Brian Aldiss: Greybeard

“But this Master role, good heavens, it is not my only role. I wish to leave it behind.”

“I don’t doubt you have a dozen roles you can play, Jingadangelow, but I’m equally sure that the essence of you lies in your roles. We don’t want you with us — I have to be brutally frank. We are happy! For all that everyone has lost since the terrible accident back in 1981, one thing at least we have gained — there is no longer need for the hypocrisies and shams of civilization; we can be our natural selves. But you would cause dissent among us, because you carry the old rigmarole of mask-wearing into these simple days. You’re too old to drop it now — how many thousands of years old are you? — and so you would never find peace with us.”

“You and I are philosophers, Greybeard! The salt of the earth! I want to share your simple life with you.”

“No. You couldn’t share it. You could only spoil it. It’s no deal. I’m sorry.”

He took down the lantern from the stone shelf and put it into Jingadangelow’s hand. The Master looked at him, then slowly swung his head to see Martha’s face. Extending a hand, he clutched the hem of her dress.

“Mrs. Greybeard, your husband’s grown hard since we met at Swifford Fair. You persuade him. I tell you there are children on the downs near here — Chammoy was one of them. The three of us could hunt them out and instal ourselves as teachers. They’d look after us while we taught them all our old knowledge. Convince this hard-hearted man of yours, I beg you.”

She said, “You heard what he said. He’s the boss.”

Jingadangelow sighed.

Almost to himself he said, “In the end, we’re all alone. Consciousness — it’s a burden.”

Slowly, he helped himself to his feet. Martha also rose. A tear forced itself from his right eye and rolled with some command down his cheek and over the expanse of his chin, where a crinkle diverted it down towards his neck.

“I offer you my humility, my humanity, and you reject it!”

“At least you have the chance of getting back to your divinity.”

He sighed and produced the effect of bowing without, in fact, doing more than bend his knees slightly.

“I trust you will all be gone early in the morning,” he said. Turning, he moved out of the door, shut it behind him, and left them in darkness.

Martha worked her hand into her husband’s.

“What a splendid speech you made him, sweet! Perhaps you are imaginative after all. Oh, to hear you say as you did, “We are happy!” You are truly a brave man, my beloved Algy. We should take the untrustworthy old fraud with us, if he could regularly provoke you to such eloquence.”

For once, Greybeard wanted to silence her teasing sweetness. He strained his ears to the sounds Jingadangelow made, or had ceased to make. For after a few steps down the creaking wooden stair, Jingadangelow had paused, there had been a muffled noise Greybeard failed to interpret, and then silence. Putting Martha aside with a muttered word, he felt for where he had leant his rifle, took it up, and pulled open the door.

Jingadangelow’s light still shone. The Master no longer carried it. He stood on the floor of the barn with his hands shakingly above his head. Round him pranced three unbelievable figures, one of them grasping his lantern and swinging it about, so that the shadows whirled round the building, over roof timbers, floor and walls.

The figures were grotesque, but it was difficult to make them out in the dim and flickering light. They appeared to have four legs and two arms each, and to stand at a half-crouch. Their ears stood up sharp on their skulls; they had snouty muzzles and long chins. They leapt about the human staggering in their midst. An onlooker might have been forgiven for mistaking them for mediaeval representations of the devil.

All the hairs in Greybeard’s beard crackled with a flow of superstitious fear. Purely by reflex action, he brought up his rifle and fired.

The noise was overwhelming. A further section of the wall at the far end of the barn fell inwards into the mud. At the same time, the dancing figures with the lantern uttered a cry and fell. The light crashed amid scampering feet and went out.

“Oh God, oh Martha, bring a light!” Greybeard called, in a sudden alarm. He went lumbering down the dark stair as Pitt and Charley ran on to the balcony. Charley carried their lantern.

With a whoop of excitement, Pitt loosened an arrow at the escaping figures, but it fell short and remained quivering, upright in the dirt. He and Charley followed Greybeard down to the ground with Martha close behind, bringing her lantern. Jingadangelow leant against the safest wall, weeping out his shock; he seemed physically unharmed.

On the floor, huddled under a pair of badger skins, lay a small boy. One of the skins was fastened low about his body, providing him with an additional pair of legs; the other was fixed so that its mask covered the boy’s face. In addition, his lean body was smeared with coloured paint or mud. In his belt was a small knife. The rifle shot had gone through his thigh. He was unconscious and losing blood rapidly.

Charley and Pitt dropped on to their knees beside Greybeard as he pulled aside the badger skin. The wound was a disease feeding on the smooth flesh of the boy’s leg.

They hardly heard Jingadangelow blubbering over them. “They’d have killed me but for you, Greybeard. Little savages! You saved my life! The vicious little blighters were lying in wait for me! I caught Chammoy near here, and I think they were after her. Little savages! I mustn’t let my followers find me here! I must still be the Master! It is my destiny, curse it.”

Pitt went over to him, facing him squarely. “We don’t want to see anything more of you. Shut your noise up and get out of here.”

Jingadangelow pulled himself erect. “Do you imagine I’d care to stay?”

He staggered out of the barn into the befoliaged night as Martha applied a tourniquet to the boy’s leg. As she tightened it, the child’s eyes opened, gazing up at the pattern of shadows on the roof. She leant over and smiled down at him.

“Whoever you are, it’s going to be all right, darling,” she said.

The dinghy was off early next morning, with Pitt’s boat trailing behind it. Pitt sat in it alone, nodding to himself, sometimes grinning and rubbing his nose. When they left Hagbourne, the day was overcast, but as they moved on the next stage of the journey that they hoped would one day take them to the mouth of the river, the sun broke through the clouds and the wind freshened.

The mouldering strip of harbour, with the Second Generation steamer tied up alongside it, was deserted. To their relief, none of Jingadangelow’s party had appeared to give them a send-off, hostile or otherwise. When they were some way out, a solitary figure appeared on the shore and waved to them; they were too far away to identify it.

Greybeard and Charley shipped their oars as the breeze took the sail, and the former went to sit at the tiller beside Martha. They looked at each other but did not speak.

His thoughts were heavy. The fraudulent Master was right in at least one respect: human hands were turned against children in practice, if not in theory. He himself had fired at the first child he had seen close to! Perhaps there was some kind of filicidal urge in man forcing him to destruction.

It was clear at least that the drive to self-preservation was strong in the new generation — and since they were so very thin on the ground, that was well. They were wary of man. By their dress it was clear they identified themselves more with the animal kind than with the crazy methuselahs who still inbabited the earth. Well, in a few more years, things would be easier for them.