Brian Aldiss: Greybeard

“I suppose there must still be depots of coal about, if you know where to look,” Greybeard said to Martha. “Presumably there’s not a coal mine left in action. Or maybe they fuel it with wood. We’d better be wary but it hardly looks as if its intentions are hostile.”

“I know now how savages feel when the missionaries turn up with a cargo of Bibles,” Martha said. She was looking at a long banner draped along the steamer’s railings which bore the words: REPENT — THE MASTER COMES! And beneath, in smaller letters, The Second Generation Needs Your Gifts and Prayers. Donations Wanted To Further Our Cause.

“Looks as if the Bibles have a price tag,” Greybeard observed. A group of people on the steamer came forward and removed a section of rail; they lowered a small boat into the water, obviously with the intention of coming ashore. At the same time, a loud-hailer opened up with a preliminary rasp and began to address the women ashore.

“Ladies of Wittenham Island, the Master calls you! He greets you and he will deign to see you. But this time he will not leave his holy vessel. If you want to speak with him, you’d better come aboard. We’re putting out a boat to ferry you and your gifts over. Remember, it costs only a dozen eggs to get you into his presence, and for a chicken you can have a word with him.”

The rowing boat put out from the steamer and laboured towards the shore. Two women rowed it, bent double over the oars, coughing and gasping as if on the verge of thrombosis. They became less insubstantial as, emerging from the mist, they reached the bank and climbed ashore.

Martha clutched Greybeard’s hand.

“Do you recognize one of those women? The one spitting into the water now?”

“It can’t be! It looks like old — what was her name?”

“We left her at whatever that place was — Becky! It is, it’s Becky Thomas!”

Martha hurried forward. The women of the island were jostling to get into the boat. Carried in their arms or in baskets were provisions, presumably offerings to lay before the Master. Becky stood to one side, watching the proceedings apathetically. She looked even dirtier than she had in her Sparcot days, and much older, though her body remained plump. Her cheeks were sunken and her nose sharp.

Regarding her, Martha thought, “She’s of Algy’s and my parents’ generation. Amazing how some of them still survive, despite those gloomy predictions we used to hear about everyone dying young. Becky must be eighty-five if she’s a day.”

Arid, stabbingly, “What’ll be left of the world if Algy and I ever reach that age?”

As Martha approached her, Becky changed her position and stood with her hands on her hips. On one scrawny wrist, Martha noted, was strapped the battered old non-functioning watch that had once been Towin’s pride. Where was he?

“Hello, Becky,” she said. “It’s a small wet world. Are you taking a summer cruise?”

Becky showed little excitement at meeting up with Martha again, or at seeing Greybeard, Charley, and Pitt as they came over to speak to her.

“I belong to the Master now,” she told them. “That’s why I’m privileged even at my age to bear one of the Second Generation children. I shall be delivered of it in the autumn.”

Pitt cackled coarsely. “You was expecting when we left you at that fair place, however many years that was ago. Whatever happened to that kid? I reckon it was a phantom litter, wasn’t it? I always thought so at the time.”

“I was married then, you coarse old brute, you are,” Becky said, “and the Master had not then taken on his Masterhood, so of course I had no issue. Only now I’ve seen the Light can I conceive. If you want children, Martha, you’d better bring a gift to the Master and see what he can do for you. He works miracles, he does.”

“What’s happened to old Towin then, Becky?” Charley asked. “Isn’t he on the boat with you?”

She wrinkled her face into a frown.

“Old Towin Thomas was a sinful man, Charley Samuels, and I don’t think of him no more. He wouldn’t believe in the Master, or take the Master’s cures, and as a result, he died of a malignant cancer that wasted him away until he didn’t weigh above a stone and a half. Frankly, it was a blessing when he passed over. I’ve followed the Master ever since then. I’m now coming up for my two hundred and twenty-third birthday. I don’t look a day over a hundred, I reckon, do I?”

Greybeard said, “That line sounds familiar. Do we know this Master of yours, then, Becky? It’s not Bunny Jingadangelow, is it?”

“You were always free with your tongue, Greybeard,” Becky said. “You mind how you address him, because he doesn’t use that old name now.”

“It sounds as though he still uses the old tricks, though,” Greybeard said, turning to Martha. “Let’s go aboard and see the old rascal.”

“I’ve no wish to see him,” Martha said.

“Well — look, we don’t want to be stuck here on this sea in this mist. We could be lost here till autumn comes, and by then we ought to be well on our way down river. Let’s go and see Jingadangelow and get him to give us a tow. It’s obvious that the captain of the ship must know his way about.”

They did as he said, and ferried themselves out to the steamer in Pitt’s boat. They climbed aboard, although the deck was already crowded with the faithful and their offerings.

Greybeard had to wait while the women from the island entered the Master’s cabin one by one to receive his blessing before he was allowed to enter. He was then shown in with some ceremoney.

Bunny Jingadangelow sprawled in a deck chair, wrapped in the greasy equivalent of a Roman toga, a garment he evidently considered more fitting for his new calling than the antique collection of rabbit skins which had previously been his most notable garment. Round him — and now being carted away by an old man in shorts — were material tributes to his godly qualities, vegetables, lettuces with plushy fat hearts, ducks, fish, eggs, a fowl with its neck newly wrung.

Jingadangelow himself still affected his curling moustache and sideburns. The rotundity that once afflicted only his chin now covered new territory; his body was corpulent, his face assumed the pasty and lop-sided podginess of a gibbous moon, and was of a hitherto unprecedented blandness — though it gathered a good percentage of its area into a scowl as Greybeard entered. Becky had evidently passed on the news of his visit.

“I wanted to see you because I always thought you had a rare gift of insight,” Greybeard said.

“That is perfectly true. It led me to divinity. But I assure you, Mr. Greybeard, since I gather that you still call yourself by that undistinguished sobriquet, that I have no intention of exchanging gossip about the past. I have outlived the past, as I intend to outlive the future.”

“You are still in your old Eternal Life racket, I see, though the props are more elaborate.”

“You observe this handbell? I have merely to ring it to have you removed from here. You must not insult me. I have achieved sanctity.” He rested a podgy hand on the table by his side, and pouted in discontent. “If you haven’t arrived to join my Second Generationists, just what do you want?”

“Well, I thought — I came to see you about Becky Thomas and this pregnancy of hers. You’ve no—”

“That’s what you told me last time we met, centuries ago. Becky’s no business of yours — she’s become one of the faithful since her husband died. You fancy yourself a bit as a leader of men, don’t you, without actually leading them?”

“I don’t lead anyone, because I—”

“Because you’re a sort of wanderer! What is your goal in life? You haven’t one! Throw in your lot with me, man, and live out your days in comfort. I don’t spend all my life tramping round this lake in a leaky boat. I’ve got a base at the south end called Hagbourne. Come there with me.”