The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ man said when he saw them. ‘Don’t be frightened – I’m only standing here listening to the cuckoo.’

      ‘Pooh, they’re commoner than pigeons at this time of year,’ thirteen year old Lena said. ‘If you heard them in winter, that would be something to listen to!’

      ‘They don’t have seasons in London, or cuckoos on Venus,’ the old man told her. ‘That’s why they’re wonderful to me – for years I’ve lived only in those two places.’

      ‘Then you’re lucky,’ Lena said – she was at a very contradictory stage at present. ‘Daddy’s going to take us to Venus when Laurie’s bigger, isn’t he, Laurie?’

      Laurie did not answer. He was frightened; this strange man with the green flecks on his cheek reminded him of something – something too big and threatening to be grasped. He tugged urgently at Lena’s hand.

      She accepted his signal and burst into a run, dragging him down a bank deep in last year’s leaves and this year’s bluebells. Laurie looked back over his shoulder: the man had disappeared, very suddenly, very oddly.

      But he couldn’t just have gone like that, Laurie thought. It was against nature.

      He called, ‘Mr. Esmond!’

      No answer, only the mighty beech trees humming in their new green.

      Nobody in sight.

      ‘Funny,’ Laurie commented aloud, running his dusty hands down his overalls. And it was funny; it was queer; his head felt queer and his stomach queasy.

      He was suddenly glad he had no need to linger further. The illusion machine was working beautifully: these beeches looked so solid that he hesitated to walk into them. He felt his way to the door and let himself back into Mr. Esmond’s living quarters. For a moment he paused, looking back.

      The woods were irresistibly real. You could not convince yourself they were mere projections. As he closed the door, he heard a distant call: ‘Cuckoo.’

      Something would not come clear in Laurie’s mind, would not focus. He shook his head vaguely, trying to puzzle things out. For a long while he stood gazing at his little repair fly, not seeing it.

      Finally, deciding he would never solve any problem if he could not think what the problem was, he climbed into the vehicle. For a second he sat in the driver’s seat looking out at the minute hall, and then switched on the muon screen and cleared his engagement board.

      At once his thoughts were more certain. Everything was bathed in a new lucidity, as if his IQ had suddenly been stepped up.

      ‘Yes,’ he said to himself, ‘I must find out what’s happened to old Granville Esmond. Of course I must.’

      As he drifted up through the strata of buildings, he tried to remember the last time he had seen the old boy. He was not too clear on that point – possibly he had been drinking too heavily when Esmond had left. He could recall the old fellow at Betty Hulcoup’s party the week before, standing looking on as always. Esmond rarely did anything but look on, yet, when you thought about it, he was a real sociable type. Why, looking back, Laurie could remember him at almost any spot of high-life you might name.

      Even when Laurie had that wonderful three days with Pauline Dent, Esmond had been looking on. Odd they hadn’t been offended by him at the time, when you thought about it, considering how they –

      Laurie stopped with a jolt at the traffic autobeam at 12th. He was nearly home already. Thinking about old Ezzie, as they called him, made time pass quickly. Good old Ezzie!

      A warm glow of pleasure ran through Laurie as he realised he had no memory of any pleasant time in which Ezzie did not also feature, just standing by, looking on, smiling, ‘taking it all in,’ as the saying was.

      ‘Good old Ezzie!’ Laurie said aloud. ‘He must be my lucky mascot. I must look him up when I get back to the shop.’

      He shuttled along 11th until he was in his home square, dialled his number, was accepted, clicked off the muon screen and materialised.

      ‘Hullo, boss!’ a voice called, and Tom Fenwick appeared. He was a friend of Laurie’s, and only put in an hour or so on the bench when business was particularly pressing, as at present.

      ‘Hullo, Tom,’ Laurie said.

      ‘Something wrong? Client engaged? You look worried.’

      ‘I was just trying to think what I was thinking of,’ Laurie said blankly.

      ‘Oh, it’ll come back if you stop worrying about it, as Freud said to the lady who’d lost her nervous complaint. Did you find Mr. Esmond in, I asked you.’

      ‘Oh … er, Mr. Esmond?’ With an effort, Laurie pulled him self together. His brain almost seemed to be clicking. ‘Do you mean old Ezzie? I haven’t seen him for some time.’

      ‘Who are you talking about?’ Tom asked in puzzlement. ‘Are you ill?’

      He placed his hand in assumed consternation on Laurie’s brow and went on, ‘What about old Ezzie? Did you say you hadn’t seen him?’

      ‘Not since last week,’ Laurie said.

      ‘I went out with the Baer boys last night and we saw him then,’ Tom said.

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