The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

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      Wyvern: ‘You must escape, Parrodyce, now. Get away to another sector quickly. Tell them what is about to happen; Bert must be wrecked. If this scheme of H’s succeeds, he’ll rule the entire roost in no time. A telepathic computer would be unstoppable. Get away now.’

      Parrodyce: ‘Must save own skin. Which sector is powerful enough to defy H, which?’

      Wyvern: ‘Try any – American will do. All sectors must unite against this. Bomb it to bits if necessary.’

      Parrodyce: ‘Killing. Good.’

      Wyvern: ‘Just get the message through. Leave them to judge. Now for heaven’s sake scoot, you horror.’

      Parrodyce: ‘Loathe you. Yet if you were saved, you could probe me properly, find what went wrong. Some thorn in the infant flesh. Oh, Wyvern, am afraid …’

      Wyvern: ‘There’ll be nothing to fear if you get out. And listen, somewhere on Luna is a girl called Eileen South; she’s a telepath, no other details. Tell her – tell her I loved her.’

      Parrodyce: ‘No use for women. Subtle, smothering …’

      Wyvern: ‘Get the message through. Do it all, and I swear if there’s ever a chance I’ll dig down through your dirt and put you right, if it’s still possible.’

      Parrodyce: ‘Love/hate. Going now.’

      The contact broke. The plump figure at the end of the corridor turned and ran back through the door it had entered. Badly frightened, one of the guards, strictly against orders, slammed home a blow on to the side of Wyvern’s chin.

      Oblivion was a complexity of sensation. The top of Wyvern’s sleeping mind whirled, whirled till all its colours blended into blinding whiteness. He was far away, but his heart still beat, his bloodstream still flowed, his latent consciousness foamed and subsided like milk boiling on an intermittent fire. Down there, where sleep never penetrates, fright was active; the smouldering intelligence knew that something was afoot which would violate its inmost hearth. The something came from outside, where all dangers came from, but it was working steadily in, insidiously, slyly and/or boldly, deeper.

      The danger was chromium-plated, then it was a gnarled hand, or it was pins. It had little piggy leech-snouts, or it had nozzles or nails. It assumed any shape to get where it wanted, and soon the primeval country fell to this protean invader, and the enemy camp fires glowed from every point of vantage.

      Time slowed, stopped. Presently it began again at a new rhythm. Dawn came: Wyvern roused.

      He could not move. He was looking at a wall of lawn starred with daisies, or it was a green sky stuffed with stars; slowly, with infinite care, the invalid muscles of his eyes brought it into focus, and it was a green wall of instruments, studded with little dials, like eyeballs. It was about three feet away from him. He acquired these facts as a new-born babe might acquire them.

      Something fiendish had been done to him.

      Men in white overalls crossed his line of vision. For the most part, they seemed to ignore him, being more concerned with the little dials. Then one came over and injected something into him – it might have been into his shoulder or his calf, he could not tell, could only feel a coolness spread, gradually defining the limits of his body.

      It seemed to him he was left alone then, with only the blind eyeballs to watch him. Slowly strength returned. Wyvern discovered that he was lying on his chest with a pillow under his left cheek. Taking his time about it, he rolled on to one side and sat up, propping himself up with his arms helped by the light lunar gravity. The effort dizzied him; he sat with his eyes shut, vaguely exploring the dry taste in his mouth. He could eventually open his eyes again.

      He was in a small room on a large table. He had been covered with a blanket which had now slipped aside. He was naked; he could see his body direct, and in a wide mirror slanting above the table. Wyvern stared at the reflection – not in horror, for his subconscious had already accepted this violation.

      From six points on the front of his body, and two on his legs, little terminals projected. From the terminals, cables – or were they tubes? – led off. He could tell that his back was similarly served.

      His skull was shaved; from it, similar though smaller terminals projected, secured into the bone. There were twelve terminals in his skull, and the connections from them had been built out so that the rear of his head was surrounded by a kind of wire basket, like a fencing mask worn backwards. A pigtail of cable hung from the back of the basket, carrying the wires away.

      ‘Someone’s been busy,’ Wyvern muttered to himself. Only that trivial thought bubbled up.

      At the bottom of the bed, a steel arm with a hook on it gathered all the thin cables together into one fat one. The fat cable slithered across the floor to a trolley fitted with valves and glass cylinders and a pump which worked slowly and laboriously. At the other side of the trolley, the cable ran into the base of the green instrument panel.

      Wyvern had no doubt at all as to what it all meant. Experimentally, he tugged at the terminal set in his left nipple and felt the network of wires like capillary veins tighten under his skin. They had taped him up. The innermost meaning of his innermost chromosome was being syphoned out of him and on to the panel. He could feel his slightest sensation, an itch on the pores of his leg or the stir of bile in his gut, register in micro-amps and flick up a reading on a dial. He could feel his thoughts scuttle along the wires and whistle through the machine’s mazes. He was ready to be coupled up to Big Bert.

      Sighing, he lay down again. A small metal box was fixed between his shoulders – a fuse box? He wondered – and he could not lie comfortably. So he lay uncomfortably.

      Four men entered the room. They wore white overalls. Two of them took great interest in Wyvern, examining him, prodding him, checking the instruments; the other two stood to one side rather boredly, and began chatting together. Wyvern could hear snatches of their conversation.

      ‘… nasty bust up on Twenty One last night. Three of our boys had it.’

      ‘My mate Alfred was down there. Apparently he picked up with some French tart …’

      It was a reminder of a world which might have ceased to exist for Wyvern.

      The examination took the best part of an hour. At the end of it, the examiners showed themselves satisfied and left. They returned in ten minutes with Colonel H’s secretary.

      The secretary came over to the table and stared down at Wyvern. Viewed from this angle, he looked less the pukka officer than usual, more the thug; his mouth had that stupid set to it observable in men of callous natures.

      ‘You see we managed to bring you through,’ he said, mock-brightly. ‘How are you feeling?’

      ‘I want a drink,’ Wyvern said. But, he reflected as he asked, he did no longer need a drink; the trolley had automatically supplied the shortage. The secretary, in any case, paid no heed to the request.

      ‘I regret the Colonel could not come,’ he said. ‘He is attending to a little source of irritation outside. We are going to get the computer to work draining you straight away – it has already been given its instructions. Results should be coming through by late afternoon, shortly after the Colonel is officially proclaimed Beloved Leader.’

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