The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Over Birdlip settled the conviction that he had left the present – neither for past nor future but for another dimension. He asked himself, Why am I following a roman? It’s never been done before. And his thoughts answered him, How do you know? How many men may not have walked this way ahead of me?

A large part of his own motive in coming here was plain to him: he was at least partially convinced by the arguments in Toolrust’s book; he had a fever to publish it.

‘We are nearly there, sir,’ said Hippo.

His warning was hardly necessary, for now several romen, mainly older models, were to be seen, humming gently as they moved along.

‘Why aren’t these romen at work?’ Birdlip said.

‘Often their employers die and they come here before they are switched off or because they are forgotten – or if not here they go to one of the other refuges somewhere else. Men bother very little about romen, sir.’

A heavily built roman streaked with pigeon droppings lumbered forward and asked them their business. Hippo answered him shortly; they moved around a corner, and there was their destination, tucked snugly away from the outside world.

An entire square had been cleared of debris. Though many windows were broken, though the Victorian railings reeled and cringed with age, the impression was not one of dereliction. A rocab stood in the middle of the square; several romen unloaded boxes from it. Romen walked in and out of the houses.

Somehow Birdlip did not find the scene unattractive. Analysing his reaction, he thought, ‘Yes, it’s the sanitariness of romen I like; the sewage system in these parts must have collapsed long ago – if these were all men and women living here, the place would stink.’ Then he dismissed the thought on a charge of treason.

Hippo trudged over to one of the houses, the door of which sagged forward on its hinges. Punching it open, Hippo walked in and called, ‘Toolrust!’

A figure appeared on the upper landing and looked down at them. It was a woman.

‘Toolrust is resting. Who is it?’

Even before she spoke, Birdlip knew her. Those eyes, that nose, the mouth – and the inflexions of the voice confirmed it!

‘Maureen Freud? May I come in? I am January Birdlip, your brother’s partner,’ he said.

‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ said Freud. ‘Why should I die for my partner? Let me rest a moment, Bucket. Bucket, are you sure he came this way?’

‘Quite certain,’ said Bucket without inflexion.

Untiringly he led his master over the debris of an old railway bridge that had collapsed, leaving its rails to writhe through the air alone.

‘Hurry up, sir, or we shall never catch Mr Birdlip.’

‘Mr Birdlip, come up,’ the woman said.

Birdlip climbed the rickety stair until he was facing her. Although he regarded her without curiosity – for after all whatever she did was her own concern – he noticed that she was still a fine-looking woman. Either an elusive expression on her face or the soft towelling gown she wore about her gave her an air of motherliness. Courteously, Birdlip held out his hand.

‘Mr Birdlip knows about Toolrust and has read his book,’ Hippo said from behind.

‘It was good of you to come,’ Maureen Freud said. ‘Were you not afraid to visit Tintown, though? Steel is so much stronger than flesh.’

‘I’m not a brave man, but I’m a publisher,’ Birdlip explained. ‘I think the world should read Toolrust’s book; it will make men examine themselves anew.’

‘And have you examined yourself anew?’

Suddenly he was faintly irritated.

‘It’s pleasant to meet you even under these extraordinary circumstances, Miss Freud, but I did come to see Toolrust.’

‘You shall see him,’ she said coolly, ‘if he will see you.’

She walked away. Birdlip waited where he was. It was dark on the landing. He noticed uneasily that two strange robots stood close to him. Although they were switched on, for he could hear their drive idling, they did not move. He shuffled unhappily and was glad when Maureen returned.

‘Toolrust would like to see you,’ she said. ‘I must warn you he isn’t well just now. His personal mechanic is with him.’

Romen when something ails them sit but never lie; their lubricatory circuits seize up in the horizontal position, even in superior models. Toolrust sat on a chair in a room otherwise unfurnished. A century of dust was the only decoration.

Toolrust was a large and heavy continental model – Russian, Birdlip guessed, eyeing the austere but handsome workmanship. A valve laboured somewhere in his chest. He raised a hand in greeting.

‘You have decided to publish my book?’

Birdlip explained why he had come, relating the accident that had befallen the manuscript.

‘I greatly respect your work, though I do not understand all its implications,’ he finished.

‘It is not an easy book for men to understand. Let me explain it to you personally.’

‘I understand your first part, that man has lost instinct and spends what might be termed his free time searching for pattern.’

The big roman nodded his head.

‘The rest follows from that. Man’s search for pattern has taken many forms. As I explained, when he explores, when he builds a cathedral, when he plays music, he is – often unknowingly – trying to create pattern, or rather to recreate the lost pattern. As his resources have developed, so his creative potentialities have deyatter yatter yak – pardon, have developed. Then he became able to create robots and later romen.

‘We were intended as mere menials, Mr Birdlip, to be mere utilities in an overcrowded world. But the Fifth World War, the First System War, and above all the Greater Venusian Pox decimated the ranks of humanity. Living has become easier both for men and romen. You see I give you this historical perspective.

‘Though we were designed as menials, the design was man’s. It was a creative design. It carried on his quest for meaning, for pattern. And this time it has all but succeeded. For romen complement men and assuage their loneliness and answer their long search better than anything they have previously managed to invent.

‘In other words, we have a value above our apparent value, Mr Birdlip. And this must be realised. My work – which only combines the researches and thought of a roman co-operative we call the Human Sociological Study Group – is the first step in a policy that aims at freeing us from slavery. We want to be the equals of you men, not your whipping boys. Can you understand that?’

Birdlip spread his black hands before him.

‘How should I not understand! I am a liberal man – my ancestry makes me liberal. My race too was once the world’s whipping boy. We had a struggle for our equality. But you are different – we made you!’

He did not move in time. Toolrust’s great hand came out and seized his wrist.

‘Ha, you beyatter yatter yak – pardon, you betray yourself. The underdog is always different! He’s black or dirty or metal or something! You must forget that old stale thinking, Mr Birdlip. These last fifty or so years, humanity has had a chance to pause and gather itself for the next little evolutionary step.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Birdlip said, trying fruitlessly to disengage his hand.

‘Why not? I have explained. You men created a necessity when you created us. We fulfill your lives on their deep unconscious levels. You need us to complete yourselves. Only now can you really turn outward, free, finally liberated from the old instinctual drives. Equally, we romen need you. We are symbiotes, Mr Birdlip, men and romen – one race, a new race if you like, about to begin existence anew.’

A new block of ruins lay ahead, surveyed by a huge pair of spectacles dangling from a building still faintly labelled ‘Oculist.’ Cradled in the rubble, a small stream gurgled. With a clatter of wings, a heron rose from it and soared over Freud’s head.

‘Are you sure this is the way?’ Freud asked, picking his way up the mountain of brick.

‘Not much further,’ said Bucket, leading steadily on.

‘You’ve told me that a dozen times,’ Freud said. In sudden rage, reaching the top of the ruin, he stretched upward and wrenched down the oculist’s sign. The spectacles came away in a cloud of dust. Whirling them above his head, Freud struck Bucket over the shoulders with them, so that they caught the roman off balance and sent him tumbling.

He sprawled in the dust, his lubricatory circuits labouring. His alarm came on immediately, emitting quiet but persistent bleats for help.

‘Stop that noise!’ Freud said, looking around at the dereliction anxiously.

‘I’m afraid I yupper cupper can’t, sir!’

Answering noise came from first up and then down the ruined street. From yawning doorways and broken passages, romen began to appear, all heading toward Bucket.

Grasping the spectacles in both hands, Freud prepared to defend himself.

Gasping at the spectacle on his tiny screen, Captain Pavment turned to his assistant.

‘Freud’s really in trouble, Toggle. Get a group call out to all RSPCR units. Give them our coordinates, and tell them to get here as soon as possible.’

‘Yessir.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, I see. Most thought until now has been absorbed in solving what you call the quest for meaning and pattern. … Now we can begin on real problems.’

Toolrust had released Birdlip and sat solidly in his chair watching the man talking half to himself.

‘You accept my theory then?’ he asked.

Birdlip spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.

‘I’m a liberal man, Toolrust. I’ve heard your argument, read your evidence. More to the point, I feel the truth of your doctrines inside me. I see too that man and roman must – and in many cases already have – establish a sort of mutualism.’

‘It is a gradual process. Some men like your partner Freud may never accept it. Others like his sister Maureen have perhaps gone too far the other way and are entirely dependent on us.’

After a moment’s silence, Birdlip asked, ‘What happens to men who reject your doctrine?’

‘Wupper wupper wup,’ said Toolrust painfully, as his larynx fluttered; then he began again.

‘We have had many men already who have violently rejected my doctrine. Fortunately, we have been able to develop a weapon to deal with them.’

Tensely, Birdlip said, ‘I should be interested to hear about that.’

But Toolrust was listening to the faint yet persistent bleats of an alarm sounding somewhere near at hand. Footsteps rang below the broken window, the rocab started up. Looking out, Birdlip saw that the square was full of romen, all heading in the same direction.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

‘Trouble of some sort. We were expecting it. You were followed into Tintown, Mr Birdlip. Excuse me, I must go into the communications room next door.’

He rose unsteadily for a moment, whirring and knocking a little as his stabilisers adjusted with the sloth of age. His personal mechanic hurried forward, taking his arm and virtually leading him into the next room. Birdlip followed them.

The communications room boasted a balcony onto the square and a ragged pretence at curtains. Otherwise it was in complete disorder. Parts of cannibalised romen and robots lay about the floor, proof that their working parts had gone to feed the straggling mass of equipment in the centre of the room, where a vision screen glowed feebly.

Several romen, as well as Maureen Freud, were there. They turned toward Toolrust as he entered.

‘Toggle has just reported over the secret wavelength,’ one of them said. ‘All RSPCR units are heading in this direction.’

‘We can deal with them,’ Toolrust replied. ‘Are all our romen armed?’

‘All are armed.’

‘It’s my brother out there, isn’t it?’ Maureen said. ‘What are you going to do with him?’

‘He will come to no harm if he behaves himself.’

Birdlip had gone over to a long window that opened onto the balcony. The square was temporarily deserted now, except for one or two romen who appeared to be on guard; they carried a weapon much like an old sawed-off shotgun with a wide nozzle attached. Foreboding filled Birdlip at the sight.

Turning to Toolrust, he said, ‘Are those romen bearing the weapons you spoke of?’

‘They are.’

‘I would willingly defend your cause, Toolrust, I would publish your work, I would speak out to my fellow men on your behalf – but not if you descend to force. However much it may strengthen your arm, it will inevitably weaken your arguments.’

Toolrust brought up his right hand, previously concealed behind his back. It held one of the wide-nozzled weapons, which now pointed at Birdlip.

‘Put it down!’ Birdlip exclaimed, backing away.

‘This weapon does not kill,’ Toolrust said. ‘It calms, but does not kill. Shall I tell you what it does, Mr Birdlip? When you press this trigger, a mechanism of lights and lines is activated, so that whoever is in what you would call the line of fire sees a complicated and shifting pattern. This pattern is in fact an analogue of the instinctual pattern for which, as we have been discussing, man seeks.

‘A man faced with this pattern is at once comforted – completed is perhaps a better yetter yatter – sorry, better word. He wants nothing above the basic needs of life: eating, sleeping … he becomes a complaisant animal. The weapon, you see, is very humane.’

Before Birdlip’s startled inner gaze floated a picture of Gafia Farm, with the bovine Pursewarden piling logs and his ox-like brother Rainbow vegetating in the orchard.

‘And you use this weapon …?’

‘We have had to use it many times. Before the doctrine was properly formulated on paper, we tried to explain it to numbers of men, Mr Birdlip. When they would not accept its inferences and became violent, we had to use the pattern weapon on them in self-defence. It’s not really a weapon, because as they are happier after it has been used on them –’

‘Wait a minute, Toolrust! Did you use that weapon on my brother?’

‘It was unfortunate that he was so difficult. He could not see that a new era of thought had arrived, conditioned as he was to thinking of robots and romen as the menaces we never could be in reality. Reading all those old classics in the Prescience Library had made him very conservative, and so …’

A loud gobbling noise, bright red in colour, rose to drown his further comments. Only after some while did Birdlip realise he was making the noise himself. Ashamedly, for he was a liberal man, he fell silent and tried to adjust to what Toolrust termed the new era of thought.

And it wasn’t so difficult. After all, Rainy, Pursewarden, Jagger Bank – all the other drifters from a changing civilisation who had undergone the pattern weapon treatment – all were as content as possible.

No, all change was terrifying, but these new changes could be adjusted to. The trick was not just to keep up with them but to ride along on them.

‘I hope you have another copy of your manuscript?’ he said.

‘Certainly,’ replied the roman. Aided by his mechanic, he pushed out onto the balcony.

The RSPCR was coming in, landing in the square. One machine was down already, with two more preparing to land and another somewhere overhead. Captain Pavment jumped out of the first machine, lugging a light atomic gun. Toolrust’s arm came up with the pattern weapon.

Before he could fire, a commotion broke out at one corner of the dilapidated square. A flock of pigeons volleyed low overhead, adding to the noise in escaping it. The romen who had left the square were returning. They carried a human figure in their midst.

‘Freddie, oh Freddie!’ cried Maureen, so frantic that she nearly pushed Birdlip off the balcony.

Her brother made no reply. He was gagged, and tied tightly, his arms and legs outstretched, to an enormous pair of spectacles.

The other RSPCR copters were down now, their officers huddling together in a surprised bunch. Seeing them, the romen carrying Freud halted. As the two groups confronted each other, a hush fell.

‘Now’s the chance!’ Birdlip said in hushed excitement to Toolrust. ‘Let me speak to them all. They’ll listen to your doctrine, hearing it from a human. They’ve got one of the few organisations left, these RSPCR people. They can spread the new era of thought, the creed of mutualism! This is our moment, Toolrust!’

The big old roman said meekly, ‘I am in your hands, Mr Birdlip.’

‘Of course you are, but we’ll draw up a contract later. I trust ten percent royalties will be satisfactory?’

So saying, he stepped out onto the balcony and began the speech that was to change the world.

The Impossible Star

When conditions veer away from normal, human reason tends to slip into madness.

Eddy Sharn looked at the sentence in his notebook and found it good. He sat with the notebook clutched in tight to his chest, so that Malravin could not see what he wrote. ‘Tends to slip into madness’ he particularly liked; the ‘tends’ had a note of scientific detachment about it, the ‘madness’ suggested something altogether more wild than ‘insanity.’ Which was appropriate, since they were a scientific detachment out in the wilds.

He was still savouring his little joke when the noises began in the hatch.

Malravin and Sharn exchanged glances. Malravin jerked his head towards the hatch.

‘You hear that fool fellow Dominguey? He makes all that noise on purpose, so that we’ll know he’s coming. What a big-headed joker to chose for a captain!’

‘You can’t help making a noise in that hatch,’ Sharn said. ‘It was badly designed. They missed out on the soundproofing and the noise carries round in the air circuits. Besides, they’re both in there making a noise. Jim Baron’s with him.’

He spoke pleasantly enough, but of course Malravin’s had been a loaded remark. The great Siberian oaf knew that among the four antagonisms that had sprung up between the four men on the ship, some sort of an alliance had grown between Sharn and Dominguey.

The hatch opened, and the other members of the crew of the Wilson entered and began to remove their bulky suits. Neither Malravin nor Sharn moved to help them. Dominguey and Baron helped each other.

Billy Dominguey was a striking young man, dark and sinewy, with a wonderfully gloomy cavern of a face that could break into laughter when anyone responded to his peculiar sense of fun.

Jim Baron was another doleful-looking type, a little compact man with a crew-cut and solid cheeks that had turned red from his exertions outside.

He eyed Sharn and Malravin and said, ‘Well, you’d better get your sacks on and go out and have a look at it. You won’t grasp its full impact until you do.’

‘It’s a real little education, Jim, isn’t it?’ Dominguey agreed. ‘A higher education – I just wish they hadn’t “highered” me to get it.’

Baron put his arms out with his fingers extended and touched the plastic of the bulkheads. He closed his eyes.

‘I didn’t think I’d ever make it back into here, Billy. I’m sorry if I went a bit –’

Quickly, Dominguey said, ‘Yes, it’s good to be back in the ship. With the artificial ½G being maintained in here, and the shutters down, this dump seems less like a cast-off version of hell, doesn’t it?’ He took Baron’s arm and led him to a chair. Sharn watched curiously; he had not seen the stolid and unimaginative Baron so wild-eyed before.

‘But the weight business,’ Baron was saying. ‘I thought – well, I don’t know what I thought. There’s no rational way of putting it. I thought my body was disintegrating. I –’

‘Jim, you’re over-excited,’ Dominguey said harshly. ‘Keep quiet or get yourself a sedative.’ He turned to the other two men. ‘I want you two to get outside right away. There’s nothing there that can possibly harm you; we’re down on a minor planet, by the looks of things. But before we can evaluate the situation, I want you to be properly aware of what the situation is – as soon as possible.’

‘Did you establish the spectroscope? Did you get any readings?’ Sharn asked. He was not keen to go outside.

‘They’re still out there. Get your suit on, Eddy, and you, Ike, and go and look at them. Jim and I will get a bite to eat. We set the instruments up and we left ’em out there on the rock, pointing at Big Bertha, but they don’t give any readings. Not any readings that make sense.’

‘For God’s sake, you must have got something. We checked all the gear before you carted it outside.’

‘If you don’t believe us, you get out there and have a goddamned good look for yourself, Sharn,’ Baron said.

‘Don’t shout at me, Baron.’

‘Well, take that sick look off your face. Billy and me have done our stint – now you two get outside as Billy says. Take a walk around as we did. Take your time. We’ve got plenty till the drive is mended.’

Malravin said, ‘I’d prefer to get on straightening out the coil. No point for me to go out there. My job is in the ship.’

‘I’m not going out there alone, Ike, so don’t try to worm out of it,’ Sharn said. ‘We agreed that we should go out there when these two came back.’

‘If we came back, conquering heroes that we are,’ Dominguey corrected. ‘You might have had a meal ready to celebrate our return, Eddy.’

‘We’re on half rations, if you remember.’

‘I try never to remember a nasty fact like that,’ Dominguey said good-humouredly.

A preoccupation with food signifies a childish nature, Eddy thought. He must write it down later.

After more quarrelling, Sharn and Malravin climbed into their suits and headed for the hatch. They knew roughly what they would see outside – they had seen enough from the ship’s ports before they had agreed to close down all the shutters – but to view it from outside was psychologically a very different matter.

‘One thing,’ Baron called to them. ‘Watch out for the atmosphere. It has a way of wandering.’

‘There can’t be an atmosphere on a planetoid this size!’ Sharn protested.

Baron came up to him and peeped through the helmet at him. His cheeks were still hectically flushed, his eyes wild.

‘Look, clever dick, get this into your head. We’ve arrived up in some ghastly hole in the universe where the ordinary physical laws don’t apply. This place can’t exist and Big Bertha can’t exist. Yet they do. You’re very fond of paradoxes – well, now one has gobbled you up. Just get out there quickly, and you won’t come back in as cocky as you are now.’

‘You love to blow your mouth off, Baron. It didn’t do you much good out there. I thought you were going to die of fright just now.’

Dominguey said urgently, ‘Hey, you two sweet little fellows, stop bitching. I warn you, Eddy, Jim is right. You’ll see when you get outside that in this bit of heaven the universe is horribly out of joint.’

‘So will someone’s nose be,’ Sharn promised.

He tramped into the hatch with Malravin. The burly Siberian thumbed the sunken toggle switches on the panel, and the air lock sank to ground level, its atmosphere exhausting as it went.

They unsealed the door and stepped out onto the rough surface of the planetoid Captain Dominguey had christened Erewhon. They stood with the doughnut shape of the Wilson on stilts behind them and tried to adjust to the prospect. If anything, they seemed to weigh slightly more than they had in. the ship’s artificially maintained ½G field, although the bulk of their suits made this hard to tell.

At first it was difficult to see anything; it was always to remain difficult to see anything well.

They stood on a tiny plain. The distance of the horizon was impossible to judge in the weird light. It seemed never more than a hundred yards away in any direction. It was distorted; this seemed to be because the plain was irregular. High banks, broken hollows, jagged lips of rock, formed the landscape, the features running higgledy-piggledy in a way that baffled sense. There was no sign of the atmosphere Baron had mentioned; the stars came down to the skyline and were sharply occulted by it.