Brian Aldiss: Greybeard

“That was what my father brought me up on. I’ve told you about that mouldy little shop of his…” One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backwards in time.

“I’ll leave you to get on with your patrol,” Charley said, but Greybeard clutched his arm. He had caught a noise upstream distinct from the sound of the water.

He moved forward to the water’s edge and looked. Something was coming downstream, though overhanging foliage obscured details. Breaking into a trot, Greybeard made for the stone bridge, with Charley following at a fast walk behind him.

From the crown of the bridge, they had a clear view upstream. A cumbersome boat was dipping into view only some eighty yards away. By its curved bow, he guessed it had once been a powered craft. Now it was being rowed and poled along by a number of white-heads, while a sail hung slackly from the mast. Greybeard pulled his elder whistle from an inner pocket and blew on it two long blasts. He nodded to Charley and hurried over to the water mill where Big Jim Mole lived.

Mole was already opening the door as Greybeard arrived. The years had yet to drain off all his natural ferocity. He was a stocky man with a fierce piggy face and a tangle of grey hair protruding from his ears as well as his skull. He seemed to survey Greybeard with nostrils as well as eyes.

“What’s the racket about, Greybeard?” he asked.

Greybeard told him. Mole came out smartly, buttoning his ancient army greatcoat. Behind him came Major Trouter, a small man who limped badly and helped himself along with a stick. As he emerged into the grey daylight, he began to shout orders in his high squeaking voice. People were still hanging about after the false alarm. They began to fall in promptly if raggedly, women as well as men, into a pre-arranged pattern of defence.

The population of Sparcot was a many-coated beast. The individuals that comprised it had sewn themselves into a wide variety of clothes and rags that passed for clothes. Coats of carpet and skirts of curtain material were to be seen. Some of the men wore waistcoats cobbled from fox skins, clumsily cured; some of the women wore torn army greatcoats. Despite this variety, the general effect was colourless, and nobody stood out particularly against the neutral landscape. A universal distribution of sunken cheeks and grey hairs added to the impression of a sad uniformity.

Many an old mouth coughed out the winter’s air. Many a back was bent, many a leg dragged. Sparcot was a citadel for the ailments: arthritis, lumbago, rheumatism, cataract, pneumonia, influenza, sciatica, dizziness. Chests, livers, backs, heads, caused much complaint, and the talk in an evening was mostly of the weather and toothache. For all that, the villagers responded spryly to the sound of the whistle.

Greybeard observed this with approval, even while wondering how necessary it was; he had helped Trouter organize the defence system before an increasing estrangement with Mole and Trouter had caused him to take a less prominent part in affairs.

The two long whistle blasts signified a threat by water. Though most travellers nowadays were peaceable (and paid toll before they passed under Sparcot bridge), few of the villagers had forgotten the day, five or six years ago, when they had been threatened by a solitary river pirate armed with a flamethrower. Flame-throwers seemed to be growing scarcer. Like petrol, machine-guns, and ammunition, they were the produce of another century, and the relics of a vanished world. But anything arriving by water was the subject for a general stand to.

Accordingly, a strongly armed party of villagers — many of them carried home-made bows and arrows was gathered along the riverside by the time the strange boat came up. They crouched behind a low and broken wall, ready to attack or defend, a little extra excitement shaking through their veins.

The approaching boat travelled sideways to the stream. It was manned by as unruly a set of landlubbers as ever cast anchor. The oarsmen seemed as much concerned with keeping the boat from capsizing as with making progress forward; as it was, they appeared to be having little luck in either endeavour.

This lack of skill was due not only to the difficulty inherent in rowing a fifty-year-old, thirty-feet long cruiser with a rotten hull; nor to the presence aboard of fully a dozen people with their possessions. In the cockpit of the cruiser, struggling under the grip of four men, was a rebellious pack reindeer.

Although the beast had been pollarded — as the custom was since the animal was introduced into the country by one of the last authoritarian governments some twenty years ago — it was strong enough to cause considerable damage; and reindeer were more valuable than men. They could be used for milking and meat production when cattle were scarce, and they made good transport animals; whereas men could only grow older.

Despite this distraction, one of the navigators, acting as lookout and standing in the bow of the boat, sighted the massed forces of Sparcot and called out a warning. She was a tall dark woman, lean and hard, her dyed black hair knotted down under a scarf. When she called to the rowers, the promptness with which they rested on their oars showed how glad they were to do so. Someone squatting behind one of the baggages of clothing piled on deck passed the dark woman a white flag. She thrust it aloft and called out to the waiting villagers over the water.

“What’s she yelling about?” John Meller asked. He was an old soldier who had once been a sort of batman to Mole, until the latter threw him out in exasperation as useless. Nearly ninety, Meller was as thin as a staff and as deaf as a stone, though his one remaining eye was still sharp.

The woman’s voice came again, confident though it asked a favour. “Let us come by in peace. We have no wish to harm you and no need to stop. Let us by, villagers!”

Greybeard bawled her message into Meller’s ear. The whitehead shook his scruffy skull and grinned to show he had not heard. “Kill the men and rape the women! I’ll take the dark-haired hussy in the front.”

Mole and Trouter came forward, shouting orders. They had evidently decided they were under no serious threat from the boat.

“We must stop them and inspect them,” Mole said. “Get the pole out. Move there, you men! Let’s have a parley with this shower and see who they are and what they want. They must have something we need.”

During this activity, Towin Thomas had come up beside Greybeard and Charley Samuels. In his efforts to see the boat clearly, he knotted his face into a grimace. He dug Greybeard in the ribs with a patched elbow.

“Hey, Greybeard, that reindeer wouldn’t come amiss for the heavy work, would it?” he said, sucking the end of his cudgel reflectively. “We could use it behind the plough, couldn’t we?”

“We’ve no right to take it from them.”

“You’re not getting religious ideas about that reindeer, are you? You’re letting old Charley’s line of talk get you down.”

“I never listen to a thing either Charley or you say,” Greybeard said.

A long pole that had done duty carrying telephone wires in the days when a telephone system existed was slid out across the water, until its tip rested between two stones on the farther bank. The river narrowed here towards the ruined bridge farther downstream. This spot had afforded the villagers a useful revenue for years; their levies on river-going craft supplemented their less enthusiastic attempts at husbandry. It was the one inspired idea of Big Jim Mole’s otherwise dull and oppressive reign. To reinforce the threat of the pole, the Sparcot men now showed themselves in strength along the bank. Mole ran forward brandishing a sword, calling for the strangers to heave to.