The Monster Trilogy. Brian Aldiss

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      ‘One, sir, just this one.’

      ‘Don’t lie to me.’

      ‘There’s just one.’ He spoke without emphasis, leaning lightly against the control panels, holding his face, letting the faint illumination turn his body into a seemingly abandoned carcass. ‘This train shuttles back and forth on scheduled time routes. All programmed. I’m not much more than a supervisor. It’s not like piloting an airliner.’

      ‘There must be other trains.’

      ‘There’s just the one. To ride time quanta you gobble vast amounts of energy. Solar energy. Very extravagant. Reverse relativism. Trains can’t be seen by the outside world – not unless we’re slowing to let agents off.’

      The driver smiled, showing the canines more fully. No humour warmed the smile. The lips simply peeled back in memory of something that might once have amused.

      ‘The sheep asks the wolf what it does …’

      The detached part of Bodenland watched as he attacked the driver and fell to the floor with him. In their struggle, they kicked Clift’s body, making it roll on to its face.

      And Bodenland was demanding who had invented this cursed train. The answer was that, as far as the driver knew, the train was the invention of the Fleet Ones.

      ‘The Fleet Ones, sir, are the Undead – the vampires – who rule the world in its last days. This is their train, sir, you’ve ventured on.’

      ‘I’m borrowing it, and it’s going to get me back home to 1999. You’re going to show me how.’

      The detached viewpoint saw how the creature made to bite Bodenland in the upper arm. But Bodenland took a firm grip of his throat and dragged him to the controls.

      ‘Start explaining,’ he said.

      ‘Ummmm ummmm ummmmmmmm. Moon and Mercury, Moon and Mercury, Romance and Remedy … Ummmm.’

      The madman Renfield rocked himself in a tight bundle and hummed as if he were full of bluebottles.

      The ginger man squatted stolidly in his corner by the cell door, watching, nodding in time with the humming, alert to the fact that Renfield was rocking himself closer. Above them, against the square of window showing blue sky, a spider hung by a thread, well out of the madman’s way.

      ‘Ummmm, you’re one of us, kind sir, she said, one of the fallen. May I ask, do you believe in God?’

      Having uttered the Almighty’s name, he fell into fits of laughter, as if the hallowed syllable contained all the world’s mirth.

      ‘Yes, I do believe,’ said the ginger man. ‘I think.’

      ‘Then you believe in Hell and Hellfire.’

      ‘That I certainly do believe in.’ He smiled wanly, and again the madman laughed.

      ‘I’m God. I’m God and I’m Hellfire. And where are these items contained? Why – in blood!’ He pronounced the word in savage relish, striking his skull violently as he did so. ‘In blood, in the head, the head, kind sir, the napper. The napper’s full of blood. There are things that peer in here of a night … things which cry and mew for the blood. You see, it’s scientific, kind sir, she said, because … because you need the blood to drown out the thought. You don’t need thought when you’re dead, or silver bells or cock-hole smells or pretty maids all in a row, because when you’re dead you can do anything. You can do anything, kind sir, I assure you. The dead travel fast. Ummmm.’

      The ginger man sighed, as if in at least partial agreement with these crazed sentiments.

      ‘Can you tell me what these things look like which peer in at you at night?’

      Renfield had rocked himself very close now.

      He put a dirty finger against the wall, as if pointing to something unseen by others.

      ‘There, you see? They come from dead planets, kind sir. From the Moon and Mercury.’ He ground his teeth so violently that his intention might have been to eat his own face. ‘Ummmm, they’re a disease, wrapped in a plague, masquerading as life. Life – yes, that’s it, life ummmm. And we shall all become like them, us, by and by, if God so wills.’

      On the last word, he sprang at the ginger man, screaming, ‘Give me a kiss of life, kind sir, she said!’

      But the ginger man was alert, leaped to his feet in time, fended off the madman with his silver-headed cane.

      ‘Down, dog. Back to your kennel, beast, Caliban, or I’ll call in the warden and have you beaten black and blue.’

      The madman retreated only a step and stood there raging or pretending rage, showing teeth, brandishing claws. When the ginger man caught him lightly over the shoulders with his cane, he desisted and crawled on hands and knees back to the far corner, by his mattress. There he sat, looking upward, innocent as a child, one finger stuck deep into his ear.

      A rhombus of sunlight crept down the wall, making for the floor as noon approached, slow as time and as steady. The ginger man remained by the door, unmoving, in a less threatening attitude, though he still had his stick ready.

      Almost as stealthily as the sunbeam, the madman began to roll on the stone floor. His movements became more exaggerated as he tried to tie himself into knots, groaning at the same time.

      The normally genial face of Renfield’s visitor was grave with compassion.

      ‘Can I help in any way?’ he asked.

      ‘Why do you seek my company in this fortress?’

      ‘It’s a fair question, but I cannot deliver you the answer. Tell me if I can help you.’

      Renfield stared at him from an upside-down viewpoint.

      ‘Bring me boxes of spiders to eat. Spiders and sparrows. I need the blood. It’s life, kind sir. Life’s paper. Seven old newspapers make a week in Fleet Street. The Fleet Ones can eat up a week with their little fingers, this little finger on the right.’

      He started to scratch a figure with sharp teeth on the wall as he spoke.

      ‘Talk sense, man,’ said the ginger man, sternly.

      ‘There soon will come a scientist who will say even stranger things about space and time. We can’t comprehend infinity, yet it’s in our heads.’

      ‘Together with the blood?’ He laughed impatiently, turning to the door to be released.

      As he rapped on the panel, the madman said, ‘Yes, yes, with the blood, with a whole stream of blood. You’ll see. It’s in your eyes, kind sir, she said. A stream of blood stretching beyond the grave, beyond the gravy.’

      He made a jump for the distant spider as the door slammed, leaving him alone.

      The ginger man walked with the doctor in the bloodstained coat. The doctor accompanied him gravely to the door of the asylum, where a carriage waited. As the ginger man passed over СКАЧАТЬ