The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ course, there had been the man in London … Wyvern had been on leave just before the capital was obliterated. A drunk had barged into him down Praed Street. In a moment of anger, the drunk’s mind had opened: the two stood locked in that overpowering union – and then both shut off abruptly. Yet Wyvern knew if he ever met that man again, the recognition would be mutual.

      Most of Praed Street must have sensed that strange meeting; but then a crickeytip droned overhead, and everything else was forgotten in a general dive for shelter.

      Still bothered by that memory. Wyvern hung his damp clothes over a line and began to dry his hair.

      There was a loud rapping at his door. For a moment he had forgotten he was not alone in Stratton Hall. Instinctively he tensed, then relaxed. Not so soon …

      ‘Come in,’ he said.

      It was Plunkett, one of his pupils on the course he ran here.

      ‘Sir, come into the rec, quick!’ Plunkett said. ‘They’ve just announced it on the telly – OBL’s had his chips!’

      OBL was an irreverent way of referring to Jim Bull, Our Beloved Leader.

      Wyvern followed the youngster downstairs at a run. His government job was to teach relays of twelve young men the essentials of his own invention, cruxtistics, the science of three-di mathematical aerial lodgements, first established in space and later adapted to stratospheric fighting. He enjoyed the task, even if it was for a loathed régime, for the squads of eager young men, changing every five weeks, brought life to the decaying house, with its peeling paint and its two ancient servants.

      It had been Plunkett, for instance, who had invented the Flyspy-baiter. He had trapped birds and tied tinfoil to their legs; when released, they had flown off and attracted the miniature gyro after them, televising frantically and signalling to HQ for help.

      Plunkett led the way to the rec room. The other eleven youths were clustered round the ill-coloured tellyscreen. They called excitedly to their instructor.

      On the screen, men marching. Wyvern found time to wonder how often he had seen almost identical shots – how often, over years and years of war, armistice and betrayed peace; it seemed a miracle there were still men to march. These now, lean and shabby, paraded beneath the angular front of the capital’s city hall, with its asymmetrical clock tower.

      ‘Our on-the-spot newsreel shows you crack troops pouring into the capital for the funeral of Our Beloved Leader, to be held tomorrow. The assassin is expected to be apprehended at any minute; there is nobody in the whole Republic who would not gladly be his executioner!’

      The metallic voice stopped. There were more scenes from other parts of the inhabitable country: York, Glasgow, Hull. Shouting, marching, shows of mourning, the dipping of banners.

      ‘And now we give you a personal message from Colonel H,’ the unseen commentator said. ‘Friends, Colonel H! – Head of the New Police, Chief Nursemaid of State, Our Late Beloved Leader’s Closest Friend!’

      Colonel H lowered into the cameras. Aping the old Prussian style, his hair was clipped to a short stubble, so that it looked now as if it stood on end with his fury. His features were small, almost pinched, their niggardliness emphasised by two heavy bars of dark eyebrow and a protruding jaw. He was less popular generally than Jim Bull but more feared.

      ‘Republicans!’ he began, as one who should say ‘curs’, ‘Our Beloved Leader has been killed – raped of his life by bloody brutes. We have all lost a friend! We have all lost our best friend! By allowing him to die we have betrayed him and his high ideals. We must suffer! We must scourge ourselves! We shall suffer – and we shall be scourged! We have been too easy, and the time for easiness is not yet, not while there are still maniacs among us.

      ‘I shall take over temporary leadership until a new Beloved Leader is elected by republican methods. I mean to make tight the chinks in our security curtain. The way will be hard, republicans, but I know you will suffer gladly for the sake of truth.

      ‘Meanwhile, it makes me happy to announce that the two murderers of Our Late Beloved Leader have just been apprehended by our splendid New Police. Here they are for you all to view – and loathe. Their punishment will be announced later.’

      The scowling visage faded.

      On the screen, a bullet-riddled sports car lay overturned near a roadside garage. A motley crowd of soldiers and civilians jostled round it. An officer stood on top of a tank, bellowing his lungs out through a megaphone. Nobody paid him any attention. It was pouring with grey rain.

      The camera panned between the crowd. Two terrified men stood against the overturned car. One, the driver, silently hugged a shattered arm; the other, a small fellow in a blue mac, stood to attention and wept.

      ‘These are the blood-crazed, reactionary killers!’ screamed the commentator.

      ‘Crikey!’ Plunkett exclaimed, ‘they don’t look capable of passing dud cheques!’

      ‘Stand by for shots from the British Republics Sector of the Moon!’ the commentator said.

      The familiar domes like great cloches faded in. Utilitarian architecture, ventilation towers, mobs of people surging back and forth, waving sticks, shaking fists.

      ‘These true republicans demonstrate their loyalty to the new Leader, Colonel H,’ cried the commentator. ‘They savagely mourn the grave loss of Our Late Beloved Leader!’

      ‘They don’t, you know,’ a youngster of Wyvern’s party exclaimed. ‘I reckon they are rioting!’

      It certainly looked as if that was the case. The colony had scant respect for any Earth authority, but Jim Bull had been an old spacer, and as such his word had always carried some weight. The sound track was cut in, and the viewers heard an ugly roaring. And then, for Wyvern, the miracle happened. The camera swooped into close-up, facing a swirling knot of people. In the background, a girl passed, taking no notice of the agitators.

      And her thoughts came over clearly to Wyvern!

      She was a telepath! He glanced quickly at the other twelve viewers, but they obviously noticed nothing. Somehow, over the ether, her thoughts had been filtered out for all but another telepath: and her thoughts were in turmoil.

      Wyvern watched her almost incredulously, his eyes strained to the reproduction of her figure. And she was thinking, in profound anxiety, ‘Got to follow him. 108, JJ Lane: that’s his destination. Heavens, I’m sending – must stop!’

      That was all; but with the thought ‘I’ came, vaguely, her name: Eileen something – Eileen South, it had seemed to Wyvern.

      She ceased sending. In a moment, she disappeared behind a pillar. The camera lost her. Wyvern forced himself to begin breathing again.

      Who the ‘him’ was Eileen South had to follow, he could not grasp; but floating behind the pronoun had been another phrase in her mind; ‘the impossible smile’.

      Of one thing he was sure. He had to get to Luna – he had to find Eileen South; she was his kind.

      II

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