Earthworks by Brian W Aldiss
Now, at a maturer age, I can see that the health of character is securely tied to the health of an age; dissolution produces dissolution, betrayal betrayal, and trust is no neighbour for fear. But at that time, I still nourished a belief in the idea that personalities shape history, rather than vice versa, and my hurt at Justine’s words was the greater.
I remember dropping my eyes and shuffling away from her.
“Keep quiet about it, Justine — that side of it is none of your business. Perhaps you don’t know his past. It’s men like him who are ruining England, with their awful system of exploiting men and land alike. You would understand nothing about that.”
Her manner remained irritatingly patient.
“Don’t be condescending. I have been to England, and Peter and I have no secrets from each other — we are both of the same faith.”
“Never mind your faith! I’m saying you have no idea of what he did to me personally.”
“I know he saved you from the land. He said so, and he never lies. Besides, England is finished, worn out, ruined, just like all the other rotten little states of Europe, yes, and of Russia and China, and what was known as the United States, in which I was born. You know nothing of the world picture — your are just a pleb. Africa is the only place with fight left in it, in its men and territories. Why do you think the other poor tottering countries like yours and mine have made treaties and alliances with the various African States? Why, so that they can get assistance from them — as you were getting sand — ”
“Sand! Sand! My God, Justine, there’s generosity on the African States’ part. How good of them to spare England a few holds full of their sand! But you know we have to pay for it — and yet they could produce enough from their stinking Skeleton Coast alone to drown all England in sand. I bet your pal next door gets his cut out of the deal somewhere, doesn’t he? Tell me what he’s doing here if he’s not after some financial deal or other.”
“We are here for other reasons.” Now my words had hurt her. She swung her hand and slapped me across the cheek. “Reasons you would not grasp! Don’t you understand how we hate your kind? And aren’t your kind with their petty little righteousness — their materialist pride — engulfing the world? Millions upon millions of them, gorging up the earth’s supplies with their narrow beliefs!”
Hurt though I was, my pride most of all, I said: “Okay, Justine, you’re a little aristocrat and you hate the common people. Your kind has enjoyed the ascendancy throughout most of history. But I’m as good as you. I can read as well as you can, and I’m not so puffed up! My belly rumbles disgustingly in front of you because I’m hungry, yet you can talk about my gorging myself on the world’s supplies. That’s what your kind does!”
She turned on her heel and walked to the far wall,
“Your beliefs and mine are absolutely opposed; I was a fool to argue with you,” she said. Her anger had gone the moment she saw me rubbing my cheek. “I did not realize how unreasonable you were. The current regime throughout the world remains almost unchallenged because there is nobody left who holds clear ideas about the nature of man and the universal character of the human condition. It arose because not enough people could command a metaphysical view of human nature. We are spiritually and agriculturally bankrupt — perhaps the two must always go together.”
This Justine said rather awkwardly, and it occurred to me that she was parroting something Mercator had said to her. At the same time, there was enough of a defensive note in her voice to suggest she was perhaps trying to offer an explanation for her own touchy behaviour. Sharp desire like sexual longing seized me; I wished to know and understand her. And yet, being contradictory, I refused to let what she had said seem to mollify me.
“I don’t understand what you are talking about, and it’s irrelevant anyway.”
“No doubt you’ll find this irrelevant too.”
She placed a tape on a turntable, and set it spinning. Voices came forth, and I recognized them. They were voices I had often listened to on board the Trieste Star, only to turn them off in boredom. They were the English-speaking radio stations of the various most powerful African States: Algeria, New Angola, Waterberg, West Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Goya, Nigeria. Their world attitude, as I knew, was tough and energetic, and not without its hints of aggression towards Europe and America, or more than a hint towards each other.
“I don’t want to hear that bloody stuff!” I shouted, for she kept turning the volume higher.
“Listen to them, Knowle, my tough bully boy — don’t they frighten you with their greedy demands?”
“Turn them off, Justine!”
“They sound just like the European nations a couple of centuries ago, Knowle; did you know that? They all want the same thing — more land!”
“I said I don’t want to hear them. Switch ’em off!”
“And you know that only one man can keep them all peaceable together at this time? In this whole continent, only one man has a chance of securing ultimate peace among the African nations — President el Mahasset.” Still she turned the volume higher. The thick voices blared out at us, their words by now indistinguishable.
“TURN IT OFF, WOMAN!”
“...AND PETER MERCATOR AND I ARE GOING TO KILL THE PRESIDENT TOMORROW!”
Suddenly I was free from the spell that meeting had thrown over me, and the idea of action returned.
As I sprang to the door, Mercator reached it from the other side. Without pausing to think, I hit him hard on the jaw. While he was still reeling back, I crossed the room and ran out through the hail to the corridor.
Justine’s shouted words still raced through my mind They convinced me that she and Mercator were in a conspiracy of madness.
I looked to right and left as I moved past the first corridor junction. To the right, I saw Israt. He was talking to a uniformed man — I took him for police. Israt saw me and shouted. I realized that I had been in Mercator’s suite for more than half an hour, and Thunderpeck had gone.
Only for a moment did I hesitate. They were moving towards me, and it prompted my thinking marvellously. I turned into the restaurant. The four dignitaries were still there. They had reached the coffee and brandy stage of their meal, and were grinning widely at each other, except for the half-caste, who sat shrunken in his chair, toying with a glass of water. I nodded to them as I turned into the men’s room.
In a minute, Mercator’s men would be after me. This time it would be an affair of bullets, not words. These people were here to assassinate the President of Africa! They had told me their mad secret, and I could not be trusted — I was a hated pleb! No doubt Justine, the fair, the fatal, had revealed the truth only out of piqued pride; it was enough that she had told me. I guessed it would seal my fate.
Seizing one of the decorator’s planks that lay at the far side of the room, I wedged it with one end behind the side of a washbasin and the other behind a hot-air drier, so that it lay across the door, stopping it from opening. That would keep them out for a brief minute; there was no lock on the simple spring door. Crossing to the coats that I had previously robbed, I lifted down the half-caste’s anti-gravity kit. At the same time, someone thudded violently against the door.
I saw plaster fall under the wash-basin. Damn them for building so badly! There was no time to adjust the harness and strap the unit on properly. I ran to the window with it hanging from one shoulder, flung the window open, and climbed up on to the sill.
Nausea and extreme panic overtook me immediately, as I saw the streets far below. Remember, I had never tried one of these units before; at that date, they were still novelties. But it was too late to turn back now. The blows at the door came again, and the wash-basin squeaked in its socket. Grasping the starting-knob of the unit, I wrenched it over to the “On” position, and jumped clear of the building.
The streets at once began to whirl up at me. Everything in that instant was presented in extreme clarity. I realized that many people were now filling the str
Chapter Eleven
Had I believed in hell before, in purgatory? Had I believed in an afterlife in which my smashed body might go on suffering?
There it was, believe it or not, and those potent symbols of dismay from which, when they obtruded in my lifetime, I had been so easily able to turn away, now stood before me in undeniable form. Even as I ran from them, I could not tell what form it was they took, but at one moment I thought they were skeletons and, at the next, devils dressed in shining armour and bearing great lights that burnt me where they touched.
The place I was in — but it seemed not to have dimensions! A beetle crushed against a badly folded cloth could have formed a better idea of his surroundings than I, for though it might be said that I was surrounded with streets and buildings of all kinds, they were always too close, pressing against my eyes, in fact.
If dimension had gone wrong, that was because my brain had gone wrong. Most of it had not survived the fall. Too much of it had been entirely lost for me even to guess what had been there before, but I was filled with a desire — no, a mania would be a better word, a mania to establish what the world had been like that I had left. I could recall nothing about that world, except that it was unlike the one I found myself in.
This mania tortured me. What had the world been? What was the world? And what had I been, what manner of being? What was the essential “I” — why had I never ascertained that when I had the chance?
The mania propelled me down a street. More accurate: the mania brought me into a sort of being a street that flowed past me. I flung up my hands to let it slip under my arms.
There were beings on the street, beings much like me. There was also a rigid etiquette that forbade my speaking to certain people, however desperately I needed help, however close I might be to — but in the old world (that I did remember, piercingly sharp!) we had death to drive us; here there was only mania.
I try to put it down calmly, clearly. Of course it won’t go. Some foods you can’t digest, only spit out. Some poisons don’t kill; they embalm you in a living mummification, where the mind glazes over and becomes a distorting mirror.
Out and out the street rolled. It rattled off a round building that spun like a great drum releasing ribbon — but all the while it was my arms that did it. I understood then, though I don’t now. At last the mania drove me to a man who sat over a small fire in the street so that his face was obscured by smoke. The etiquette allowed me to speak to him before he went by because his eyes were hidden.
As we were carried along by the street, I called to him: “What was the world like that I left? I must know to be set free.”
He said: “You do not know about the sheep and the goats then? I can tell you only about the sheep. You must find another who will tell you about the goats.”
All this I could hardly understand, for we seemed to be moving along at a grinding rate. Perhaps at this point I was hitting him, but I never saw his face for smoke, and without waiting for an answer, he began to tell me about the sheep, in an automatic manner that suggested that throughout the ages he had had to suffer an endless retelling of his tale.
“There was this big field of sheep,” he said. “Many of the sheep had lambs, and they were all vacantly happy. They had no sort of worries, financial, matrimonial, moral, or religious, and the grazing was good.
“The only thing that bothered them was the railway. Running along the side of the field where they preferred to lie was an embankment, along the top of which diesel trains ran.
“Every day, twelve diesel trains ran along the top of the embankment. They never stopped, for there was nothing to stop for, and they never sounded their hooters, for there was nothing to sound their hooters for. But they sped by very fast and noisily.
“Every time one of the trains rushed by, the sheep and the lambs were compelled to get up and run away from the embankment to the far side of their field, because they were afraid the trains might catch them. It was always a long while after the train had gone before they could settle down to their grazing again.
“One of the oldest sheep in the field was considerably wiser than the rest. When they had all stampeded across the field for the twelfth time one day, she addressed the rest of the flock.
“ ‘My friends,’ she said, ‘I have studied carefully the path that these horrid metal monsters take when they charge through our pasture. I have observed that they never come down from the embankment. We have always prided ourselves, with some justification, that we have run away so fast that the horrid metal monsters could not catch us. But I want you to consider an entirely new theory, based on my observations. Friends, suppose the horrid metal monsters cannot come down from the embankment?”
At this, there was some derisive laughter, particularly from the fleet of foot. Undismayed the old sheep continued.
“ ‘Observe what follows if my theory is correct. If the horrid metal monsters cannot come down from the embankment, then they are not chasing us. In fact, my friends, their perceptions may be so alien they are not even aware of us as they clatter by.’
“This was so startlingly novel that everyone began bleating at once. As several sheep pointed out, were this hypothesis true, it would imply that the pasture and they themselves were not central to the scheme of things; which was an intolerable heresy and should be punished. The fleetest lamb contradicted this, saying that people should be free to think what they liked, provided they kept it to themselves. Where the hypothesis was dangerous was that belief in it would clearly mean nobody would bother to run very fast when the horrid metal monsters came, and in no time the flock would become decadent and unable to run at all.
“When they had all had their say, the wise old sheep spoke again.
“ ‘Fortunately, my theory can be tested empirically,’ she said. ‘In the morning, when the first horrid metal monster comes, we will not run away. We will lie by the embankment, and you will see that the horrid metal monster flashes by without being aware of us.’
“They greeted this proposal with bleats of horror: it was an insult to common sense. But as night fell, such was the enlightenment of the flock, it became apparent that the wise old sheep would have her way, and that in the morning they would co-operate in this dangerous experiment.
“When the wise old sheep perceived this, she began to have qualms. Supposing she were mistaken, and they were all killed by the horrid metal monsters?
“The rest of the flock fell asleep at last, and she decided she must go alone to the top of the embankment and study the enemy territory. If she saw anything to alarm her, she could then call off the experiment.
“To get to the top of the embankment was more difficult than she had expected. There was wire to be negotiated, a steep slope to be climbed, gorse bushes to be pushed through. The wise old sheep was unused to such exertions. As she gained the top of the embankment, she suffered a heart attack and died.
“The flock woke in the morning and soon observed the hindquarters of the wise old sheep on the top of the embankment. A council was held. It was generally agreed that to honour her memory they must undertake her experiment.
“So when the first horrid metal monster was heard approaching, every one of the sheep sat tight where she was. The horrid metal monster roared down the line, struck the body of the wise old sheep, plunged over the embankment, and killed all the sheep without exception.
This story baffled me. “What happened?” I asked the faceless man.
“The grass grew tall in the field again.”
I left him, or I let the road whirl him away. Now the buildings were moving past more rapidly. The effect was not as if I was running forw
The mania had me savagely again, and impelled me to speak to an old woman who stood with a stick to support her. Her eyes were closed, or it may be that she had lids with no pupils underneath, but in either case, she never looked at me in the time I was before her.
“I understand nothing,” I said. “I only know that there is suffering. Why do we suffer, old woman?”
“I will tell you a story,” she said. Though we were both whirling away, she spoke softly, so that I could hardly catch her crazy words.
“When the Devil was a child, he was kept well away from all knowledge of the bitter things of the world. Only the happy things were allowed into his presence. Sin, unhappiness, ugliness, illness, age, all were secret from him.
“One day, the Devil escaped from his nanny and climbed over the garden wall. He walked down the road, full of excitement, until he met an old man bent double with age. The Devil stopped and looked at him.
“ ‘Why do you stare at me?’ said the old man. ‘Anyone would think you had never seen an old man before.’
“The Devil saw that his eyes were dim, his mouth slack, his skin full of wrinkles.
“ ‘What has happened to you?’ he asked.
“ ‘This is what happens to everyone. It is an incurable disease called time.’
“ ‘But what have you done to deserve it?’
“ ‘Nothing. I have got drunk, I have lied occasionally, I have slept with pretty women, I have worked no more than I had to. But those are not bad things. The punishment is greater than the crime, young man.’
“ ‘When will you get better?’ asked the Devil.