The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ morning. Perhaps you’ll have a look yourself.’

      Still talking, he backed to the door and left, with a final nervous grin at Freud and Pavment, who were heavily engaged in grinning nervously at each other.

      Glimpses into other people’s secret lives always distressed him. It would be a relief to be home with Mrs Birdlip. He was outside and into his car, leaving for once without Hippo, before he remembered he had an appointment at seventeen-fifty.

      Dash the appointment, he thought. Fortunately people could afford to wait these days. He wanted to see Mrs Birdlip. Mrs Birdlip was a nice comfortable little woman. She made loose covers of brightly patterned chintzes to dress her romen servants in.

      Next morning, when Birdlip entered his office, a new manuscript awaited him on his desk – a pleasant enough event for a firm mainly specialising in reprints. He seated himself at the desk, then realised how outrageously hot it was.

      Angrily, he banged the button of the new homing control on his desk.

      Hippo appeared.

      ‘Oh, you’re there, Hippo. Did you go home last night?’

      ‘Yessir.’

      ‘Where did you go?’

      ‘To a place of shelter with other romen.’

      ‘Uh. Hippo, this confounded heating system is always going wrong. We had trouble last week, and then it cured itself. Ring the engineers; get them to come around; I will speak to them. Tell them to send a human this time.’

      ‘Sir, you had an appointment yesterday at seventeen-fifty.’

      ‘What has that to do with it?’

      ‘It was an appointment with a human engineer. You ordered him last week when the heating malfunctioned. His name was Pursewarden.’

      ‘Never mind his name. What did you do?’

      ‘As you were gone, sir, I sent him away.’

      ‘Ye gods! What was his name?’

      ‘His name was Pursewarden, sir.’

      ‘Get him on the phone and say I want the system repaired today. Tell him to get on with it whether I am here or not. …’ Irritation and frustration seized him, provoked by the heat. ‘And as a matter of fact I shan’t be here. I’m going to see my brother.’

      ‘Your brother Rainbow, sir?’

      ‘Since I have only one brother, yes, you fool. Is Mr Freud in yet? No? Well, I want you to come with me. Leave instructions with Bucket; tell him all I’ve told you to tell Mr Freud. … And look lively,’ he added, collecting the manuscript off the desk as he spoke. ‘I have an irrational urge to be on the way.’

      On the way, he leafed through the manuscript. It was entitled An Explanation of Man’s Superfluous Activities. At first, Birdlip found the text yielded no more enticement than the title, sown as it was in desiccated phrases and bedded out in a laboured style. Persevering with it, he realized that the author – whose name, Isaac Toolust, meant nothing to him – had formulated a grand and alarming theory covering many human traits which had not before been subjected to what proved a chillingly objective examination.

      He looked up. They had stopped.

      To one side of the road were the rolling hedgeless miles of Kent with giant wharley crops ripening under the sun; in the copper distance a machine glinted, tending them with metal motherliness. On the other side, rupturing the flow of cultivation, lay Gafia Farm, a higgledy-piggledy of low buildings, trees and clutter, sizzling in sun and pig smell.

      Hippo detached himself from the arm bracket that kept him steady when the car was in motion, climbed out, and held the door open for Birdlip.

      Man and roman trudged into the yard.

      A mild-eyed fellow was stacking sawed logs in a shed. He came out as Birdlip approached and nodded to him without speaking. Birdlip had never seen him on previous visits to his brother’s farm.

      ‘Is Rainy about, please?’ Birdlip asked.

      ‘Around the back. Help yourself.’

      The fellow was back at his logs almost before Birdlip moved away.

      They found Rainbow Birdlip around the back of the cottage, as predicted. Jan’s younger brother was standing under a tree cleaning horse harness with his own hands; Birdlip was taken for a moment by a sense of being in the presence of history; the feeling could have been no stronger had Rainy been discovered painting himself with woad.

      ‘Rainy!’ Birdlip said.

      His brother looked up, gave him a placid greeting, and continued to polish. As usual he was wrapped in a metre-thick blanket of content. Conversation strangled itself in Birdlip’s throat, but he forced himself to speak.

      ‘I perceive you have a new helper out in front, Rainy.’

      Rainy showed relaxed interest. He strolled over, carrying the harness over one shoulder.

      ‘That’s right, Jan. Fellow walked in and asked for a job. I said he could have one if he didn’t work too hard. Only got here an hour or so ago.’

      ‘He soon got to work.’

      ‘Couldn’t wait! Reckoned he’d never felt a bit of non-man-made timber before. Him thirty-five and all. Begged to be allowed to handle logs. Nice fellow. Name of Pursewarden.’

      ‘Pursewarden? Pursewarden? Where have I heard that name before?’

      ‘It is the surname of the human engineer with whom you had the appointment that you did not keep,’ Hippo said.

      ‘Thank you, Hippo. Your wonderful memory! Of course it is. This can’t be the same man.’

      ‘It is, sir. I recognised him.’

      Rainy pushed past them, striding toward the open cottage door.

      ‘Funnily enough I had another man yesterday persuade me to take him on,’ he said, quite unconscious of his brother’s dazed look. ‘Man name of Jagger Bank. He’s down in the orchard now, feeding the pigs. … Lot of people just lately leaving town. See them walking down the road – year ago, never saw a human soul on foot. … Well, it’ll be all the same a century from now. Come on in, Jan, if you want.’

      It was his longest speech. He sat down on a sound homemade chair and fell silent, emptied of news. The harness he placed carefully on the table before him. His brother came into the dim room, noted that its confusion had increased since his last visit, flicked a dirty shirt off a chair, and also sat down. Hippo entered the room and stood by the door, his neat functional lines and the chaste ornamentation on his breastplates contrasting with the disorder about him.

      ‘Was your Pursewarden an engineer, Rainy?’

      ‘Don’t know. Didn’t think to ask. We talked mostly about wood, the little we said.’

      A silence fell, filled with СКАЧАТЬ