The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ look like them – they are suspicious! I say, let’s get back to the snows; that was a more interesting place to explore.’

      He made a move toward the ship. Instantly an arrangement of duralum bars and R-rays descended from the roof and held them in five separate cells. They stood temporarily disconcerted in glowing cages.

      The Aliens Officer walked among them grimly. ‘Now you’re going to answer questions,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry we are forced to use these methods to secure your attention. The speech-pattern separators that allow us to talk together work through the floor here and are relayed out to me via Main Base. I don’t imagine you can do us much harm over such a system. And nothing can get through the electronic barricade we’ve brought up against you. In other words, you’re trapped. Now let’s have straight answers, please.’

      ‘Here’s a straight answer for your speech-pattern separator,’ said Aprit. Just for a second he wore a look of concentration. At once smoke rose from the floor of the bay. A dozen different alerts clicked and whirred, relentlessly bearing witness to ruined equipment.

      Base signalled a two-day repair job required on language circuits.

      ‘Now we’ll use our system of communicating,’ Aprit said, mollified.

      ‘You shouldn’t be destructive,’ the Preacher reproved. ‘Havoc becomes a habit.’ Delighted with the chime of his maxim, he repeated it to himself.

      Aliens Officer went a little paler. He recognised a show of force when he saw one. Also, he was still hearing them perfectly despite the smouldering failure of his speech-pattern separators. A subordinate hurried up and conferred with him for a moment. Then the officer looked up and said to the prisoners: ‘At that act of destruction you released typical Boux configurations of thought. Do you admit your origins?’

      Pointing to the R-rays, Little Light said: ‘I am beginning to become uneasy, friends. This gadget surrounding us is as impervious as he claims.’

      ‘I think it would be very wise to withdraw,’ the Preacher agreed. ‘Shall we not have left the Arctic?’

      ‘That seems the only way,’ agreed Calurmo doubtfully. Redature always upset his stomach.

      Grand-Admiral Rhys-Barley pushed roughly forward. He was dissatisfied with the conduct of the interrogation. Also, he was worried. There was standard procedure for dealing with Boux; man’s deadly enemy, originating on fast-rotating planets with high-velocity winds, were fluid in form and could easily assume the shape of men. A Boux-man loose on a planet like Kyla I could do an infinite amount of damage – and Bouxmen were not easy to detect. Therefore, once Main Base was satisfied there were Boux aboard Pointer, they were quite likely to signal the flagship to proceed into the nearest sun. Rhys-Barley had other ideas about his future.

      He halted pugnaciously before Aprit.

      ‘What’s your real shape?’ he demanded.

      Aprit was puzzled. ‘You mean my metaphysical shape?’ he asked.

      ‘No, I do not. I mean that my instruments register close to the Boux end of the brain impulse-scale. And Boux can masquerade as anything they like, over limited periods of time. What I’m asking is, who or what are you?’

      ‘We are brothers,’ said Aprit mildly. ‘As you are our brother. Only you are a very bad-tempered brother.’

      The stun was shot into Aprit’s enclosure from the still-smoking floor. It struck with frightening suddenness. Pressure built instantaneously to a peak that would have spread a man uniformly over the walls of the enclosure in a pink paste. It would have forced a genuine Boux into one of his primary shapes. Aprit merely dropped unconscious to the deck.

      Little Light pointed crossly at the Grand-Admiral. ‘For that, the instant Aprit returns we shall not have left Arctic at all,’ he said.

      ‘It was a stupid and ignorant act,’ agreed the Preacher.

      Nobody had noticed Deeping. When the Captain and the Admiral had come through the teleport, he had been left to take the long, physical route down to Interrogation Bay. One does not waste six million volts on junior ranks.

      Now he walked straight up to Calurmo and said, peering anxiously through the vibrating wall that separated them: ‘I am very sorry we have not made you more welcome here, but we are at war.’

      ‘Please don’t apologise,’ said Calurmo. ‘It must be very upsetting for you to have a difference with someone. How long has this been happening?’

      ‘Thousands of years,’ said Deeping bitterly.

      ‘March that man to the disintegrators,’ Rhys-Barley bellowed. Two guards moved smartly toward Deeping.

      ‘If you will pardon my venturing to suggest it,’ Aliens Officer said, wobbling at the knees as he spoke, ‘but just possibly, sir, this new approach might … might be effective.’

      Faint with his own temerity, he saw Rhys-Barley’s hand flicker and stay the guards.

      ‘ – a difference we can never settle until we vanquish the enemy,’ Deeping was saying. He was still pale, but stood stiff and resolute, almost as if he drew strength from these strange beings.

      ‘Oh yes, you can settle it,’ Calurmo said. ‘But you’ve been going about it the wrong way.’

      ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Rhys-Barley chimed in. ‘You don’t know the problem – unless you are a race of Boux we have not met before.’

      ‘My friends are learning of the problem now,’ murmured Calurmo, glancing at Little Light and Woebee, who were unusually quiet. But the Grand-Admiral went ruthlessly on.

      ‘The enemy has inestimable advantages over Man. It has only been by exerting his military might up to the hilt, by standing continually on his toes, by having one finger perpetually on the trigger, that Man has kept the Boux out of his systems.’

      ‘That really is the truth,’ said Deeping earnestly. ‘If you have a super-weapon you could let us know about we would be very grateful.’

      ‘Don’t humour me, please,’ Calurmo said. He turned to Little Light and Woebee, who smiled and nodded. At the same time Aprit opened his eyes and stood up.

      ‘I had such a funny dream,’ he said. ‘Do we go home now?’

      ‘We want to readjust these people first,’ the Preacher said. The five of them conferred together for a minute, while Rhys-Barley walked rapidly up and down and Deeping sneezed once or twice; R-rays had that effect on his nose.

      Finally Woebee motioned to Deeping and said: ‘You must forgive me if I say your people appear full of contradictions to us, but it is so. One contradiction, however, we could not understand. You pen us in here with impenetrable R-rays, as you term your inertia field, and also with duralum bars. The bars are quite superfluous unless – they are not what they seem; they are another of the machines you so delight in. They are, in fact, categorising grids that transmit almost comprehensive records of the five of us back to your nearest planet. An excellent device! Entire blueprints of us, psychologically and physiobiologically, are fed back to your biggest brain units. You really need complimenting on the efficiency of this machine. It is so good, in fact, that Little Light and I have explored Main Base by it, have sent the rest of your fleet СКАЧАТЬ