The Best of (4 page)

Then he stopped on a part of the hard strip which was bordered by a row of artificial caves.

Continually, as the day wore on, he led me past gaping crowds into places where every man held a glass of coloured liquid. Strange liquids they were, although men do not value water on the third planet. And each time he proudly showed me to his friends in these places, he came to believe more firmly that he had created me.

Towards sunset something seemed to go seriously wrong with his machinery. He leaned heavily upon me for support and his voice became as uncertain as his thoughts were jumbled.

"Anybody comin' my way?" he had inquired at last and at that invitation the other three men had joined us.

The machine seemed to have become as queer as the men. In the morning it had held a straight line, but now it swayed from side to side, sometimes as though it would leave the track. Each time it just avoided the edge, all four men would break off their continuous wailing sounds to laugh senselessly and loudly.

It was while I struggled to find some meaning in all this madness that the disaster occurred.

Another machine appeared ahead. Its lights showed its approach and ours must have been as plain. Then an astounding thing happened. Instead of avoiding one another as would two intelligent machines, the two lumbering masses charged blindly together. Truly this was an insane world.

There came a rending smash. Our machine toppled over on its side. The other left the hard strip, struck one of the growths at the side of the road and burst into naked flames.

None of the four men seemed more than a little dazed. As one of them scrambled free, he pointed to the blaze.

"Thash good bonfire," he said. "Jolly good bonfire. Wonder if anybody'sh inshide?"

They all reeled over to examine the wreck while I, forgotten, waited for the next imbecility to occur on this nightmare world.

"It'sh a girl," said Tom's voice.

One of the others nodded solemnly.

"I think you're right," he agreed with difficult dignity.

After an interval, there came the girl's voice.

"But what shall I do? I'm miles from home."

"'S'all righ'," said Tom. "Quite all righ'. You come along with me. Nishe fellow I am."

I could read the intention behind his words—so could the girl.

There was the sound of a scuffle.

"No, you don't, my beauty. No runnin' away. Dangeroush for li'l girlsh—'lone in the dark."

She started to scream, but a hand quickly stifled the sound.

I caught the upsurge of terror in her mind and at that moment I knew her.

The girl whose machine I had mended — who had been grateful.

In a flash I was among them. Three of the men started back in alarm, but not Tom. He was contemptuous of me because I had obeyed him. He lifted a heavy boot to send it crashing at my lens. Human movement is slow: before his leg had completed the back swing, I had caught it and whirled him away. The rest started futilely to close in on me.

I picked the girl up in my forerods and raced away into the darkness out of their sight.

At first she was bewildered and not a little frightened, though our first meeting must have shown that I intended no harm.

Gently I placed her on top of my casework and, holding her there with my forerods, set off in the direction of her journey.

She was hurt, blood was pouring down her right arm.

We made the best speed my eight legs could take us. I was afraid lest from lack of blood her mind might go blank and fail to direct me. At length it did. Her mental vibrations had been growing fainter and fainter until they ceased altogether. But she had been thinking ahead of us, picturing the way we should go, and I had read her mind.

At last, confronted by a closed door she had shown me, I pushed it down and held her out on my forerods to her father.

"Joan...?" he said, and for the moment seemed unsurprised at me—the only third planet man who ever was. Not until he had dressed his daughter's wounds and roused her to consciousness did he even look at me again.

There is little more. They have been kind, those two. They have tried to comprehend, though they cannot. He once removed a piece of my casing—I allowed him to do so, for he was intelligent—but he did not understand. I could feel him mentally trying to classify my structure among electrically operated devices—the highest form of power known to him, but still too primitive.

This whole world is too primitive. It does not even know the metal of which I am made. I am a freak... a curiosity outside comprehension.

These men long to know how I was built; I can read in their minds that they want to copy me. There is hope for them: some day, perhaps, they will have real machines of their own— But not through my help will they build them, nothing of me shall go to the making of them.

...I know what it is to be an intelligent machine in a world of madness...

The doctor looked up as he turned the last page.

"And so," he said, "it dissolved itself with my acids."

He walked slowly over to the window and gazed up to Mars, swimming serenely among a myriad stars.

"I wonder," he murmured, "I wonder."

He handed the typewritten sheets back to his daughter.

"Joan, my dear, I think it would be wisest to burn them. We have no desire to be certified."

Joan nodded.

"As you prefer, Father," she agreed.

The papers curled, flared and blackened on the coals—but Joan kept a copy.

#2 From The Best Of John Wyndham

The Man From Beyond
The Earthman's Story
Murders in Space
Stealing the Ship
The Mysterious Valley

ONE of the greatest sights in Takon* these days was the exhibition of discoveries made in the Valley of Dur. In the building erected especially to house them Takonians and visitors from other cities crowded through the corridors, peering into the barred or glassfronted cages, observing the contents with awe, interest or amusement according to their natures.

[* All Venusian terms are rendered in their closest English equivalents.]

The crowd was formed for the most part of those persons who flock to any unusual sight, providing it is free or cheap. Their eyes dwelt upon the exhibits. Their minds were ready to marvel and be superficially impressed. But they had come to be amused and they faintly resented the efforts of the guides to stir their intelligent interest. One or two, perhaps, studied the cases with real appreciation.

But if the adults were superficial the same could not be said of the children. Every day saw teachers bringing their classes for a practical demonstration of the planet's prehistoric condition. Even now Magon, a biology teacher in one of Takon's leading schools, was having difficulty restraining his twenty pupils for the arrival of a guide. He had marshalled them beside the entrance and, to keep them from straying, was talking of the Valley of Dur.

"The condition of the Valley was purely fortuitous and it is unique here upon Venus," he said. "Nothing remotely resembling it has been found, and it is the opinion of the experts that nothing like it exists anywhere else. This exhibition you are going to see is neither a museum nor a zoo, yet it is both...

His pupils only half attended. They were fidgeting, casting expectant glances down the row of cage fronts, craning to see over one another's backs, the more excitable among them occasionally rising on their hind legs for a better view. The passing Takonian citizens regarded their youthful enthusiasm with a mild amusement. Magon smoothed back the silver fur on his head with one hand and continued to talk.

"The creatures you will see belong to all ages of our world. Some are so old that they roamed Venus long before our race appeared. Others are more recent, contemporaries of those ancestors of ours who, in a terrible world, were for ever scuttling to cover as fast as their six legs would carry them...

"Six legs, sir?" asked a surprised voice.

Some of the youths in the group sniggered but Magon explained considerately.

"Yes, Sadul, six legs. Did you not know that our remote ancestors used all six of their limbs to get them along? It took them many thousands of years to turn themselves into quadrupeds but until they did that no progress was possible. The forelimbs could not develop such sensitive hands as ours until they were carried clear of the ground...

"Our ancestors were animals, sir?.

"Well—er—something very much like that." Magon lowered his voice in order that the ears of passing citizens might not be offended. "But once they got their forelegs off the ground, released from the necessity of carrying their weight, the great change began. We were on the upward climb—and since then we've never stopped climbing...

He looked around the circle of eagereyed, silverfurred faces about him. His eyes dwelt a moment on the slender tentacles which had developed from stubby toes on the forefeet. There was something magical in evolution, something glorious in the fact that he and his race were the crown of progress.

It was a very wonderful thing to have done, to have changed from shaggy sixfooted beasts to creatures who stood proudly upon four, the whole front part of the body raised to the perpendicular to support heads which looked out proudly and unashamed at the world.

Admittedly several of his class appeared to have neglected their coats in a way which was scarcely a credit to the race— their silver fur was muddied and rumpled—but then boys will be boys. No doubt they would trim and brush better as they grew older.

"The Valley of Dur—" he began again but at that moment the guide arrived.

"The party from the school, sir?.

"Yes...

"This way, please. Do they understand about the Valley, sir?" he added.

"Most of them," Magon admitted. "But it might be as well—.

"Certainly...

The guide broke into a highspeed recitation which he had evidently made many times before.

"The Valley of Dur may be called a unique phenomenon. At some remote date in the planet's history certain internal gases combined in a way yet imperfectly understood and issued forth through cracks in the crust at this place, and this place only...

"The mixture had two properties. It not only anaesthetized but it also preserved indefinitely. The result, was to produce a form of suspended animation. Everything that was in the Valley of Dur has remained as it was when the gas first broke out. Everything which has entered the Valley since has remained there imperishably. There is no apparent limit to the length of time that this preservation may continue...

"Among the ancients this place was regarded with superstitious fear and though in more recent times many attempts have been made to explore it none were successful until a year ago when a mask which could withstand the gas was at last devised.

"It was then discovered that the animals and plants in the Valley were not petrified as had hitherto been believed but could, by means of certain treatment, be revived. Such are the specimens you are about to see—the flora and fauna of a million years ago—yet alive today...

He paused opposite the first cage.

"Here we have a glimpse of the carboniferous era—the tree ferns and giant mosses thriving in a specially prepared atmosphere, continuing the lives which were suspended when Venus was young. We hope to be able to grow more specimens from the spores of these. And here," he passed to the next case, "we see the beginning of one of Nature's most graceful experiments—the earliest form of flower...

His audience stared in dutiful attention at the large white blossoms which confronted them. They were not very interesting. Fauna has a far greater appeal to the adolescent than flora. A mighty roar caused the building to tremble. Eyes were switched from the magnolialike blossoms to glance up the passage in anticipatory excitement.

Attention to the guide became even more perfunctory. Only Magon, to the exasperation of the pupils, thought it fit to ask a few questions. At last, however, the preliminary botanical cases were left behind and they came to the first of the cages.

Behind the bars a reptilian creature, which might have been described as a biped, had its tail not played so great a part in supporting it, was hurrying tirelessly and without purpose to and fro, glaring at as much of the world as it could from intense small eyes. Every now and then it would throw back its head and utter a kind of strangled shriek.

It was an unattractive creature covered with a greygreen hide, very smooth. Its contours were almost streamlined but managed to appear clumsy. In it, as in so many of the earlier forms, one seemed to feel that Nature was getting her hand in for the real job.

She had already learned to model after a crude fashion when she made this running dinosaur but her sense of proportion was not good and she lacked the deftness necessary to produce the finer bits of modelling which she later achieved. She could not, one felt, even had she wanted, have then produced fur or feathers to clothe the creature's nakedness.

"This," said the guide, waving a proprietary hand, "is what we call Struthiomimus, one of the running dinosaurs capable of travelling at high speed, which it does for purposes of defence, not attack, being a vegetarian...

There was a slight pause while his listeners sorted out the involved sentence. "You mean that it runs away?" asked a voice.

"Yes...

They all looked a little disappointed, a trifle contemptuous of the unfortunate Struthiomimus. They wanted stronger meat. They longed to see—(behind bars)—those ancient monsters which had been lords of the world, whose rumbling bellows had sent Struthiomimus and the rest scuttling for cover. The guide continued in his own good time.

"The next is a fine specimen of Hesperornis, the toothed bird. This creature, filling a place between the Archeopteryx and the modern bird, is particularly interesting...

But the class did not agree. As they filed slowly on past cage after cage it was noticeable that their own opinions and that of the guide seldom coincided. The more majestic and terrifying reptiles he dismissed with a curt, "These are of little interest, being sterile branches of the main stem of evolution—Nature's failures...