Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1960s

That cityhive and what its singeing symbolled did cosmic Charteris survey from the shaking platform.

Angeline shook the Master’s arm. ‘Come on, Masterpiece, let’s shake this unaimed scenario before the whole action goes Vesuvius! Come on! Uncoil the Kundalini!’

He stood enwrapped staring as the centuries fevered to the edges and breathed and blew themselves to heat again and their stones ran in showers kill slate cracked down the long glacier of mansard roofs and hurtled into the extinct square below to be devoured with its old common order in the long morain of alienation.

He pushed her away.

‘Colin! Colin! I’m not flame-proof if you are! It’s the last loot-in else!’

Rich curtains at the windows of an old embroidery now released a noise like cheering and whistling swept the blaze and the crushed bodies in the square below burst into conflagration with amazing joy. One or two cars were still careening madly about to lie with black bellies uppermost lewdly burning tyres still rotating as their votaries dragged themselves away. The emptying bowls held ashes and a lascivious flute held court.

Angelina was having a mild hysteric fit, crying this was London burning and slapping Charteris wildly on the face. He in his eyes scribbled on the retinal wall saw the graffiti of her blazing hate and all behind her flames like Christmas cacti flowering with a lorry coming fast recalled her husband the white land as it rushes up but no impact and his blows and knew among the microseconds lay a terminal alternative to silence her and have no more inspector at his feast for she as much as any of the predelic enemies among the Neanders dream her speckled wake.

She in her turn was not too wild to see a redder shade of crimson leap up his retaining wall and with a lesser scream now our valleys fall echoing before them now in our shattered towns the smoke clings still as the ulcerated countryside rumpled outwards at predatomi speed to her fluttering chimera she did the sleight-of-hand and dodged him as he once more sprang and pushed clutching at his ancient blue coat of Inner Relief but now no Christmas innocence. Slipping he fell and at the rickety platform edge hung down to see bloodied cobbles under surflare. With instinct she on top of him flung her bony trunk loading him back and cosseted him and goosed and mewed and sat him up and like a mother made all kindliness but milk there though the sun novaed.

Half-stunned he sighed, ‘You are my all-ternatives,’ and she half-wept upon him at such grudged sign.

Their hair singed and Buddy Docre came in an illusory moment with Ruby who fancied her and Bill and Greta yelling murder. They together all but not in unison climbed tumbled down the foul inner chimney stair and ran among the Sailing lava of another Eurape to the battered cavalcade jarring to take off in another street with the nervewrecked bangwaggon.

‘Boreas!’ cast the whiteface Master. ‘We must save Boreas!’

And she glowed him amazed still in his headwound he had some human part that plugged for the schillerskulled director. But she was learning now and now stayed silent at his murderous feast with inward tremor knowing she would not break a single crust if Boreas loafed or died as maybe the Master minded: a gulf of more than language lay between them.

Vanquished she tottered against Ruby his face moonstrous in the setglow and he grasped to the smouldering pompous columns gasping ‘Change gear Ange your way doesn’t have to be his or my car in the Chartercade you know that you know how I skid for you even since before Phil’s day two rotten no good bums –’

But he gave up as through her frantic goosetears she began on tearawy note that she was not good enough for him was no good to any man deserved to die or could render to no man the true grips of loves clutchment till the others turned back calling and Charteris took her failing wrist abraptly.

For him the self was once again in its throne called back from the purged night’s exile and he commanded no more as he faced the lack of his own divinity in all its anarchic alternative. His pyre grew behind him as they barged off across the ruby pavements for as Buddy passed a reefer he flipped the photograph that he had godded himself because they had to crown some earthly king then had forgotten that he was their moulding not his make so tunnelling upwards through the sparce countryside the mole-truth set up its tiny hill that all was counterfate in a counterfeit kingdoom.

He had cried for Boreas because that artifacer could help blow blazes from his parky wavering nature with the bellows of his counterfaking craft

Before real miracles he had to dislocate the miraculous in himself. New dogs shagged along alleyways with ties of flame. A man ran blazing down a side street. Dischorded impages of choleranis sang along the bars of his perplextives. All were infected from him and in that pandemetic lay his power to make or sicken till nature itself couched underground.

A smoke pall canopiled overhead the new angrimals swimming powerfully in it or hopping along the crestfallen buildings. Shops stood plagened open entrailed on the echoing gravements as men noised abroad and struck at each other with fansticks more than one fire was buckling up its lootage as they acidheaded out towards the oceanic piracy of their motorways.

Famine Starting At The Head

She clad herself in nylon

Walked the flagstones by my side

The feathered eagle

To the skies

No more uprises

Instead a palm of dust grows

You know that earthly tree now bears no bread

A hand outstretched is trembling

The flagstaff has an ensign

Only madmen see

With famine starting at the head

Some judy delivers a punchline

In the breadbasket today

No fond embraces

Are afoot

Death puts a boot

Where the bounce was once

In among the listening lilies a silent tread

Bite the fruit to taste the stone

Throughout the Gobi seed awaits

The rain to stalk

Famine starting at the head

He only has to say one word

Roses grow from an empty bowl

In our shuttered streets

The cars roam

Don’t need a home

Or volume control

Wandering sizeless with the unaimed dead

We hear his voice cry ‘Paradise!’

On the Golden Coast the cymbals

Start to sound

Salvation starting at the head

Tortures

There’s no answer from the old exchange

I want to push inside you

The sensations you find in yourself

May just be within my range

Grimly sitting round a table

Fifteen men with life at stake

They may torture themselves but those tortures

Will not make them awake

The cards were somehow different

The board I had not seen before

Their iron maiden gleamed dimly cherry-red with sex

Down in the basement I reached Low Point X

Last year they stopped their playing

Phone just ceased to buzz

But if you find them there tomorrow

Better start in there praying

Reincarnation where the cobwebs

Are comes daily from your keep

We may torture ourselves but those tortures

Cannot break our sleep

Poor A!

(Gurdjieff’s Mocking Song)

Poor A! Poor A! Now there’s a clever man!

He only wants to talk and he is happy!

I could have pulled his trousers off

Un-noticed, silly chappie!

Poor A! Poor A! What sort of man is it

Who only wants to talk and he’s okay?

I tell you everyone’s like that –

They fill the world today.

I might say poor old A is rather better

Then some wild talkniks I have met, a

Chap who in his way knows what is what –

On military onions he knows quite a lot.