The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ mark of a beach. Refugees and traders from London and the shattered Midlands accumulated here in all the disorder of an oriental bazaar.

      It was to this region that Wyvern drove in his shooting brake the next morning. He had a small collections of canvases under his arm – a Dufy, two Paul Nashes and a Sutherland, the last of his father’s fine collection. Wyvern knew of no other way to raise the required money for a lunar ticket quickly. In this quarter, they bought anything – at their own price.

      After half an hour, Wyvern emerged with five thousand, five hundred pounds in greasy tenners; it was about a half of what the Dufy alone was worth. But it bought a ticket on the moonship Aqualung, leaving at midday the next day.

      That gave him twenty-four-hours to wait. He just hoped he would still be at liberty when the time came. But the officials at Thorpe spaceport had seemed casual enough: his passport had been checked, his papers examined, and not a word said. He drove home in a state of modest triumph.

      At four o’clock in the afternoon, soon after he had got back to Stratton, he was arrested by the New Police.

      At four-thirty, after a bumpy lorry-ride which he spent handcuffed to the frame of the lorry, he found himself back in Norwich again.

      The New Police had taken over a big department store on one corner of the market square; it swarmed with activity. Still handcuffed, Wyvern was taken through a side door up to the second floor and left with a Captain Runton, who nodded to him in abstracted fashion and continued to direct some builders working there.

      This floor was still being converted to police use. Once, it had been a spacious restaurant; now, flimsy partitions were transforming it into a nest of tiny offices.

      ‘Let’s see, what are you here for?’ the Captain asked Wyvern mildly.

      ‘It’s no good asking me: I don’t know,’ Wyvern said, truthfully.

      ‘You don’t what?’

      ‘Know, I don’t know,’ Wyvern said.

      ‘Sorry, there’s so much banging here! You have to watch these fellows or they down tools. I think they suspect they are not going to get paid for this job.’

      A swinging plank narrowly missed his ear. He ducked under a partition frame.

      ‘Now,’ he shouted, above a fresh outburst of hammering. ‘We’ve found in practice that the quickest thing for everyone is for you to confess at once, without mucking about.’

      ‘Confess what?’

      ‘The crime.’

      ‘What crime?’

      ‘What what? Oh, what crime? Why man, the crime for which you were brought here.’

      ‘You’ll have to tell me what it is first,’ Wyvern said grimly.

      ‘Oh hell, I suppose I’ll have to take you down and look at your bloody papers,’ Captain Runton said sourly. ‘It won’t pay you to be unco-operative, you know.’

      He bellowed to the workmen to keep hard at it and led the way to a lift. They descended to the basement and Runton pushed Wyvern into his room; cocking his leg up on the edge of a desk, Runton read carefully through the ill-typed report someone had left on his pad.

      Wyvern looked round. Tarnished mirrors greeted him, and glass-fronted cupboards with cracked glass, containing cardboard boxes and big rubber bouncing balls for children. He saw little wooden spades, yachting caps, a dusty poster saying ‘The Glorious Norfolk Broads’. Nothing very frightening: he wondered why he felt frightened.

      The captain of police was looking at him.

      ‘So you’re Conrad Wyvern, one of the inventors of cruxtistics?’ he said.

      ‘Is that why I’ve been arrested?’

      Runton went and sat heavily down in the room’s only chair. His behind was running to fat and his hair thinning. It was a wonder how he did it on the lean rations. No doubt he had lost his family and spent long evenings feeling sorry for himself, drinking. He looked the typical man of his age: comfortless, unlovable.

      ‘Why do you suddenly want to go to the Moon, Mr Wyvern?’ he asked.

      ‘There’s nothing sudden about it,’ Wyvern said. ‘I’ve been planning this trip for some time.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Oh – a change.’

      ‘A change from what?’

      ‘From routine.’

      ‘You don’t like routine?’

      ‘Yes, but I just want a change.’

      ‘You realise you do an important job, Mr Wyvern?’

      ‘Of course. I thought a change –’

      ‘The government doesn’t like to lose its important men.’

      ‘I booked return, didn’t I? I’ll be back in four days, before the next course starts at Stratton.’

      ‘The government doesn’t like to lose its important men even for four days.’

      ‘It’s getting choosy, isn’t it?’ Wyvern asked. He could feel his temper rising.

      ‘These are bad days, Mr Wyvern.’

      ‘Need we make them worse?’

      ‘You can still hear that bloody banging, even from here.’ Runton sighed deeply. He picked up the phone.

      ‘The palace,’ he said, not without a trace of irony. After a pause, he said, ‘Get me Colonel H.’ After another pause, ‘I’m Captain Runton, late of Leicester; he’ll remember.’ Later, ‘Yes, I’ll settle for his secretary.’

      Finally he was put through.

      ‘Hello? Captain Runton here … Good. Look, we have Conrad Wyvern here … Yes, that’s him. He is being rather impolite in answer to polite questions … Yes … May I bring him over to you? … Well, for one thing, we have the decorators in here, making a lot of noise, and for another I hoped I might perhaps have the great pleasure of – er, possibly meeting Colonel H again … Oh yes, yes, I’m sure he must be … Yes, well another thing was, I hear you have a marvellous new Inquisitor up there, eh? … No, oh no, sir, that was a mild joke merely. I’m sorry. I naturally meant Questioner … Thank you.’

      Runton hung up, puffing out his cheeks. Somebody at the other end of the line evidently did not love him.

      ‘Come on, Wyvern,’ he said heavily. ‘We’re going over to see the big chiefs at the barracks.’

      It took ten minutes to drive, in a commandeered Post Office van, up to the barracks where Our Beloved Leader had been shot. It took a further twenty to get inside, by which time Captain Runton was more nervous than his captive.

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