiously over to the crumbling building and peered through a
foggy window. In the murk, two Negroes were talking to two white men.
He was suddenly extremely frightened of being caught by them. Making his
way quietly from the vicinity of the pond, he started running and did not
stop until he was panting outside the dentist's. By that time, he was
uncertain whether he had actually seen what he thought he had seen,
or whether his nerves were not playing him false. He was a little upset
by his mother's death, and needed to get away.
Taking up his kit and the case of whisky, he hurried into the house.
James Bush unstoppered a bottle of the Indian whisky, poured some for
Mrs. Annivale, Bush, and himself, and listened moodily as Bush spoke
of the new life of action on which he was about to embark. He had been
instructed not to mention Silverstone. He told them he was going to patrol
the past, claimed that his days of idleness were over, that he would be
a man of action from now on, getting very excited, waving his arms about.
"They succeeded with you!" his father exclaimed. "Just a month and they
succeeded! They shaved your head and took away your intelligence too.
What are you? You talk about action! Action's nothing, pah!"
"You'd rather be dead drunk than act!"
"So I would! Though not on this Indian muck, for preference. Pity you
were illiterate, or you'd remember what Wordsworth said."
"To hell with bloody Wordsworth!"
"I'll tell you what bloody Wordsworth said!"
"I don't want to know what he said!"
"I'm going to tell you just the same!" He rose and started shouting at Bush.
Bush jumped up and grabbed his father's wrists. They stood there glaring at
each other as the old man recited.
"'Action is transitory -- a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle, this way or that --
'Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity.'
"How about that then, eh?"
"Bloody unidirectional nonsense!" Pushing his father away, he staggered
out of the room. He was going to trick them all. They didn't realize that
everything that happened was part of being an artist. Wordsworth should
have had enough sense to recognize his own fallacy: action was as much
a part of suffering as inaction.
In the inaction of the next two days, he found another goad to suffer with.
He had fallen in with the course of events, he told himself, not only because
it might work to his advantage, but because by so doing he gained some
security for his father. But if the government patronage only extended
to whisky, it was not going to help a great deal; he had, in fact,
set his father on an abrupt downward path.
It was when they were well embarked upon the fourth bottle of Black Wombat
that James Bush switched on the television. A view of peaceful countryside
swam into the bowl; over it was superimposed a message; "Stand By for an
Important Announcement"; a military band played.
"Treason!" Bush exclaimed. He went down on his knees before the set,
fiddling with the controls.
A man with two heads appeared. They merged into one as Bush twiddled
and he said, "Following severe disturbances up and down the country,
martial law was declared last night in all big cities. The so-called
government of General Bolt has proved itself ineffective. This morning,
representatives of the Popular Action party took over governmental
headquarters after limited military action. The welfare of our country
is now in the hands of Admiral Gleason, who will exercise complete
command over the government and armed forces, pending the restoration
of normal governmental procedures. Admiral Gleason will speak to the
nation now. Admiral Gleason!"
stupor. Pond had staggered away into the night, and the squaddies had
either fallen into bed or been thrown there by hearty companions. One
man stood alone at the far end of the room by a window flung wide,
still clutching a bottle, and singing a lewd song.
"But the way he caught the butler
Was the dirtest way of all . . ."
Finally there was silence, and darkness. Bush lay on his bed, wakeful
under a feeling of terror that had an illusive familiarity about it.
"I'm not dying, am I?" he whispered. He could hear voices. There seemed
to be four men round his bed, two in white coats, two in black. One of
them said, "He can't understand a thing you say; it's all turned to his
own needs. He imagines himself in another place, perhaps another time.
Isn't he a committed insect?"
The thought of insects goaded Bush into sitting upright. The gaunt bleak
room full of insensible bodies stretched away in all directions. The four
men still stood at his bedside. Humoring his fantasy, he said, "Where do
you fellows think I am?"
"Quietly!" one of the phantoms admonished. "You'll wake the others in the
wardrobe. You're suffering from anoxia, with ordinary hallucinations."
"But the window's open," he protested. "Where is this, anyway?"
"The Carlfield Mental Hospital. We are looking after you; we believe
you are an amniote egg."
"Your meeting's scrambled," he said. He sank down again, overwhelmed by
sensations of drunkenness and futility. These men could do nothing for him
or to him. On his pillow, a yawning pit of sleep awaited him.
He made it to the lecture hut on time next morning, despite a throbbing
head. Howes and Stanhope arrived in a few minutes. They were in civilian
clothes. The course was over -- until the next one began. In the square,
the disbanded Ten Squad was moving about in unfamiliar clothes, heading
away from home or duty, bawling final ribaldries at each other.
The officers sat down on the bench next to Bush, and Stanhope began to talk
in a business-like way.
"We know you will be honored by the mission the government has in mind
for you. However, before we tell you what it is, we feel it necessary
to give you some of the wider background.
"This is a time of great uncertainty, nationally and internationally,
as you are by now aware. The new theory of time has upset the status
quo. This is particularly so in the West -- America and Europe, which have
for historic reasons always been very time-conscious areas. In the East,
things are much as they ever were. Duration means a different thing to
a Chinaman or Indian than it does to us.
"General Peregrine Bolt had to step in and take over because this country
of ours was on the brink of economic ruin. A strong hand is going to
be needed for a long while, until we adjust to the new conditions --
meanwhile, we are in the paradoxical position of having to accept aid
from the East."
Bush's aching head prompted him to say, "Hence the Black Wombat Special,
I suppose."
He observed that Stanhope looked blank, whereas Howes caught the reference.
"You will see that it is imperative that no new disruptions come along
to upset the order we are trying to build."
"What sort of disruptions do you mean?"
Stanhope looked embarrassed. Howes said, "Ideas are sometimes worse than
armed uprisings. As an intellectual, you should know that."
"I'm not an intellectual."
"I'm sorry. Suppose a conflicting idea should now arise about the nature
of time? It might throw us back to where we were a few months ago."
Understanding began to creep over Bush. These two men seemed so harmless,
so marginal (and Stanhope was really not particularly bright); but they were
sitting here like two evil uncles at a sick child's bedside, telling him
bad fairy stories -- stories that might reveal the whole secret of . . .
of the regime's, and consequently Bolt's, fears; of the neuroses of the
age. . . . It was something in Howes' face that prompted this feeling;
he was being as frank as he dared, he was also hiding something; the
classic dilemma of an intelligent man in a totalitarian society.
Howes told Bush, "It's the question of time, you see. All that man is,
all that he has built -- although, as Captain Stanhope says, this is
more true of the West than the East -- has been founded on the idea that
time is unidirectional: like the flow of water through a sluice gate,
shall we say? But this was man's invented idea, and the little he knew
of the truth he kept suppressed down in the dark basements of his being,
the undermind, as we call it. Occasionally, intimations of the truth have
leaked through, to frighten him. Precognitive experiences or dreams,
extra-sensory perceptions, the sense of déjŕ vu, and so on -- almost
anything that could ever be dismissed as magical or superstitious --
were such leakages and directly contradicted the precious theory of
unidirectional time. Which was why they were so passionately laughed
out of court."
"And your alternative to unidirectional time?"
"Co-continuous time. You know that. You believe it. You went through the
Wenlock discipline. Space-time being what it is, past and present are at
par in terms of energy. Imagine a featureless world without day or night
or organic processes: we'd have no basis there for any concept of time,
even an incorrect one like unidirectionalism, because there would be
no way of establishing time differences from a human point of view.
The error, the very concept of time-flow, is in the human consciousness,
not in the external universe: the creed that causes us to speak of
mind-travel rather than time-travel, as some would originally have
preferred.
"Such is Wenlock's discovery and it gives us something to work on. Any other
rival theories must be squashed, in case they throw us back into chaos
again."
And I take it there are rival theories?"
He knew what was coming even before Stanhope answered (this was Stanhope's
domain, the world of security, so much simpler than the realm of
speculation): "You know there are rival theories. The renegade Silverstone,
once a colleague of Wenlock's, is uttering dangerous and misleading
nonsense."
"Heresy, eh?"
"Don't joke, Bush. Not heresy but treason. Silverstone is guilty of treason
by uttering ideas calculated to upset the security of the state. He must be
eliminated."
Bush guessed what came next. The madmen who visited him in the night could
have guessed. By the very nature of his thinking, Silverstone would be an
accomplished mind-traveler. The regime would require another such to go
and eradicate him -- and Bush was another such.
Howes must have read Bush's expression, for he said, "That is your mission,
Bush, and I hope you prove worthy of the honor. You have to hunt down
Silverstone and kill him. We know he is somewhere at large in time,
probably under an assumed name; we shall give you every assistance."
Snapping open the case he was nursing, he produced a bulky file and held
it out to Bush.
"You are going to be given forty-eight hours' leave and then you will be
equipped and required to mind-travel until you find the traitor Silverstone.
We shall see that your father is provided for; he will appreciate the
Black Wombat. You will study these documents and make youself familiar
with Silverstone's case in every way possible . . . except that of
inflicting on yourself the man's treasonable theories."
Catching an edge of irony in Howes' voice, Bush glanced up, but the officer
stared at him blank-faced, and Bush dropped his gaze to the dossier.
On the top of it lay a photograph of Silverstone, one of the rare ones.
It showed a man with long straggly white hair and an untidy grey moustache.
His nose was long and curved. Although his eyes in the photo were serious
and abstracted, a half-smile lurked about the lips. When Bush had last
seen him, his hair had been cut and dyed and his moustache shaved off,
but he had no difficulty in recognizing Stein.
"I'll see what I can do, gentlemen," he said. "I shall enjoy the assignment."
The captains rose and shook his hand.
Chapter 8
A WORD FROM WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
A battered truck drove Bush from the barracks and deposited him at his
father's house. Besides his kit, he carried half a case of Black Wombat
Special, a present from a grateful government.
He stood on the pavement, watching the truck out of sight. Spring had sunk
into dusty summer. The truck seemed hardly able to chug up the road for
dust. If the municipal services did not get organized again, the whole
road would eventually silt up. Grass and thistles were growing along the
gutters. In the dentist's garden, the cherry tree stumps were hidden by
a riot of cow parsley and nettles, like tokens of unidirectional change.
Bush stood and sampled what it felt like to be away from the horrible
life of Ten Squad. It was rather like escaping from a straitjacket. He
could not enter the little house just yet; it looked too confining, and
he needed time to breathe. He needed time to breathe. . . . He stood and
laughed, thinking of a mobile he could construct, with glittering metal
shards representing minutes and seconds being pumped through a pair of
bird cages. It would be a small thing to work on until his gift came back.
Hiding the case of whisky among the cow parsley, he began to walk down the
road in the direction the truck had taken. No one was about. The scene
was colorless. He thought about sex. He tried to remember Mrs. Annivale
and Ann, but could hardly conjure up their faces. Over the last month,
he had been so hard-driven that all sexual urges had left him; even the
vision of an hospitably crooked leg and thigh had ceased to torment him.
The madness of military discipline he had taken as a sign that mankind was
sick in some deep way; otherwise, how could the generations have tolerated
that stifling of the individual will? But now he was experiencing one reward
that came from such harsh monasticism.
He walked in the by-streets, found an old pond at the end of one, marveled
that he could not remember it. He stood staring into its muddy shallows,
cluttered with derelict things, drowned boots and wheels and tins.
Voices came from near at hand. A ruined building stood by the pond;
the voices seemed to originate there. Bush started listening when he
caught the name Bolt.
"We'd better step up the treatment, hadn't we?"
"Before Bolt does!"
"The sooner the better. This afternoon, if we can get the message through;
we were only held up for lack of Ł.s.d. I'll provide the contact."
They mentioned another name. Treason? Or maybe it was Gleason.
Bush moved cautiously over to the crumbling building and peered through a
foggy window. In the murk, two Negroes were talking to two white men.
He was suddenly extremely frightened of being caught by them. Making his
way quietly from the vicinity of the pond, he started running and did not
stop until he was panting outside the dentist's. By that time, he was
uncertain whether he had actually seen what he thought he had seen,
or whether his nerves were not playing him false. He was a little upset
by his mother's death, and needed to get away.
Taking up his kit and the case of whisky, he hurried into the house.
James Bush unstoppered a bottle of the Indian whisky, poured some for
Mrs. Annivale, Bush, and himself, and listened moodily as Bush spoke
of the new life of action on which he was about to embark. He had been
instructed not to mention Silverstone. He told them he was going to patrol
the past, claimed that his days of idleness were over, that he would be
a man of action from now on, getting very excited, waving his arms about.
"They succeeded with you!" his father exclaimed. "Just a month and they
succeeded! They shaved your head and took away your intelligence too.
What are you? You talk about action! Action's nothing, pah!"
"You'd rather be dead drunk than act!"
"So I would! Though not on this Indian muck, for preference. Pity you
were illiterate, or you'd remember what Wordsworth said."
"To hell with bloody Wordsworth!"
"I'll tell you what bloody Wordsworth said!"
"I don't want to know what he said!"
"I'm going to tell you just the same!" He rose and started shouting at Bush.
Bush jumped up and grabbed his father's wrists. They stood there glaring at
each other as the old man recited.
"'Action is transitory -- a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle, this way or that --
'Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity.'
"How about that then, eh?"
"Bloody unidirectional nonsense!" Pushing his father away, he staggered
out of the room. He was going to trick them all. They didn't realize that
everything that happened was part of being an artist. Wordsworth should
have had enough sense to recognize his own fallacy: action was as much
a part of suffering as inaction.
In the inaction of the next two days, he found another goad to suffer with.
He had fallen in with the course of events, he told himself, not only because
it might work to his advantage, but because by so doing he gained some
security for his father. But if the government patronage only extended
to whisky, it was not going to help a great deal; he had, in fact,
set his father on an abrupt downward path.
It was when they were well embarked upon the fourth bottle of Black Wombat
that James Bush switched on the television. A view of peaceful countryside
swam into the bowl; over it was superimposed a message; "Stand By for an
Important Announcement"; a military band played.
"Treason!" Bush exclaimed. He went down on his knees before the set,
fiddling with the controls.
A man with two heads appeared. They merged into one as Bush twiddled
and he said, "Following severe disturbances up and down the country,
martial law was declared last night in all big cities. The so-called
government of General Bolt has proved itself ineffective. This morning,
representatives of the Popular Action party took over governmental
headquarters after limited military action. The welfare of our country
is now in the hands of Admiral Gleason, who will exercise complete
command over the government and armed forces, pending the restoration
of normal governmental procedures. Admiral Gleason will speak to the
nation now. Admiral Gleason!"
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