the Dark Light Years (5 page)

When the speech was over, reporters closed round Bargerone.

"You're saying these rhinos don't live on Clementina?”

"We have reason to suppose not.”

"What reason?”

("Smile for the Subud Times, please, Captain.") "We think they were on a visit there, just as we were.”

"You mean they travelled in a spaceship?”

"In a sense, yes. But they may just have been taken along on the trip as experimental animals - or dumped there, like Captain Cook's pigs dumped on Tahiti or wherever it was.”

("More profile, Captain, if you please.") "Well, did you see their spaceship?”

"Er well, we think we actually have ... er, their space-ship in our hold.”

"Give, then, Captain, this is big! Why the secrecy? Have you captured their spaceship or have you not?”

("And over this way. sir.") "We think we have. That is, it has the properties of a spaceship, but it, er - no TP drive naturally, but an interesting drive, and, well, it sounds silly but you see the hull is made of wood. A very high-density wood." Captain Bargerone wiped his face clear of expression.

"Oh now look. Captain, you're joking... .”

In the mob of photographers, phototects, and reporters, Adrian Bucker could get nowhere near the captain.
He elbowed his way across to a tall nervous man who stood behind Bargerone, scowling out of one of the long windows at the crowds milling about in the light rain.

"
Would you tell me how you feel about these aliens you brought back to Earth, sir?" Bucker asked.

"Are they animals or are they people?”

Hardly hearing, Bruce Ainson sent his gaze probing over the crowds outside. He thought he had caught a glimpse of his good-for-nothing son, Aylmer, wearing his usual hangdog expression as he plunged through the mob.

"Swine," he said.

"You mean they look like swine or they act like swine?”

The explorer turned to stare at the reporter.

"I'm Bucker of the Windsor Circuit, sir. My paper would be interested in anything you could tell us about these creatures. You think they are animals, am I right in saying?”

"What would you say mankind is, Mr. Bucker, civilized beings or animals? Have we ever met a new race without corrupting it or destroying it? Look at the Polynesians, the Guanches, the American Indians, the Tasmanians “

"Yes, sir, I get your point, but would you say these aliens....”

"Oh, they have intelligence, as has any mammal; these are mammals. But their
behavior
or lack of
behavior
is baffling because we must not think anthropomorphically about them. Have they ethics, have they consciences? Are they capable of being corrupted as the Eskimos and Indians were? Are they perhaps capable of corrupting us? We have to ask ourselves a lot of searching questions before we are capable of seeing these rhinomen clearly. That is my feeling on the matter.”

"That is very interesting. What you are saying is that we have to develop a new way of thinking, is that it?”

"
No, no, no, I hardly think this is a problem I can discuss with a newspaper representative, but man places too much trust in his intellect; what we need is a new way of feeling, a more reverent.... I was getting somewhere with those two unhappy creatures we have captive - establishing trust, you know, after we had slaughtered their companions and taken them prisoner, and what is happening to them now?

They're going to be a sideshow ha the Exozoo. The Director, Sir Mihaly Pasztor, is an old friend of mine; I shall complain to him.”

"Heck, people want to see the beasts! How do we know they have feelings like ours?”

"Your view, Mr. Bucker. is probably the view of the damn fool majority. Excuse me, I have a technical! to make.”

Ainson hurried from the building, where the wedge of people instantly closed in and held him tight. He stood helpless there while a lorry moved slowly by, buoyed along with cheers, cries and exclamations from the onlookers. Through the bars at the back of the lorry, the two ETA's stared down on the onlookers. They made no sound. They were large and grey, beings at once forlorn and formidable.

Their gaze rested on Bruce Ainson. They gave no sign of recognition. Suddenly chilled, he turned and began to worm his way through the press of wet mackintoshes.

The ship was emptying and being emptied.
Cranes dipped their great beaks into the ship's vitals, coming up with nets full of cartons, boxes, crates, and canisters.
Sewage lighters swarmed, sucking out the waste from the metal creature's alimentary canal. The hull bled men in little gouts. The great whale Mariestopes was stranded and powerless, beached far from its starry native deeps.

Walthamstone and Ginger Duffield followed Quilter to one of the exit ducts. Quilter was loaded with kit and due to catch an ionosphere jet from another corner of the port to the U.S.A. in half an hour's time. They paused on the lip of the ship and looked out quizzically, inhaling the strange-tasting air.

"Look at it, worst weather in the universe," Waltham-stone complained. "I'm staying in here till it stops, I tell you straight.”

"Catch a taxi." Duffield suggested.

" 'Tisn't worth it. My aunt's place is only half a mile away. My bike's over there in the P.T.O.'s offices.

I'll cycle when the rain clears - if it does.”

"Does the P.T.O. let you leave your bike there free between flights?" Duffield asked with interest.

Anxious not to get involved in what promised to become a rather English conversation, Quilter shrugged a duffel bag more comfortably on to his shoulders and said, "Say, you men, come on over to the flight canteen and have a nice warm British synthbeer with me before I go.”

"We ought to celebrate the fact that you have just left the Exploration Corps," Walthamstone said.

"Shall we go along, Ginger?”

"Did they stamp your paybook 'Discharged' and sign you off officially?" Duffield asked.

"I only signed on a Flight-by-flight basis," Quilter explained. "All perfectly legal, Duffield, you old barrack-room lawyer, you. Don't you ever relax?”

"You know my motto, Hank. Observe it and you won't go wrong: 'They'll twist you if they
can.”
“
I
knew a bloke a bit ago who forgot to get his 535 cleared by the Quarter-master before he was
demobbed
, and they had him back. They did, they caught him for another five years. He's serving on Charon now, helping to win the war.”

"Are you coming for this beer or aren't you?”

"I'd better come," Walthamstone said. "We may never see you again after this bird in Dodge City gets at you, from what you've told me about her. I'd run a mile from that sort of girl, myself.”

He moved tentatively out into the fine drizzle; Quilter followed, glancing back over his shoulder at Duffield.

"Are you coming, Ginger, or aren't you?”

Duffield looked crafty.

"I'm not leaving this ship till I get my strike pay, mate," he said.

Explorer Phipps was home. He had embraced his parents and was hanging his coat in the hall. They stood behind him, managing to look discontented even while they smiled. Shabby, round-shouldered, they gave him the grumbling welcome he knew so well. They spoke in turn, two monologues that never made a dialogue.

"Come along in the sitting-room, Gussie. It's warmer in there," his mother said. "You'll be cold after leaving the ship. I'll get a cup of tea in a minute.”

"Had a bit of trouble with the central heating. Shouldn't need it now we're into June, but it has been usually chilly for the time of year. It's such a job to get anyone to come and look at anything. I don't know what's happening to people. They don't seem to want your custom nowadays.”

"Tell him about the new doctor, Henry. Terribly rude man, absolutely no education or manners at all.

And dirty finger-nails - fancy expecting to examine anyone with dirty finger-nails.”

"Of course, it's the war that's to blame. It's brought an entirely different type of man to the surface.

Brazil shows no sign of weakening, and meanwhile the government -”

"The poor boy doesn't want to hear about the war directly he gets home, Henry.
They've even started rationing some foodstuffs!
All we hear is propaganda,
propaganda
, on the techni. And the quality of things has deteriorated too. I had to buy a new saucepan last week -”

"Settle yourself down here, Gussie. Of course it's the war that's to blame. I don't know what's to become of us all. The news from Sector 160 is so depressing, isn't it?”

Phipps said, "Out in the galaxy, nobody takes any interest in the war. I must say it all sounds a bit of a shower to me.”

"Haven't lost your patriotism, have you, Gussie?" his father asked.

"What's patriotism but an extension of egotism?" Phipps asked, and was glad to see his father's chest, momentarily puffed, shrink again.

His mother broke a tense silence by saying, "Anyhow, dear, you'll see a difference in England while you're on leave. How long have you got, by the way?”

Little as the parental chatter enthralled Phipps, this sudden question discomforted him, as mother and father waited eagerly for his answer. He knew that stifling feeling of old.
They wanted nothing of him, only that he was there to be spoken to. They wanted nothing from him but his life.

"I shall only be staying here for a week. That charming part-Chinese girl that I met last leave, Ah Chi, is in the Far East on a painting holiday. Next Thursday I fly to Macao to stay with her.”

Familiarity again. He knew his father's would-be piteous shake of the head, that particular pursing of his mother's lips as if she nursed a lemon pip there. Before they could speak, he rose to his feet.

"I'll just go upstairs and unpack my grip, if you'll both excuse me.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Pasztor , Director of the London Exozoo, was a fine willowy man without a grey hair on his head despite his fifty-two years.
A Hungarian by birth, he had led an expedition into the submarine Antarctic by the time he was twenty-five, had gone on to set up the Tellus Zoological Dome on the asteroid Apollo in 2005.
and had written the most viewed technidrama of 2014, An Iceberg for Icarus. Several years later he went on the First Charon Expedition, which charted and landed upon that then newly-discovered planet of the solar system; Charon refrigerates so unloveably some three thousand million miles beyond the orbit of Pluto that it earned itself the name of Deep Freeze Planet, Pasztor had given it that nickname.

After which triumph, Sir Mihaly Pasztor was appointed Director of the London Exozoo and was at present employed in offering Bruce Ainson a drink.

"You know I don't, Mihaly," Bruce said, shaking his long head in reproof.

"From now on you are a famous man; you should toast your own success, as we toast it.
The drinks are all pure synthetics, you know - a de-alcoholized sinker will surely never hurt you.”

"
You know me of old, Mihaly. I wish only to do my duty.”

"I know you of old, Bruce.
I know that you care very little for the opinions or the applause of anyone else, so thirstily do you crave for the nod of approval from your own superego," the Director said in a mild voice, while the bartender mixed him the cocktail known as a Transponential.
They were at the reception being held in the hotel belonging to the Exozoo, where murals of exotic beasts stared down on a bracing mixture of bright uniforms and flowery dresses.

"I do not stand in need of
tidbits
from your well of wisdom," Ainson said.

"You will not allow that you have need of anything from anybody," said the Director. "I have meant to say this to you for a long while, Bruce - though this is neither the time nor the place, let me continue now I have begun.

You are a brave, learned, and formidable man. That you have proved not only to the world but to yourself. You can now afford to relax, to let down your guard. Not only can you now afford to do so; you ought to do so before it is too late. A man has to have an interior, Bruce, and yours is dying of suffocation -”

"For heavens' sake, man!" Ainson exclaimed, breaking away half laughing, half angry. "You are talking like an impossibly romantic character in one of the plays of your nonage! I am what I am, and I am no different from what I have always been. Now here comes Enid, and it is high tune we changed the subject.”

Among the bright dresses, Enid Ainson's hooded cobra costume looked as sunny as an eclipse. She smiled, how-ever, as she came up to her husband and Pasztor.

"This is a lovely party, Mihaly. How foolish I was not to have come to the last one, the last time Bruce came home. You have such a pretty room here to hold it in, too.”

"For wartime, Enid, we try to squeeze a little extra gaiety, and your appearance has done the trick.”

She laughed, obviously pleased, but compelled to protest.