The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ his shoulders, Stevens walked between the massed shapes of the rulers of the Home Galaxy. Although it had been expressly stated before he left Earth that no powers, such as telepathy, which he did not possess, would be used against him, he could feel a weight of mental power all round him. Strange faces watched him, some just remotely human, strange robes stirred as he brushed past them. The diversity! he thought. The astounding, teeming womb of the universe!

      Pride suddenly gripped him. He found courage to stare back into the multitudinous eyes. They should be made to know the mettle of man. Whatever they were planning to do with him, he also had his own plans for them.

      Just as it seemed only fitting to him that man should walk in this hall, it seemed no less fitting that of all the millions on Earth, he, David Stevens, should be that man. With the egotism inherent in junior races, he felt sure he could pass their trial. What if he had been awed at first? A self-confident technological civilisation, proud of its exploration projects on Mercury and Neptune, is naturally somewhat abashed by the appearance of a culture spreading luxuriously over fifty hundred thousand planets.

      With a flourish, he bowed before Mordregon and the other Supreme Ultralords.

      ‘I offer greetings from my planet Earth of Sol,’ he said in a resonant voice.

      ‘You are welcome here, David Stevens of Earth,’ Mordregon replied graciously. A small object the size of a hen’s egg floated fifteen inches from his beak. All other members of the council, Stevens included, were attended by similar devices, automatic interpreters.

      Mordregon was mountainous. Below his beaked head, his body bulged like an upturned grand piano. A cascade of clicking black and white ivory rectangles clothed him. Each rectangle, Stevens noted, rotated perpetually on its longitudinal axis, fanning him, ventilating him, as if he burned continually of an inexorable disease (which was in fact the case).

      ‘I am happy to come here in peace,’ Stevens said. ‘And shall be still happier to know why I have been brought here. My journey has been long and partially unexplained.’

      At the word ‘peace’, Mordregon made a grimace like a smile, although his beak remained unsmiling.

      ‘Partially, perhaps; but partially is not entirely,’ Mordregon said. ‘The robot ship told you you would be collected to stand trial in the name of Earth. That seems to us quite sufficient information to work on.’

      The automatic translators gave an edge of irony to the Ultralord’s voice. The tone brought faint colour to Stevens’s cheeks. He was angry, and suddenly happy to let them see he was angry.

      ‘Then you have never been in my position,’ he said ‘Mine was an executive post at Port Ganymede. I never had anything to do with politics. I was down at the methane reagent post when your robot ship arrived and designated me in purely arbitrary fashion. I was simply told I would be collected for trial in three months – like a convict – like a bundle of dirty laundry!’ He looked hard at them, anxious to see their first reaction to his anger, wondering whether, he had gone too far. Ordinarily, Stevens was not a man who indulged his emotions. When he spoke, the hen’s egg before his mouth sucked up all sound, leaving the air dry and silent, so that he was unable to hear the translation going over; he thought, half-hopefully, that it might omit the outburst in traditional interpreter fashion. This hope was at once crushed.

      ‘Irritation means unbalance,’ said Deln Phi J. Bunswacki. It was the only sentence he spoke throughout the interview. On his shoulders, a mighty brain siphoned its thoughts beneath a transparent skull case; he wore what appeared to be a garishly cheap blue pin-stripe suit, but the stripes moved as symbiotic organisms plied up and down them ceaselessly, ingurgitating any microbes which might threaten the health of Deln Phi. J. Bunswacki. Slightly revolted, Stevens turned back to Mordregon.

      ‘You are playing with me,’ he said quietly. ‘Do I abuse your hospitality by asking you to get down to business?’

      That, he thought, was better. Yet what were they thinking? His manner is too unstable? He seems to be impervious to the idea of his own insignificance? This was going to be the whole of hell: to have to guess what they were thinking, knowing they knew he was guessing, not knowing how many levels above his own their IQ was.

      Acidic apprehension turned in Stevens’s stomach. His hand fluttered up to the lump below his right ear; he fingered it nervously, and only with an effort broke off the betraying gesture. To this vast concourse, he was insignificant: yet to Earth – to Earth he was their sole hope. Their sole hope! – And he could not keep himself from shaking.

      Mordregon was speaking again. What had he been saying?

      ‘… customary. Into this hall in the city of Grapfth on the planet Xaquibadd in the Periphery of the Dominion of the Sack are invited all new races, each as it is discovered.’

      Those big words don’t frighten me, Stevens told himself, because, to a great extent, they did. Suddenly he saw the solar system as a tiny sack, into which he longed to crawl and hide.

      ‘Is this place Grapfth the centre of your Empire?’ he asked.

      ‘No; as I said, it is in a peripheral region – for safety reasons, you understand,’ Mordregon explained.

      ‘Safety reasons? You mean you are afraid of me?’

      Mordregon raised a brow at Ped2 of the Sack. Ped2, under an acre of coloured, stereoscopic nylon, was animated cactus, more beautiful, more intricate than his clothing. Captive butterflies on germanium, degravitized chains turned among the blossoms on his head; they fluttered up and then re-alighted as Ped2 nodded and spoke briefly to the Earthman. ‘Every race has peculiar talents or abilities of its own,’ he explained. ‘It is partly to discover those abilities that you aliens are invited here. Unfortunately, your predecessor turned out to be a member of a race of self-propagating nuclear weapons left over from some ancient war or other. He talked quite intelligently, until one of us mentioned the key word “goodwill”, whereupon he exploded and blew this entire hall to bits.’

      Reminiscent chuckles sounded round him as he told the story.

      Stevens said angrily: ‘You expect me to believe that? Then how have you all survived?’

      ‘Oh, we are not really here,’ Ped2 said genially, interlocking a nest of spikes behind his great head. ‘You can’t expect us to make the long journey to Xaquibadd every time some petty little system – no offence of course – is discovered. You’re talking to three-dimensional images of us; even the hall’s only there – or here, if you prefer it (location is merely a philosophical quibble) in a sort of sub-molecular fashion.’

      Catching sight of the dazed look on the Earthman’s face, Ped2 could not resist driving home another point. (His was a childish race: theologians had died out among them only some four thousand years ago.)

      ‘We are not even talking to you in a sense you would understand, David Stevens of Earth,’ he said. ‘Having as yet no instantaneous communicator across light-year distances, we are letting a robot brain on Xaquibadd do the talking for us. We can check with it afterwards; if a mistake has been made, we can always get in touch with you.’

      It was said not without an easy menace, but Stevens received at least a part of it eagerly. They had as yet no instantaneous communicator! No sub-radio, that could leap light-years without time lag! Involuntarily, he again fingered the tiny lump beneath the lobe of his right ear, and then thrust his hand deep into his pocket. So Earth had a chance of bargaining with these colossi after all! His confidence СКАЧАТЬ