The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

The centaur struggled and lay still, as if the weight of whistling cheers that rose from the audience bore him down. Through the narrow bars, Javlin saw the throat bleed and the lungs heave as the defeated one sprawled in the dust.

‘What do you dream of, dying there in the sun?’ Javlin asked.

He turned away from the sight and the question. He sat quietly down on the bench and folded his arms.

When the din outside told him that the next bout had begun, the passage door opened and a young human was pushed in. Javlin did not need telling that this was to be his partner in the double double against the yillibeeth.

It was a girl.

‘You’re Javlin?’ she said. ‘I know of you. My name’s Awn.’

He kept himself under control, his brows drawn together as he stared at her.

‘You know what you’re here for?’

‘This will be my first public fight,’ she said.

Her hair was clipped short as a man’s. Her skin was tanned and harsh, her left arm bore a gruesome scar. She held herself lithely on her feet. Though her body looked lean and hard, even the thick one-piece gown she wore to thigh length did not conceal the feminine curves of her body. She was not pretty, but Javlin had to admire the set of her mouth and her cool grey gaze.

‘I’ve had some stinking news this morning, but Ik So Baar never broke it to me that I was to be saddled with a woman,’ he said.

‘Ik probably didn’t know – that I’m a woman, I mean. The reduls are either neuter or hermaphrodite, unless they happen to be a rare queen. Didn’t you know that? They can’t tell the difference between human male and female.’

He spat. ‘You can’t tell me anything about reduls.’

She spat. ‘If you knew, why blame me? You don’t think I like being here? You don’t think I asked to join the great Javlin?’

Without answering he bent and began to massage the muscles of his calf. Since he occupied the middle of the bench, the girl remained standing. She watched him steadily. When he looked up again, she asked, ‘What or who are we fighting?’

No surprise was left in him. ‘They didn’t tell you?’

‘I’ve only just been pushed into this double double, as I imagine you have. I asked you, what are we fighting?’

‘Just a couple of yillibeeth.’

He injected unconcern into his voice to make the shock of what he said the greater. He massaged the muscles of the other calf. An aphrohale would have come in very welcome now. These crazy insects had no equivalent of the Terrestrial prisoner-ate-a-hearty-breakfast routine. When he glanced up under his eyebrows, the girl stood motionless, but her face had gone pale.

‘Know what the yillibeeth are, little girl?’

She didn’t answer, so he went on, ‘The reduls resemble some Terrestrial insects. They go through several stages of development, you know; reduls are just the final adult stage. Their larval stage is rather like the larval stage of the dragonfly. It’s a greedy, omnivorous beast. It’s aquatic and it’s big. It’s armoured. It’s called a yillibeeth. That’s what we are going to be tied together to fight, a couple of big hungry yillibeeth. Are you feeling like dying this morning, Awn?’

Instead of answering, she turned her head away and brought a hand up to her mouth.

‘Oh, no! No crying in here, for Earth’s sake!’ he said. He got up, yelled through the passage door, ‘Ik So, Ik So, you traitor, get this bloody woman out of here!’ … recalled himself, jammed the lip-whistle into his mouth and was about to call again when Awn caught him a backhanded blow across the face.

She faced him like a tiger.

‘You creature, you cowardly apology of a man! Do you think I weep for fear? I don’t weep. I’ve lived nineteen years on this damned planet in their damned farms. Would I still be here if I wept? No – but I mourn that you are already defeated, you, the great Javlin!’

He frowned into her blazing face.

‘You don’t seriously think you make me a good enough match for us to go out there and kill a couple of yillibeeth?’

‘Damn your conceit. I’m prepared to try.’

‘Fagh!’ He thrust the lip-whistle into his mouth, and turned back to the door. She laughed at him bitterly, jeeringly.

‘You’re a lackey to these insects, aren’t you, Javlin? If you could see what a fool you look with that phony beak of yours stuck on your mouth.’

He let the instrument drop to the end of its chain. Grasping the bars, he leaned forward against them and looked over his shoulder.

‘I was trying to get this contest called off.’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t already tried. I have.’

To that he had no answer. He went back and sat on the bench. She returned to her corner. They both folded their arms and stared at each other.

‘Why don’t you look out into the arena instead of glaring at me? You might pick up a few tips.’ When she did not answer, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what you’ll see. You can see the rows of spectators and a box where some sort of bigwig sits. I don’t know who the bigwig is. It’s never a queen – as far as I can make out, the queens spend their lives underground, turning out eggs at the rate of fifty a second. Not the sort of life Earth royalty would have enjoyed in the old days. Under the bigwig’s box there is a red banner with their insect hieroglyphs on. I asked Ik So once what the hieroglyphs said. He told me they meant – well, in a rough translation – The Greatest Show on Earth. It’s funny, isn’t it?’

‘You must admit we do make a show.’

‘No, you miss the point. You see, that used to be the legend of circuses in the old days. But they’ve adopted it for their own use since they invaded Earth. They’re boasting of their conquest.’

‘And that’s funny?’

‘In a sort of way. Don’t you feel ashamed that this planet which saw the birth of the human race should be overrun by insects?’

‘No. The reduls were here before me. I was just born here. Weren’t you?’

‘No, I wasn’t. I was born on Washington IV. It’s a lovely planet. There are hundreds of planets out there as fine and varied as Earth once was – but it kind of rankles to think that this insect brood rules Earth.’

‘If you feel so upset about it, why don’t you do something?’

He knotted his fists together. You should start explaining history and economics just before you ran out to be chopped to bits by a big rampant thing with circular saws for hands?

‘It would cost mankind too much to reconquer this planet. Too difficult. Too many deaths just for sentiment. And think of all those queens squirting eggs at a rate of knots; humans don’t breed that fast. Humanity has learned to face facts.’ She laughed without humour.

‘That’s good. Why don’t you learn to face the fact of me?’

Javlin had nothing to say to that; she would not understand that directly he saw her he knew his hope of keeping his life had died. She was just a liability. Soon he would be dying, panting his juices out into the dust like that game young centaur … only it wouldn’t be dust.

‘We fight in two feet of water,’ he said. ‘You know that? The yillibeeth like it. It slows our speed a bit. We might drown instead of having our heads bitten off.’

‘I can hear someone coming down the corridor. It may be our armour,’ she said coolly.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘You can’t wait to die, Javlin, can you?’

The bars fell away on the outside of the door, and it opened. The keeper stood there. Ik So Baar had not appeared as he usually did. The creature flung in their armour and weapons and retreated, barring the door again behind him. It never ceased to astonish Javlin that those great dumb brutes of workers had intelligence.

He stooped to pick up his uniform. The girl’s looked so light and small. He lifted it, looking from it to her.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘It looks so small and new.’

‘I shouldn’t want anything heavier.’

‘You’ve fought in it?’

‘Twice.’ There was no need to ask whether she had won.

‘We’d better get the stuff strapped on, then. We shall know when they are getting ready for us; you’ll hear the arena being filled with water. They’re probably saving us for the main events just before noon.’

‘I didn’t know about the two feet of water.’

‘Scare you?’

‘No. I’m a good swimmer. Swam for fish in the river on the slave farm.’

‘You caught fish with your bare hands?’

‘No, you dive down and stab them with a sharp rock. It takes practice.’

It was a remembered pleasure. She’d actually swum in one of Earth’s rivers. He caught himself smiling back into her face.

‘Ik So’s place is in the desert,’ he said, making his voice cold. ‘Anyhow, you won’t be able to swim in the arena. Two feet of muddy stinking water helps nobody. And you’ll be chained onto me with a four-foot length of chain.’

‘Let’s get our armour on, then you’d better tell me all you know. Perhaps we can work out a plan of campaign.’

As he picked up the combined breastplate and shoulder guard, Awn untied her belt and lifted her dress over her head. Underneath she wore only a ragged pair of white briefs. She commenced to take those off.

Javlin stared at her with surprise – and pleasure. It had been years since he had been within hailing distance of a woman. This one – yes, this one was a beauty.

‘What are you doing that for?’ he asked. He hardly recognised his own voice.

‘The less we have on the better in that water. Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?’

He shook his head. Embarrassed, he fumbled on the rest of his kit. At least she wouldn’t look so startling with her breastplate and skirt armour on. He checked his long and shortswords, clipping the one into the left belt clip, the other into the right. They were good swords, made by redul armourers to Terrestrial specifications. When he turned back to Awn, she was fully accoutred.

Nodding in approval, he offered her a seat on the bench beside him. They clattered against each other and smiled.

Another bout had ended in the arena. The cheers and chirrups drifted through the bars to them.

‘I’m sorry you’re involved in this,’ he said with care.

‘I was lucky to be involved in it with you.’ Her voice was not entirely steady, but she controlled it in a minute. ‘Can’t I hear water?’

He had already heard it. An unnatural silence radiated from the great inhuman crowd in the circus as they watched the stuff pour in. It would have great emotional significance for them, no doubt, since they had all lived in water for some years in their previous life stage.

‘They have wide-bore hoses,’ he said. His own voice had an irritating tremor. ‘The arena fills quite rapidly.’

‘Let’s formulate some sort of plan of attack then. These things, these yillibeeth must have some weaknesses.’

‘And some strengths! That’s what you have to watch for.’

‘I don’t see that. You attack their weak points.’

‘We shall be too busy looking out for their strong ones. They have long segmented grey bodies – about twenty segments, I think. Each segment is of chitin or something tough. Each segment bears two legs equipped with razor combs. At tail end and top end they have legs that work like sort of buzz saws, cut through anything they touch. And there are their jaws, of course.’

The keeper was back. His antennae flopped through the grating and then he unbolted the door and came in. He bore a length of chain as long as the cell was wide. Javlin and Awn did not resist as he locked them together, fitting the bracelets onto Javlin’s right arm and Awn’s left

‘So.’ She stared at the chain. ‘The yillibeeth don’t sound to have many weak points. They could cut through our swords with their buzz saws?’

‘Correct.’

‘Then they could cut through this chain. Get it severed near one of our wrists, and the other has a better long-distance weapon than a sword. A blow over the head with the end of the chain won’t improve their speed. How fast are they?’

‘The buzz saw takes up most of their speed. They’re nothing like as fast as the reduls. No, you could say they were pretty sluggish in movement. And the fact that the two of them will also be chained together should help us.’

‘Where are they chained?’

‘By the middle legs.’

‘That gives them a smaller arc of destruction than if they were chained by back or front legs. We are going to slay these beasts yet, Javlin! What a murderous genus it must be to put its offspring in the arena for the public sport.’

He laughed.

‘Would you feel sentimental about your offspring if you had a million babies?’

‘I’ll tell you that when I’ve had the first of them. I mean, if I have the first of them.’

He put his hand over hers.

‘No if. We’ll kill the bloody larvae OK.’

‘Get the chain severed, then one of us with the longest bit of chain goes in for the nearest head, the other fends off the other brute. Right?’

‘Right.’

There was a worker redul at the outer door now, the door that led to the arena. He flung it open and stood there with a flaming torch, ready to drive them out if they did not emerge.

‘We’ve – come to it then,’ she said. Suddenly she clung to him.

‘Let’s take it at a run, love,’ he said.

Together, balancing the chain between them, they ran toward the arena. The two yillibeeth were coming out from the far side, wallowing and splashing. The crowd stretched up toward the blue sky of Earth, whistling their heads off. They didn’t know what a man and a woman could do in combination. Now they were going to learn.

The International Smile

The room, with its Spy cartoons and the oil of Chequers hanging on the chimney-breast like the promise of a better world, held a cluttered comfort. The woman also was tired, but her straight back and splendid coiffure did not admit the fact. She could have poured their tea with no more command had she been before the TV cameras.

As if aware of reasons for guilt, both men straightened in their chairs when a tap sounded at the door and Taver peered in.

The Prime Minister glowered from behind his cup and said, ‘What is it, Tarver? Can’t we have five minutes in peace?’

The butler of No 10 said apologetically, ‘It’s Colonel Quadroon to see you, sir.’

‘The Governor of Pentonville Prison. More escapes, I suppose – more questions in the House. Better show him in.’

The PM turned to Lady Elizabeth and the Foreign Secretary in mock-resignation.

‘You remember you did make an appointment for him yesterday, Herbert,’ Lady Elizabeth said. She managed men as easily and gracefully as she managed herself. ‘The colonel said it was of great national importance.’

‘I don’t doubt he did. Quadroon presumes too much, my dear. Just because I’ve been on his shoots a couple of – Oh, Colonel, good afternoon. Come in.’

The PM wiped his moustache and gestured irritably to a free armchair as Quadroon moved into the room. The Governor of Pentonville was a tall, sharp-featured man, Haileybury and Queen’s, OBE. He bowed stiffly to Lady Elizabeth and shook hands perfunctorily with Ralph Watts-Clinton, the Foreign Secretary.

‘I wouldn’t bother you, Prime Minister, if this was not a matter of the highest moment,’ he said.

‘I should hope not. No more rioting, I trust?’

‘The Opposition gave you a pretty stiff time in the House this afternoon, I hear.’

At that, the PM had the grace to smile.

‘Sorry, Colonel. Give the Colonel a cup of tea, will you, my dear? Well, what can we do for you?’

‘No sugar, thank you, Lady Elizabeth. In this instance, sir, it’s a matter of what we can do for you. I mentioned the Opposition just now. Has it ever occurred to you that the Opposition consists of unhappy men?’

Watts-Clinton guffawed.

‘It’s often occurred to us, Colonel. Take the debate on the Immigration Restriction Bill this afternoon – they were frankly miserable. Harold Gaskin almost wept crocodile tears over what he calls “the overworked and under-privileged in less fortunate lands”.’

‘Precisely.’ The Colonel balanced Lady Elizabeth’s Spode cup and saucer on his angular knee and said, ‘All that can be changed tomorrow.’

The PM made a noise he had been heard to make more than once in the House.

‘I have no idea what sort of political chicanery you have up your sleeve, Colonel, but let me put it to you beforehand that nothing can alter Gaskin’s jaundiced view of the enlightened measures we are proposing.’

‘Polyannamine could,’ said the Colonel.

After a cold and curious pause, Lady Elizabeth said, ‘I’m sure we are all three very impressed by your air of mystery, Colonel. Perhaps you’d better put your case to us. I’m sure Herbert can spare you five minutes before he goes to prepare his Berlin speech.’

She embodied all the qualities needful in a Prime Minister’s wife: directness, indirectness, tact and insolence.

Blowing his nose lustily, the Colonel said by way of preamble, ‘You know I have always been a staunch party man. There can be few people in this country who do not recall the famous recruiting speech I made at East Moulton, when I was so narrowly defeated in the ’45 election. That is why I have come straight to you, Prime Minister, as a staunch party man, to lay polyannamine at your feet.’

‘I know your record,’ said the PM testily. ‘Proceed.’

‘Well, to come straight to the point, you probably remember the unfortunate riots we had in Pentonville a couple of years back. The Beaverbrook Press made a lot of fuss about it – they love a prison story. Two convicts were killed, and three severely injured. One of the injured man was Joseph Branksome. Remember the name?’

‘We must all remember the name,’ said Watts-Clinton. ‘He was the member for Dogsthorpe East in Eden’s time.’

‘That’s it. Seven years for embezzling party founds – but a good man, all the same. A good party man. You’d never shake him. I know at the time of Suez he –’

‘Yes, yes, you were saying he was injured, Colonel.’

‘So I was. So he was. Injured in the kidney – nasty business. It was touch and go for several days; I had to have him transferred to Bart’s. They put a patch on his kidney; first time that particular op had been done at Bart’s, so they were telling me. Anyhow, it seemed to do the trick, and in a fortnight we were able to bring Branksome back to the prison hospital. He was still very feeble, but extremely cheerful. I went to visit him. Never met a man more full of happiness and optimism. He was the life and soul of that ward. Why, when Christmas came round –’

‘Branksome’s dead now, isn’t he?’ the PM said.

‘Eh? Dead? Oh yes. I was coming to that. His general air of cheer deceived us all. We thought he was fit again, although he lost a deal of weight. He was back at his old job – I had him on a pretty soft number in the prison library. Then one morning – this would be just over a year ago now – he collapsed in the Do-It-Yourself section and was dead within an hour. Poor Branksome, he died laughing!’

Overcome by the tragedy of his tale, Quadroon sat in the chair, nodding his head sorrowfully. Lady Elizabeth rescued his cup.

With a touch, not to say load, of finality in his voice, the PM said, ‘Thank you very much, Colonel Quadroon, for coming along and –’

The Colonel held up a long and stringy hand, at which the others gazed with curiosity.

‘At the inquest, a remarkable fact emerged. Owing to the injury it had sustained, Branksome’s kidney had been – what d’you call it? – malfunctioning. As far as I could make out from our prison specialist, Mark Miller – very capable chap – instead of making new tissue or whatever it was supposed to do, this kidney had been secreting a substance hitherto unknown to science. Miller christened this secretion Polyannamine. Apparently it had circulated to Branksome’s endo – ah, endocrine glands and there had set up a sort of permanent imbalance if that’s not a contradiction in terms. Anyhow, this imbalance had the effect of keeping him happy even when he was dying painfully by inches.’

‘Hmm.’ The PM, with a gesture familiar to millions of TV viewers, lit a briar pipe and sat with his nose almost hanging into the bowl. ‘And has this stuff been synthesised, Colonel?’

For answers, the Colonel drew from an inner pocket a small plastic tube. He performed the gesture with what, in a better actor, would have been a grand flourish.

‘There’s enough synthesised polyannamine in here, Miller informs me, to keep all your opposition happy for the rest of their lives.’

The PM cast an eyebrow at Watts-Clinton who, never at a loss, cast one back.

‘I think the Berlin speech might be given a miss till we’ve seen Miller. My old constituency wouldn’t like to think I let grass grow under my feet, eh, Ralph? Elizabeth, my dear, do you think –’

‘Oh, Herbert, I really can’t, not again! I wouldn’t know what to put.’

‘Nonsense, pet. Usual stuff about standing fast, backing Adenauer to the hilt, Western solidarity, and all that, with the safety clause about striving for peace by all means within our power, and so on. By now you can do it as easily as I can. Tarver, the Bentley, please.’

Traffic was thick about the gloomy façade of Pentonville Prison.

‘Visitors’ night tonight,’ Quadroon said gloomily. Always draws the crowds.’

I must tell you how much I admire all your far-reaching reforms; the Home Sec. was telling me about them only the other day,’ Watts-Clinton said ingratiatingly; he had no special liking for the Colonel, but to be included on one of his shoots would be no bad thing.

‘Got Johnny Earthquake and the Four Corners playing tonight. Keeps the men happy.’

The PM looked shocked.

‘But the M1 Massacre Man – what’s his name, McNoose, is due to be executed tomorrow. Surely –’

‘That’s what’s drawn all this crowd tonight. Dodge in after that confounded Volkswagen, Chauffeur. We’re letting McNoose have a last request from Johnny Earthquake, for his mum and dad and all at 78 Montpelier Road, Camden Town.’

‘Very doubtful taste,’ the PM said.

‘You were the one who wanted the prisons to pay their way, sir.’

‘This is really no time to bring up old election promises.’

The three man lapsed into moody silence. At last a clear way showed itself, and the car swept into the front square and round beyond the bright lights and marquees to the Governor’s house. As they hurried up the steps, blaring loudspeakers carried music and a nasal voice droned:

Eva Bardy’s doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it,

Eva Bardy’s doin’ it …

It was good to get inside. Quadroon showed them into his study and summoned a servent to fetch Mark Miller.

Impatiently, the PM looked about the solid dingy room. Trophies, lowering photographs, handcuffs, an amateur pencil portrait of John Reginald Halliday Christie, certificates, maps, a death-mask, and a pokerwork legend bearing the words, ‘Stone walls do not a prison make,’ surrounded them on all sides. The smell was one of the tapioca with vegetable additives. Reluctantly, the PM selected the less horsy-looking of two horsehair chairs and gave it the benefit of his posterior.

‘Interesting place,’ Watts-Clinton said, in the manner of one volunteering information.

The Colonel himself looked shrunken by his surroundings.

‘I could put the fire on,’ he said. He coughed, rubbed his hands together and added, ‘I ought to warn you, gentlemen, first you may find him a little – ah, ha, ha, ah, Miller, there you, ah, are! Come in.’

Miller was in. He swept in with his arms wide, smiling broadly, and shook hands with them all before he was introduced.

‘So, gentlemen, you’re in at the birth of a new nation, in on the ground floor, eh? In fact, you’re in before the birth – on the underground floor, you might say. We’re all set to go polyannamine, the new wonder drug that makes your body works for you instead of against you.’