Authors: Brian Aldiss
Cryptozoic! (11 page)
"That's what I mean about perspectives!" Judy said gamely.
"You perhaps miss the point, my dear. All those grand millions of years
the mind-travelers make so free with in their conversation are but the
last ten minutes on the dial. Man is a small thing, his little life is
not only ended but begun with a sleep."
"The clock analogy is misleading," Bush said. "It doesn't leave room for
the immense future, many times all that's past. You think your clock puts
everything in perspective but really it ruins it."
"Well, we can't see the future, can we?"
The question was unassailable, at least for a little while.
Chapter 7
THE SQUAD
The truck delivered Bush at the training center at ten-thirty in the morning.
By midday, his civilian clothes had been taken from him, to be replaced by
a coarse khaki uniform; his head had been shaved; he had plunged through
a cold disinfectant bath; been inoculated against typhoid, cholera, and
tetanus and vaccinated against smallpox; been examined to see that he was
not suffering from a venereal disease; had his voice- and retina-patterns
taken and his finger-prints recorded; and paraded at the cookhouse for
an ill-cooked meal.
The course proper began at 1300 hours sharp, and from then until the end
of the month was almost unremitting.
Bush was put in Ten Squad, under a Sergeant Pond. Pond drove his men
through a succession of difficult or impossible tasks. They had to learn
to march and even run in step. They had to learn to respond to orders
given a quarter of a mile away by the human voice, if such a designation
was seemly for Sergeant Pond's noises, shouting at its most ragged and
repulsive pitch. They had to learn to climb brick walls and to fall
from upper-story windows; they had to learn to climb ropes and to wade
through stagnant pools; they had to learn how to dig meaninglessly deep
holes and strangle their fellow men; to shoot and stab and swear and
sweat and eat garbage and sleep like dead men. To begin with, a sardonic
part of Bush's brain amused itself by standing apart and watching his
actions. Now and again, it would come forward and say, "The object of
this exercise is to make you less an individual, more a machine for
taking orders. If you cross this rope bridge without failing on the
rocks below, you will be less human than you were before you attempted
it. Gobble down this bit of sea-lion pie and you will be even less of
an artist than you were yesterday." But the sardonic part of Bush's
brain was soon anesthetized by constant meaningless activity. He was
too tired and bemused for criticism to flourish, and the harsh roar of
Pond's voice supplanted the whisper of his intelligence.
Nevertheless, he was alert enough to notice the activities of some of his
fellow recruits. Most of them, the great majority, accepted and suffered
as he did, putting their private selves away, as it were, the better to
endure. There were also two small minorities; one consisted of those
unfortunates who could not put away their private selves. They got on
parade late with their boots dusty; they could not eat the food; they
turned left when the rest turned right; they half-drowned in the scummy
ponds; sometimes, they wept instead of sleeping at night.
The other small minority called 'themselves "The Tripe-shop Troopers."
They were the ones who enjoyed Seageant Pond's insults, who relished
the degradations of the barracks square, who were born for stabbing
sawdust dummies. And in their spare time, they drank wildly, beat up
the members of the other minority, vomited unexpectedly on the floor,
sucked up to Pond, and generally behaved like heroes.
They also gave the squad its backbone and spirit, and Bush wondered
afterwards if he would have got through the course without his desire
to prove himself as good and tough as they.
He did best and outshone the rest of the course only on the firing range,
where the squad frittered away every Monday and Thursday morning in
draughty surroundings. Here, they learned to fire light-guns, which might
(or more probably might not) become standard items of their equipment
later. The light-guns fired pulsed beams of coherent light that could
burn a neat little black hole right through a man at half-a-mile. But
it was less the killing potentialities of the weapon than its artistic
side that attracted Bush. This slender metal barrel dealt with the basic
substance df all painters, light: ordered it, organized it; the ruby
laser it contained spat out light in milliseconds' worth, delivering
it in parallel, monochrome beams onto target. As Bush burned out his
bull's-eyes, he felt he was indulging in the only artistic pursuit left
to a man in time of emergency.
Among all the marching, chasing, and mock-fights to which Ten Squad was
subjected, lectures were given on various subjects. The squad then sat
on benches in blessed momentary peace, and Bush sometimes snatched these
periods to wonder what the object of the course was.
Clearly, it had been cobbled quickly together from other established
military courses, but he could not see that it had much connection with
his future as an agent which had been mapped out for him. He appreciated
that he was being systematically degraded, and perhaps more effectively
than The Tripeshop Troopers, who gloatingly took all the punishment
meted out. He just failed to see its purpose; and then he realized what
all this would mean to the undermind; knowing its own worth, it would
be shamed and defeated, and would die more easily when ordered to.
But that was nonsense, because . . . Their duty was not to die. The hatred
Sergeant Pond injected into them for twelve hours a day was to help them
suffer, not die. The undermind was being fed poison -- and nobody was
protesting! They must be mad. And this conspiracy was no freak of General
Bolt's regime; it was ubiquitous, eternal. Men had always poisoned
themselves in this way, making themselves coarse of habit, dim of wit,
void of individuality. As an artist, he had always been alone. Now for
the first time, he was surrounded by his fellow men, and he saw into them.
They had windows in their chests. There was something moving in there,
peering out through the windows; the windows were misty, steamed over by
the breath as it was sucked in among the sponges of the lungs; it was hard
to see. One of the things inside was writing on the window with a finger.
It was a message for help, something explaining the sanity of all mankind,
but not only were the letters back to front, they ran in the wrong direction.
Bush was on the verge of deciphering the words when --
His name was called, and he sat up abruptly.
His name was called, and he had been asleep!
"Bush, you have ten seconds to answer the question." A red-faced officer,
one Captain Stanhope, stood by the blackboard, glaring at Bush. The rest
of the squad had turned round to stare and the Troopers were grinning
and nudging each other. "The carotid vein!" one whispered across at Bush.
"The carotid vein, sir," Bush said, clutching at a straw.
The squad rocked with laughter. The troopers nearly fell onto the floor
in their delight.
Stanhope barked for silence. When the squad had been reduced to silence,
he said, "All right, Bush, I asked you what carrots were good for.
You tried to be funny. I'll deal with you afterwards."
Bush directed a glare of hatred at the hearties.
He marched up to the captain afterwards, as the rest of the squad was
clattering out, and stood rigidly at attention till the officer deigned
to notice him.
"You were trying to be funny at my expense."
"No, sir, I was asleep."
"Asleep! What do you mean, asleep, when I was talking?"
"I'm exhausted, sir. There's too much running around on this course."
"What were you in pre-revolutionary days?"
"Artist, sir. I did groupages and that sort of thing."
"Oh. What's your name?"
"Bush, sir."
"I know that. Your full name, man."
"Edward Bush."
"Then I know your work." Stanhope softened slightly. "I used to be an
architect before the need for architecture disappeared. I admired some
of the things you did. Liked your groupages, especially the one you made
for Southall station; the spatial-kinetic series you did was a revelation.
I have -- had -- a book on your work, with illustrations."
"The one by Branquier?"
"That's the name, Branquier. Well, I'm happy to meet you, though hardly
in these surroundings and conditions. You're an expert mind-traveler, too,
I hear."
"I've been doing it a long time."
"You shouldn't be on a course like this! Weren't you picked for minding
by Wenlock himself?"
"That may be partly why I'm here."
"Mmm. I see. What do you think of this Wenlock-Silverstone controversy?
Don't you feel that the Wenlock orthodoxy may well be a myth, and that
Silverstone in fact has a great deal to offer if his side of the matter
were not distorted? So many suppositions have been taken for facts,
haven't they?"
"I don't know, sir. I know nothing about it."
Stanhope smiled. "They've gone now. You can speak freely to me. Quite
honestly, the regime are all wrong in hunting Silverstone, aren't they?
Don't you think?"
"As I said, sir, it's a tough course. I can't think any more. I have
no opinions."
"But as an artist, on a vital matter like Silverstone, you must have
very strong opinions."
"No, none, sir. Blisters on feet and hands, sir; no opinions."
Stanhope drew himself up. "Bush, dismiss -- and next time I catch you
dozing in my lectures, you'll be in bad trouble."
Bush marched away, solid and flat-footed. Inwardly, he laughed and sang.
The bastards weren't going to catch him that easily!
But he wondered very much about the news that the regime was hunting
Silverstone. It sounded authentic. And why should they be sounding out
his views on the subject?
At that time, he had only two weeks to run before he found out, but those
two weeks dragged on interminably as the course went its pointless way.
Being anti-social, Bush found barracks-room life no pleasanter when it
became clear that his brush with Stanhope had made him something of a
favorite with the Troopers.
"What ho, mate! How's the old carrots going down?" they would call,
with oafish good-humor, and never tired of his lewd answer.
At last, the final straw dummy had been stabbed, the last illiterate
talk on seeing without being seen listened to, the last mile run.
Ten Squad paraded for its final tests, followed by personal interviews,
alone in the shabby lecture huts with two officers.
Bush found himself with a bald-headed man, Captain Howes, and Captain
Stanhope.
"You can sit down," Stanhope said. "We are going to ask you a series of
questions, just to test your knowledge and reaction speed. What is wrong
with this sentence: 'Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night. God said
let Newton be and all was light'?"
"It's an accurate quote from some poet or other -- Pope? But it isn't
true. There's no God, and Newton didn't illuminate as much as his
generation supposed."
"What's wrong with this sentence: 'The regime are mistaken in persecuting
Silverstone'?"
"Collective noun should be followed by singular verb."
Stanhope scowled. "What else?"
"I don't know."
"Why not?"
"What regime? What Silverstone? I don't know."
"Next question." They went on through a maze of trivia, the captains
taking it in turn to interrogate, sitting staring moodily at Bush while
they were resting. At last the farce came to an end.
Captain Howes cleared his throat and said, "Cadet Edward Bush, we are pleased
to say that you have passed your test. We allot you a score of about 89
per cent, with the rider that you have an unstable personality,
peculiarly suited to mind-travel. We hope to send you on a special
mission into the past within a few days."
"What sort of a mission?"
Howes laughed unconvincingly. He was a big man, not ill-looking, who seemed
more in control than Stanhope. "Come, you've had enough for today! Relax,
Bush! The course is over. Captain Stanhope and I will see you back here
tomorrow morning at nine-thirty, to give you full briefing. Till then,
you can go away and celebrate."
He bent down and pulled a bottle out of the drawer of the desk, handing
it solemnly over to Bush. "Don't imagine the regime has no time for fun,
Bush, or no sense of the better things in life. Go and enjoy yourself
and accept this gift with the compliments of the officers of the course."
When they had gone, Bush examined the bottle of drink with some curiosity.
It had a big tartan label and was called "Black Wombat Special: Genuine
South Indian Rice Whisky, Brewed in Madras from a forbidden recipe."
He flipped up the metal cap and sniffed cautiously. He shivered.
Tucking the bottle inside his tunic, he took it back to the barracks room.
The Tripeshop Troopers were already celebrating the end of the couse,
drinking vile resinous drinks out of tin mugs. They greeted Bush with
a cheer and arch references to the carotid vein. Destined to begin life
anew as memhers of the newly formed mind-travel police, working in mufti,
they had a week's leave coming to them on the morrow. They were vowing
to spend the whole leave drunk.
Bush presented them with the Forbidden Recipe Whisky. As he sat down with
them, he found Sergeant Pond was among them, Pond whose kindest word
in the last month had been to damn them for a ruddy herd of ruptured
bleeding camels. Pond who had bayed at them like a bloodhound and worried
them like a terrier.
Pond put his arm about Bush. "You been my besh squad you boys! What'm
I going to do without you? Another ruddy shower of recuits in tomorrow,
needing their noshesh wiped all the time. You're my friensh!"
Gritting his teeth, Bush poured some Forbidden Recipe on top of the brown
liquid already in Pond's mug.
"Yer my besh frien', Bush." the sergeant said. His maltreated voice,
grinding along in low gear, could hardly be heard for the band now
starting up, as some of the brighter or more stupid lads began to whistle
and shout and sing and beat a crude rhythm out on waste bins, mess tins,
and other instruments. Bracing himself, Bush took a swig of the Black Wombat,
and was instantly three parts drunk.
"You perhaps miss the point, my dear. All those grand millions of years
the mind-travelers make so free with in their conversation are but the
last ten minutes on the dial. Man is a small thing, his little life is
not only ended but begun with a sleep."
"The clock analogy is misleading," Bush said. "It doesn't leave room for
the immense future, many times all that's past. You think your clock puts
everything in perspective but really it ruins it."
"Well, we can't see the future, can we?"
The question was unassailable, at least for a little while.
Chapter 7
THE SQUAD
The truck delivered Bush at the training center at ten-thirty in the morning.
By midday, his civilian clothes had been taken from him, to be replaced by
a coarse khaki uniform; his head had been shaved; he had plunged through
a cold disinfectant bath; been inoculated against typhoid, cholera, and
tetanus and vaccinated against smallpox; been examined to see that he was
not suffering from a venereal disease; had his voice- and retina-patterns
taken and his finger-prints recorded; and paraded at the cookhouse for
an ill-cooked meal.
The course proper began at 1300 hours sharp, and from then until the end
of the month was almost unremitting.
Bush was put in Ten Squad, under a Sergeant Pond. Pond drove his men
through a succession of difficult or impossible tasks. They had to learn
to march and even run in step. They had to learn to respond to orders
given a quarter of a mile away by the human voice, if such a designation
was seemly for Sergeant Pond's noises, shouting at its most ragged and
repulsive pitch. They had to learn to climb brick walls and to fall
from upper-story windows; they had to learn to climb ropes and to wade
through stagnant pools; they had to learn how to dig meaninglessly deep
holes and strangle their fellow men; to shoot and stab and swear and
sweat and eat garbage and sleep like dead men. To begin with, a sardonic
part of Bush's brain amused itself by standing apart and watching his
actions. Now and again, it would come forward and say, "The object of
this exercise is to make you less an individual, more a machine for
taking orders. If you cross this rope bridge without failing on the
rocks below, you will be less human than you were before you attempted
it. Gobble down this bit of sea-lion pie and you will be even less of
an artist than you were yesterday." But the sardonic part of Bush's
brain was soon anesthetized by constant meaningless activity. He was
too tired and bemused for criticism to flourish, and the harsh roar of
Pond's voice supplanted the whisper of his intelligence.
Nevertheless, he was alert enough to notice the activities of some of his
fellow recruits. Most of them, the great majority, accepted and suffered
as he did, putting their private selves away, as it were, the better to
endure. There were also two small minorities; one consisted of those
unfortunates who could not put away their private selves. They got on
parade late with their boots dusty; they could not eat the food; they
turned left when the rest turned right; they half-drowned in the scummy
ponds; sometimes, they wept instead of sleeping at night.
The other small minority called 'themselves "The Tripe-shop Troopers."
They were the ones who enjoyed Seageant Pond's insults, who relished
the degradations of the barracks square, who were born for stabbing
sawdust dummies. And in their spare time, they drank wildly, beat up
the members of the other minority, vomited unexpectedly on the floor,
sucked up to Pond, and generally behaved like heroes.
They also gave the squad its backbone and spirit, and Bush wondered
afterwards if he would have got through the course without his desire
to prove himself as good and tough as they.
He did best and outshone the rest of the course only on the firing range,
where the squad frittered away every Monday and Thursday morning in
draughty surroundings. Here, they learned to fire light-guns, which might
(or more probably might not) become standard items of their equipment
later. The light-guns fired pulsed beams of coherent light that could
burn a neat little black hole right through a man at half-a-mile. But
it was less the killing potentialities of the weapon than its artistic
side that attracted Bush. This slender metal barrel dealt with the basic
substance df all painters, light: ordered it, organized it; the ruby
laser it contained spat out light in milliseconds' worth, delivering
it in parallel, monochrome beams onto target. As Bush burned out his
bull's-eyes, he felt he was indulging in the only artistic pursuit left
to a man in time of emergency.
Among all the marching, chasing, and mock-fights to which Ten Squad was
subjected, lectures were given on various subjects. The squad then sat
on benches in blessed momentary peace, and Bush sometimes snatched these
periods to wonder what the object of the course was.
Clearly, it had been cobbled quickly together from other established
military courses, but he could not see that it had much connection with
his future as an agent which had been mapped out for him. He appreciated
that he was being systematically degraded, and perhaps more effectively
than The Tripeshop Troopers, who gloatingly took all the punishment
meted out. He just failed to see its purpose; and then he realized what
all this would mean to the undermind; knowing its own worth, it would
be shamed and defeated, and would die more easily when ordered to.
But that was nonsense, because . . . Their duty was not to die. The hatred
Sergeant Pond injected into them for twelve hours a day was to help them
suffer, not die. The undermind was being fed poison -- and nobody was
protesting! They must be mad. And this conspiracy was no freak of General
Bolt's regime; it was ubiquitous, eternal. Men had always poisoned
themselves in this way, making themselves coarse of habit, dim of wit,
void of individuality. As an artist, he had always been alone. Now for
the first time, he was surrounded by his fellow men, and he saw into them.
They had windows in their chests. There was something moving in there,
peering out through the windows; the windows were misty, steamed over by
the breath as it was sucked in among the sponges of the lungs; it was hard
to see. One of the things inside was writing on the window with a finger.
It was a message for help, something explaining the sanity of all mankind,
but not only were the letters back to front, they ran in the wrong direction.
Bush was on the verge of deciphering the words when --
His name was called, and he sat up abruptly.
His name was called, and he had been asleep!
"Bush, you have ten seconds to answer the question." A red-faced officer,
one Captain Stanhope, stood by the blackboard, glaring at Bush. The rest
of the squad had turned round to stare and the Troopers were grinning
and nudging each other. "The carotid vein!" one whispered across at Bush.
"The carotid vein, sir," Bush said, clutching at a straw.
The squad rocked with laughter. The troopers nearly fell onto the floor
in their delight.
Stanhope barked for silence. When the squad had been reduced to silence,
he said, "All right, Bush, I asked you what carrots were good for.
You tried to be funny. I'll deal with you afterwards."
Bush directed a glare of hatred at the hearties.
He marched up to the captain afterwards, as the rest of the squad was
clattering out, and stood rigidly at attention till the officer deigned
to notice him.
"You were trying to be funny at my expense."
"No, sir, I was asleep."
"Asleep! What do you mean, asleep, when I was talking?"
"I'm exhausted, sir. There's too much running around on this course."
"What were you in pre-revolutionary days?"
"Artist, sir. I did groupages and that sort of thing."
"Oh. What's your name?"
"Bush, sir."
"I know that. Your full name, man."
"Edward Bush."
"Then I know your work." Stanhope softened slightly. "I used to be an
architect before the need for architecture disappeared. I admired some
of the things you did. Liked your groupages, especially the one you made
for Southall station; the spatial-kinetic series you did was a revelation.
I have -- had -- a book on your work, with illustrations."
"The one by Branquier?"
"That's the name, Branquier. Well, I'm happy to meet you, though hardly
in these surroundings and conditions. You're an expert mind-traveler, too,
I hear."
"I've been doing it a long time."
"You shouldn't be on a course like this! Weren't you picked for minding
by Wenlock himself?"
"That may be partly why I'm here."
"Mmm. I see. What do you think of this Wenlock-Silverstone controversy?
Don't you feel that the Wenlock orthodoxy may well be a myth, and that
Silverstone in fact has a great deal to offer if his side of the matter
were not distorted? So many suppositions have been taken for facts,
haven't they?"
"I don't know, sir. I know nothing about it."
Stanhope smiled. "They've gone now. You can speak freely to me. Quite
honestly, the regime are all wrong in hunting Silverstone, aren't they?
Don't you think?"
"As I said, sir, it's a tough course. I can't think any more. I have
no opinions."
"But as an artist, on a vital matter like Silverstone, you must have
very strong opinions."
"No, none, sir. Blisters on feet and hands, sir; no opinions."
Stanhope drew himself up. "Bush, dismiss -- and next time I catch you
dozing in my lectures, you'll be in bad trouble."
Bush marched away, solid and flat-footed. Inwardly, he laughed and sang.
The bastards weren't going to catch him that easily!
But he wondered very much about the news that the regime was hunting
Silverstone. It sounded authentic. And why should they be sounding out
his views on the subject?
At that time, he had only two weeks to run before he found out, but those
two weeks dragged on interminably as the course went its pointless way.
Being anti-social, Bush found barracks-room life no pleasanter when it
became clear that his brush with Stanhope had made him something of a
favorite with the Troopers.
"What ho, mate! How's the old carrots going down?" they would call,
with oafish good-humor, and never tired of his lewd answer.
At last, the final straw dummy had been stabbed, the last illiterate
talk on seeing without being seen listened to, the last mile run.
Ten Squad paraded for its final tests, followed by personal interviews,
alone in the shabby lecture huts with two officers.
Bush found himself with a bald-headed man, Captain Howes, and Captain
Stanhope.
"You can sit down," Stanhope said. "We are going to ask you a series of
questions, just to test your knowledge and reaction speed. What is wrong
with this sentence: 'Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night. God said
let Newton be and all was light'?"
"It's an accurate quote from some poet or other -- Pope? But it isn't
true. There's no God, and Newton didn't illuminate as much as his
generation supposed."
"What's wrong with this sentence: 'The regime are mistaken in persecuting
Silverstone'?"
"Collective noun should be followed by singular verb."
Stanhope scowled. "What else?"
"I don't know."
"Why not?"
"What regime? What Silverstone? I don't know."
"Next question." They went on through a maze of trivia, the captains
taking it in turn to interrogate, sitting staring moodily at Bush while
they were resting. At last the farce came to an end.
Captain Howes cleared his throat and said, "Cadet Edward Bush, we are pleased
to say that you have passed your test. We allot you a score of about 89
per cent, with the rider that you have an unstable personality,
peculiarly suited to mind-travel. We hope to send you on a special
mission into the past within a few days."
"What sort of a mission?"
Howes laughed unconvincingly. He was a big man, not ill-looking, who seemed
more in control than Stanhope. "Come, you've had enough for today! Relax,
Bush! The course is over. Captain Stanhope and I will see you back here
tomorrow morning at nine-thirty, to give you full briefing. Till then,
you can go away and celebrate."
He bent down and pulled a bottle out of the drawer of the desk, handing
it solemnly over to Bush. "Don't imagine the regime has no time for fun,
Bush, or no sense of the better things in life. Go and enjoy yourself
and accept this gift with the compliments of the officers of the course."
When they had gone, Bush examined the bottle of drink with some curiosity.
It had a big tartan label and was called "Black Wombat Special: Genuine
South Indian Rice Whisky, Brewed in Madras from a forbidden recipe."
He flipped up the metal cap and sniffed cautiously. He shivered.
Tucking the bottle inside his tunic, he took it back to the barracks room.
The Tripeshop Troopers were already celebrating the end of the couse,
drinking vile resinous drinks out of tin mugs. They greeted Bush with
a cheer and arch references to the carotid vein. Destined to begin life
anew as memhers of the newly formed mind-travel police, working in mufti,
they had a week's leave coming to them on the morrow. They were vowing
to spend the whole leave drunk.
Bush presented them with the Forbidden Recipe Whisky. As he sat down with
them, he found Sergeant Pond was among them, Pond whose kindest word
in the last month had been to damn them for a ruddy herd of ruptured
bleeding camels. Pond who had bayed at them like a bloodhound and worried
them like a terrier.
Pond put his arm about Bush. "You been my besh squad you boys! What'm
I going to do without you? Another ruddy shower of recuits in tomorrow,
needing their noshesh wiped all the time. You're my friensh!"
Gritting his teeth, Bush poured some Forbidden Recipe on top of the brown
liquid already in Pond's mug.
"Yer my besh frien', Bush." the sergeant said. His maltreated voice,
grinding along in low gear, could hardly be heard for the band now
starting up, as some of the brighter or more stupid lads began to whistle
and shout and sing and beat a crude rhythm out on waste bins, mess tins,
and other instruments. Bracing himself, Bush took a swig of the Black Wombat,
and was instantly three parts drunk.
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