The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s

And all the while he had marvelled: Why did they pick me?

‘Supposing it hadn’t been me?’ he said to Mordregon aloud. ‘Supposing it had been a madman or a man dying of cancer you picked on?’

Silence fell. Mordregon looked at him piercingly and then answered slowly: ‘We find our random selection principle entirely satisfactory, considering the large numbers involved. Whoever is brought here is responsible for his world. Your mistakes or illnesses are your world’s mistakes or illnesses. If a madman or a cancerous man stood in your place now, your world would have to be destroyed; worlds which have not been made free from such scourges by the time they have interplanetary travel must be eradicated. The galaxy is indestructible, but the security of the galaxy is a fragile thing.’

All the light-heartedness seemed gone from the assembly of Ultralords now. Even Ped2 of the Dominion of the Sack sat bolt upright, looking grimly at the Earthman. Stevens himself had gone chill, his throat was as dry as his sleeve. Every time he spoke he betrayed a chunk of the psychological atmosphere of Earth.

During the three months’ preparation, during the month-long voyage here in a completely automatic ship, he had chased his mind round to come only to this one conclusion: that through him Man was to be put to a test for fitness. Thinking of the mental homes and hospitals of Earth, his poise almost deserted him; but clenching his fists together behind his back – what matter if the assembly saw that betrayal of strain, so long as the searching eyes of Mordregon did not? – he said in a voice striving to remain firm: ‘So then I have come here on trial?’

‘Not you only but your world Earth – and the trial has already begun!’ The voice was not Mordregon’s nor Ped2’s. It belonged to Arntibis Isis of Sirius III, the Proctor Superior of the Tenth Sector, who had not yet spoken. He stood like a column, twelve feet high, his length clad in furled silver, a dark cluster of eyes at his summit probing down at Stevens. He had what the others, what even Mordregon lacked: majesty.

Surreptitiously, Stevens touched his throat. The device nestling there would be needed presently; with its assistance he might win through. This Empire had no sub-radio; in that fact lay his and Earth’s hope. But before Arntibis Isis hope seemed stupidity.

‘Since I am here I must necessarily submit to your trial,’ Stevens said. ‘Although where I come from, the civilised thing is to tell the defendant what he is defending, how he may acquit himself and which punishment is hanging over his head. We also have the courtesy to announce when the trial begins, not springing it on the prisoner half-way through.’

A murmur circling round the hall told him he had scored a minor point. As Stevens construed the problem, the Ultralords were looking for some cardinal virtue in man which, if Stevens manifested it, would save Earth; but which virtue did this multicoloured mop consider important? He had to pull his racing mind up short to hear Arntibis Isis’s reply to his thrust.

‘You are talking of a local custom tucked away in a barren pocket of the galaxy,’ the level voice said. ‘However, your intellect being what it is, I shall enumerate the how and the wherefore. Be it known then, David Stevens of Earth, that through you your world is on trial before the Supreme Diet of the Ultralords of the Second Galaxy. Nothing personal is intended; indeed, you yourself are barely concerned in our business here, except as a mouthpiece. If you acquit yourself – and we are more than impartial, we are eager for your success, though less than hopeful – your race Man will become Full Fledgling Members of our great concourse of beings, sharers of our skills and problems. If you fail, your planet Earth will be annihilated – utterly.’

‘And you call that civilised – ?’ Stevans began hotly.

‘We deal with fifty planets a week here,’ Mordregon interrupted. ‘It’s the only possible system – cuts down endless bureaucracy.’

‘Yes, and we just can’t afford fleets to watch these unstable communities any more,’ one of the Ultralords from the body of the hall concurred. ‘The expense …’

‘Do you remember that ghastly little time-swallowing reptile from somewhere in the Magellans?’ Ped2 chuckled reminiscently. ‘He had some crazy scheme for a thousand years’ supervision of his race.’

‘I’d die of boredom if I watched them an hour,’ Mordregon said, shuddering.

‘Order, please!’ Arntibis Isis snapped. When there was silence, he said to Stevens: ‘And now I will give you the rules of the trial. Firstly, there is no appeal from our verdict; when the session is over, you will be transported back to Earth at once, and the verdict will be delivered almost as soon as you land there.

‘Next, I must assure you we are scrupulously fair in our decision, although you must understand that the definition of fairness differs from sector to sector. You may think we are ruthless; but the Galaxy is a small place and we have no room for useless members within our ranks. As it is we have this trouble, with the Eleventh Galaxy on our hands. However …

‘Next, many of the beings present have powers which you would regard as supernormal, such as telepathy, deep-vision, precognition, outfarling, and so on. These powers they are holding in abeyance, so that you are judged on your own level as far as possible. You have our assurance that your mind will not be read.

‘There is but one other rule; you will now proceed with your own trial.’

For a space of a few chilly seconds, Stevens stared unbelievingly at the tall column of Arntibis Isis: that entity told him nothing. He looked round at Mordregon, at the others, at the phalanx of figures silent in the hall. Nobody moved. Gazing round at the incredible sight of them, Stevens realised sadly how far, far from home he was.

‘… my own trial?’ he echoed.

The Ultralords did not reply. He had had all the help, if help it was; now he was on his own: Earth’s fate was in the scales. Panic threatened him but he fought it down; that was a luxury he could not afford. Calculation only would help him. His cold hand touched the small lump at his throat; his judges had, after all, virtually played into his hands. He was not unprepared.

‘My own trial,’ he repeated more firmly.

Here was the classic nightmare made flesh, he thought. Dreams of pursuit, degradation, annihilation were not more terrible than this static dream where one stands before watchful eyes explaining one’s existence, speaking, speaking to no avail because if there is right it is not in words, because if there is a way of delivering the soul it is not to this audience. He thought, I must all my life have had some sort of a fixation about judgement without mercy; now I’ve gone psychopathic – I’ll spend all my years up before this wall of eyes, trying to find excuses for some crime I don’t know I’ve committed.

He watched the slow revolutions of Mordregon’s domino costume. No, this was reality, not the end results of an obsession. To treat it as other than reality was the flight from fear; that was not Steven’s way: he was afraid, but he could face it.

He spoke to them.

‘I presume by your silence,’ he said, ‘that you wish me to formulate both the questions and the answers, on the principle that two differing levels of intelligence are thus employed; it being as vital to ask the right question as to produce the correct answer.

‘This forcing of two roles upon me obviously doubles my chance of failure, and I would point out that this is, to me, not justice but a mockery.

‘Should I, then, say nothing more to you? Would you accept that silence as a proof that my world can distinguish justice from injustice, surely one of the prime requisites of a culture?’

He paused, only faintly hopeful. It could not be as simple as that. Or could it? If it could the solution would seem to him just a clever trick; but to these deeper brains it might appear otherwise. His thoughts swam as he tried to see the problem from their point of view. It was impossible: he could only go by his own standards, which of course was just what they wanted. Yet still he kept silence, trusting it more than words.

‘Your point accepted. Continue,’ said Ped2 brusquely, but he gave Stevens an encouraging nod.

So it was not going to be as easy as that. He pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his forehead, thinking wildly: ‘Would they accept that as a defence: that I am near enough to the animal to sweat but already far enough away to object to the fact? Do they sweat, any of them? Perhaps they think sweat’s a good thing. How can I be sure of anything?’

Like every other thought to his present state of mind, it turned circular and short-circuited itself.

He was an Earthman, six foot three, well proportioned, he had made good in a tough spot on Ganymede, he knew a very lovely woman called Edwina. Suppose they would be content with hearing about her, about her beauty, about the way she looked when Stevens left Earth. He could tell them about the joy of just being alive and thinking of Edwina: and the prodding knowledge that in ten years their youth would be sliding away.

Nonsense! he told himself. They wouldn’t take sentiment here; these beauties wanted cold fact. Momentarily, he thought of all the other beings who had stood in the past where he stood now, groping for the right thing to say. How many had found it?

Steadying himself, Stevens began to address the Ultralords again.

‘You will gather from what I say that I am hoping to demonstrate that I possess and understand one virtue so admirable that because of it you will, in your wisdom, be able to do nothing but spare me. Since modesty happens to be one of my virtues, I cannot enumerate the others: sagacity, patience, courage, loyalty, reverence, kindness, for example – and humour, as I hope that remark may hint to you. But these virtues are, or should be, common possessions of any civilisation; by them we define civilisation, and you presumably are looking for something else.

‘You must require me to produce evidence of something less obvious … something Man possesses which none of you have.’

He looked at the vast audience and they were silent. That damned silence!

‘I’m sure we do possess something like that. I’ll think of it if you’ll give me time. (Pause.) I suppose it’s no good throwing myself on your mercy? Man has mercy – but that’s not a virtue at all acceptable to those without it.’

The silence grew round him like ice forming over a Siberian lake. Were they hostile or not? He could not tell anything from their attitude; he could not think objectively. Reverse that idea: he thought subjectively. Could he twist that into some sort of a weird virtue which might appeal to them, and pretend there was a special value in thinking subjectively?

Hell, this was not his line of reasoning at all; he was not cut out to be a metaphysician. It was time he played his trump card. With an almost imperceptible movement of a neck muscle, he switched on the little machine in his throat. Immediately its droning awoke, reassuring him.

‘I must have a moment to think,’ Stevens said to the assembly.

Without moving his lips, he whispered: ‘Hello, Earth, are you there, Earth? Dave Stevens calling across the light-years. Do you hear me?’

After a moment’s pause, the tiny lump behind his ear throbbed and a shadowy voice answered: ‘Hello, Stevens, Earth Centre here. We’ve been listening out for you. How are you doing?’

‘The trial is on. I don’t think I’m making out very well.’ His lips were moving slightly; he covered them with his hand, standing as if deep in cogitation. It looked, he thought, very suspicious. He went on: ‘I can’t say much. For one thing, I’m afraid they will detect this beam going out and regard our communication as infringing their judical regulations.’

‘You don’t have to bother about that, Stevens. You should know that a sub-radio beam is undetectable. Can we couple you up with the big brain as pre-arranged? Give it your data and it’ll come up with the right answer.’

‘I just would not know what to ask it, Earth; these boys haven’t given me a lead. I called to tell you I’m going to throw up the game. They’re too powerful! I’m just going to put them the old preservation plea: that every race is unique and should be spared on that account, just as we guard wild animals from extinction in parks – even the dangerous ones. OK?’

The reply came faintly back: ‘You’re on the spot, feller; we stand by your evaluation. Good luck and out.’

Stevens looked round at the expressionless faces. Many of the beings present had gigantic ears; one of them possibly – probably – had heard the brief exchange. At that he made his own face expressionless and spoke aloud.

‘I have nothing more to say to you,’ he announced. ‘Indeed, I already wish I had said nothing at all. This court is a farce. If you tried all the insects, would they have a word to say in their defence? No! So you would kill them – and as a result you yourself would die. Insects are a vital factor. So is Man. How can we know our own potentialities? If you know yours, it is because you have ceased to develop and are already doomed to extinction. I demand that Man, who has seen through this stunt, be left to develop in his own fashion, unmolested.

‘Gentlemen, take me back home!’

He ended in a shout, and carried away by his own outburst expected a round of applause. The silence was broken only by a polite rustling. For a moment, he thought Mordregon glanced encouragingly at him, and then the figures faded away, and he was left standing alone, gesticulating in an empty hall.

A robot came and led him back to the automatic ship.

In what was estimated to be a month, Stevens arrived back at Luna One and was greeted there by Lord Sylvester as he stepped from the galactic vessel.

They pumped each other heartily on the back.

‘It worked! I swear it worked!’ Stevens told the older man.

‘Did you try them with reasoning?’ Sylvester asked eagerly.

‘Yes – at least, I did my best. But I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, and then I chucked it up. I remembered what you said, that if they were masters of the galaxy they must be practical men to stay there, and that if we dangled before their variegated noses a practical dinkum which they hadn’t got they’d be queuing up for it.’

‘And they hadn’t got an instantaneous communicator!’ Sylvester exclaimed, bursting into a hoot of laughter.

‘Naturally not, the thing being an impossibility, as our scientists proved long ago! But the funny bit was, Syl, they accidentally told me they hadn’t got one. And I didn’t even have to employ that argument for having no mind-readers present.’

‘So that little bit of recording we fixed up behind your ugly great ear did the trick?’

‘It sounded so absolutely genuine I almost believed it was the real thing,’ Stevens said enthusiastically. ‘I’m convinced we’ve won the day with that gadget.’

And then, perversely, the sense of triumph that had buoyed him all the way home deserted him. The trick was no longer clever: to have duped the Ultralords gave him suddenly nothing but disappointment. With listless surprise at this reaction, he realized he knew himself less well than he had believed.

He glanced at the gibbous Earth, low over Luna’s mountains: it was the colour of verdigris.

All the while, Sylvester chattered on excitedly.

‘Phew! You knock at least nine years off the ten I’ve aged since you left! When do we get the verdict, Dave? – the mighty Yea or Nay!’

‘Any time now – but I’m convinced the Ultralords are in the bag. Some of the mammoth ears present must have picked your voice up.’

Sylvester commenced to beat Stevens’s back again. Then he sobered and said: ‘Now we’ll have to think about stalling them when they come and ask for portable sub-radios. Still, that can wait; after all, we didn’t actually tell them we had them! Meanwhile, I’ve been stalling off the news-hounds here – the Galactics can’t prove more awkward than they’ve been. Then the President wants to see you – but before that there’s a drink waiting for you, and Edwina is sitting nursing it.’

‘Lead the way!’ Stevens said, a little more happily.

‘You look a bit gloomy all of a sudden,’ Sylvester commented. ‘Tired, I expect?’

‘It has been a strain …’

As he spoke, the door of his transport slammed shut behind him and the craft lifted purposefully off the field, silent on its cosmic drive. Stevens waved it a solemn farewell and turned away quickly, hurrying with Sylvester across to the domes of Luna One. A chillness was creeping over him again.

Our Council of the Ultralords must be certain it pronounces the correct verdict when aliens such as Stevens are under examination; consequently, it has to have telepaths present during the trials. All it asks is, simply, integrity in the defendants – that is the simple touchstone: yet it is too difficult for many of them. The men of Earth tortured themselves chasing phantoms, cooking up chimeras. Stevens had integrity, yet would not trust to it. Those who are convicted of dishonesty perish; we have no room for them.

The robot craft swung away from Luna and headed at full speed towards Earth, the motors in its warhead ticking expectantly, counting out the seconds to annihilation.

And that, of course, would be the end of the story – for Earth at least. It would have been completely destroyed, as is usual in such distressing cases, but Mordregon, who was amused by Stevens’s bluff, decided that, after all, the warped brains of Earthmen might be useful in coping with the warped brains of the enemy Eleventh Galaxy. He called it ‘an expedient war-time measure’.

Quietly, he deflected the speeding missile from its target, ordering it to return home. He sent this message by sub-radio, of course; dangerous aliens must necessarily be deluded at times.

Dumb Show

Mrs. Snowden was slowly being worn down. She had reached the stage now where she carried about with her a square of card on which the word DON’T was written in large letters. It was kept tucked inside her cardigan, ready to be produced at a moment’s notice and flashed before Pauline’s eyes.

The ill-matched pair, the grubby girl of three and the shabby-elegant lady of fifty-eight, came up to the side door of their house, Pauline capering over the flagstones, Mrs. Snowden walking slowly with her eyes on the bare border. Spring was reluctantly here, but the tepid earth hardly acknowledged it; even the daffodils had failed to put in an appearance this year.

‘Can’t understand it at all,’ Mrs. Snowden told herself. ‘Nothing ever happens to daffodils.’ And then she went on to compile a list of things that nevertheless might have happened: frost – it had been a hard winter; soil-starvation – no manure since the outbreak of hostilities, seven years ago; ants; mice; cats; the sounds – that seemed most likely. Sound did anything, these days.

Pauline rapped primly on the little brass knocker and vanished into the hall. Mrs. Snowden paused in the porch, stopping to look at the houses on the other side of her high brick wall. When this house had been built, it had stood in open fields; now drab little semi-detacheds surrounded it on three sides. She paused and hated them. Catching herself at it, she tried instead to admire the late afternoon light falling on the huddled roofs; the sunshine fell in languid, horizontal strokes – but it had no meaning for her, except as a sign that it was nearly time to blackout again.

She went heavily into the house, closing the door. Inside, night had already commenced.

Her granddaughter marched round the drawing-room, banging a tin lid against her head. That way, she could hear the noise it made. Mrs. Snowden reached for the DON’T card, then let her hand drop; the action was becoming automatic, and she must guard against it. She went to the gram-wire-TV cabinet, of which only the last compartment was now of use, and switched on. Conditions at home were a little better since the recapture of Iceland, and there were now broadcasts for an hour and a half every evening.

Circuits warmed, a picture burned in the half-globe. A man and woman danced solemnly, without music. To Mrs. Snowden it looked as meaningless as turning a book of blank pages, but Pauline stopped her march and came to stare. She smiled at the dancing couple; her lips moved; she was talking to them.

DON’T, screamed Mrs. Snowden’s sudden, dumb card.

Pauline made a face and answered back. She jumped away as her grandmother reached forward, leaping, prancing over the chairs, shouting defiance.

In fury, Mrs. Snowden skimmed the card across the room, crying angrily, hating to be reminded of her infirmity, waving her narrow hands. She collapsed onto a music stool – music, that dear, extinct thing! – and wept. Her own anger in her own head had sounded a million cotton-wool miles away, emphasizing the isolation. At this point she always crumpled.

The little girl came to her delicately, treading and staring with impertinence, knowing she had the victory. She pulled a sweet face and twizzled on her heel. Lack of hearing did not worry her; the silence she had known in the womb had never left her. Her indifference seemed a mockery.

‘You little beast!’ Mrs. Snowden said. ‘You cruel, ignorant, little beast!’

Pauline replied, the little babblings which would never turn into words, the little noises no human ear could hear. Then she walked quietly over to the windows, pointed out at the sickening day, and began to draw the curtains. Controlling herself with an effort, Mrs. Snowden stood up. Thank goodness the child had some sense; they must blackout. First she retrieved her DON’T card from behind the ancient twentieth-century settee, and then they went together through the house, tugging the folds of black velvet across the glass.

Now Pauline was skipping again. How she did it on the low calories was a matter for wonder. Perhaps, thought Mrs. Snowden, it was a blessing to be responsible for the child; so, she kept contact with life. She even caught an echo of gaiety herself, so that they hurried from room to room like bearers of good news, pulling blackness over them, then sweeping on the sonic lights. Up the stairs, pausing at the landing window, racing into the bedrooms, till new citadels were created from all the shabby darknesses. Pauline collapsed laughing on her bed. Seizing her, tickling now and again, Mrs. Snowden undressed her and tucked her between the fraying sheets.

She kissed the girl good night, put out the light, closed the door, and then went slowly round, putting out all the other lights, downstairs, putting all the lights out there.

Directly she had gone, Pauline climbed out of bed, stamped into the bathroom, opened the little medicine cupboard, took out the bottle with the label ‘Sleeping Pills’. Unscrewing the top, she swallowed a pill, pulling a pig’s eyes face at herself in the looking-glass as she did so. Then she put the bottle back on its shelf and slammed the little door, hugging to herself this noisy secret.

None of these things had names for her. Having no names, they had only misty meanings. The very edges of them were blurred, for all objects were grouped together in only two vast categories: those-that-concerned-her and those-that-did-not-concern-her.

She trailed loudly back to her bed in the silence there was no breaking, making pig’s eyes all the way to ward off the darkness. Once in bed, she began to think; it was because of these pictures she stole her grandmother’s pills: they fought the pictures and turned them eventually into an all-night nothing.

Predominant was the aching picture. A warmth, a face, a comforting – it was at once the vaguest yet most vivid picture; someone soft who carried and cared for her; someone who now never came; someone who now provoked only the water scalding from her eyes.