Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1960s

The stranger was standing half-concealed behind the trunk of a tree, gazing uncertainly at the trundler and Balank. When Balank raised a hand in tentative greeting, the stranger responded hesitantly. When Balank called out his identification number, the man came cautiously into the open, replying with his own number. The trundler searched in its files, issued an okay, and they moved forward.

As they got level with the man, they saw he had a small mobile hut pitched behind him. He shook hands with Balank, exchanging personal signals, and gave his name as Cyfal.

Balank was a tall slender man, almost hairless, with the closed expression on his face that might be regarded as characteristic of his epoch. Cyfal, on the other hand, was as slender but much shorter, so that he appeared stockier; his thatch of hair covered all his skull and obtruded slightly onto his face. Something in his manner, or perhaps the expression around his eyes, spoke of the rare type of man whose existence was chiefly spent outside the city.

‘I am the timber officer for this region,’ he said, and indicated his wristcaster as he added, ‘I was notified you might be in this area, Balank.’

‘Then you’ll know I’m after the werewolf.’

‘ The werewolf? There are plenty of them moving through this region, now that the human population is concentrated almost entirely in the cities.’

Something in the tone of the remark sounded like social criticism to Balank; he glanced at the trundler without replying.

‘Anyhow, you’ve got a good night to go hunting him,’ Cyfal said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Full moon.’

Balank gave no answer. He knew better than Cyfal, he thought, that when the moon was at full, the werewolves reached their time of greatest power.

The trundler was ranging about nearby, an antenna slowly spinning. It made Balank uneasy. He followed it. Man and machine stood together on the edge of a little cliff behind the mobile hut. The cliff was like the curl of foam on the peak of a giant Pacific comber, for here the great wave of earth that was this hill reached its highest point. Beyond, in broken magnificence, it fell down into fresh valleys. The way down was clothed in beeches, just as the way up had been in oaks.

‘That’s the valley of the Pracha. You can’t see the river from here.’ Cyfal had come up behind them.

‘Have you seen anyone who might have been the werewolf? His real name is Gondalug, identity number YB5921 stroke AS25061, City Zagrad.’

Cyfal said, ‘I saw someone this way this morning. There was more than one of them, I believe.’ Something in his manner made Balank look at him closely. ‘I didn’t speak to any of them, nor them to me.’

‘You know them?’

‘I’ve spoken to many men out here in the silent forests, and found out later they were werewolves. They never harmed me.’

Balank said, ‘But you’re afraid of them?’

The half-question broke down Cyfal’s reserve. ‘Of course I’m afraid of them. They’re not human – not real men. They’re enemies of men. They are, aren’t they? They have powers greater than ours.’

‘They can be killed. They haven’t machines, as we have. They’re not a serious menace.’

‘You talk like a city man! How long have you been hunting after this one?’

‘Eight days. I had a shot at him once with the laser, but he was gone. He’s a grey man, very hairy, sharp features.’

‘You’ll stay and have supper with me? Please. I need someone to talk to.’

For supper, Cyfal ate part of a dead wild animal he had cooked. Privately revolted, Balank ate his own rations out of the trundler. In this and other ways, Cyfal was an anachronism. Hardly any timber was needed nowadays in the cities, or had been for millions of years. There remained some marginal uses for wood, necessitating a handful of timber officers, whose main job was to fix signals on old trees that had fallen dangerously, so that machines could fly over later and extract them like rotten teeth from the jaws of the forest. The post of timber officer was being filled more and more by machines, as fewer men were to be found each generation who would take on such a dangerous and lonely job far from the cities.

Over the eons of recorded history, mankind had raised machines that made his cities places of delight. Machines had replaced man’s early inefficient machines; machines had replanned forms of transport; machines had come to replan man’s life for him. The old stone jungles of man’s brief adolescence were buried as deep in memory as the coal jungles of the Carboniferous.

Far away in the pile of discarded yesterdays, man and machines had found how to create life. New foods were produced, neither meat nor vegetable, and the ancient wheel of the past was broken forever, for now the link between man and the land was severed: agriculture, the task of Adam, was as dead as steamships.

Mental attitudes were moulded by physical change. As the cities became self-supporting, so mankind needed only cities and the resources of cities. Communications between city and city became so good that physical travel was no longer necessary; city was separated from city by unchecked vegetation as surely as planet is cut off from planet. Few of the hairless denizens of the cities ever thought of outside; those who went physically outside invariably had some element of the abnormal in them.

‘The werewolves grow up in cities as we do,’ Balank said. ‘It’s only in adolescence they break away and seek the wilds. You knew that, I suppose?’

Cyfal’s overhead light was unsteady, flickering in an irritating way. ‘Let’s not talk of werewolves after sunset,’ he said.

‘The machines will hunt them all down in time.’

‘Don’t be so sure of that. They’re worse at detecting a werewolf than a man is.’

‘I suppose you realise that’s social criticism, Cyfal?’

Cyfal pulled a long sour face and discourteously switched on his wristphone. After a moment, Balank did the same. The operator came up at once, and he asked to be switched to the news satellite.

He wanted to see something fresh on the current time exploration project, but there was nothing new on the files. He was advised to dial back in an hour. Looking over at Cyfal, he saw the timber officer had tuned to a dance show of some sort; the cavorting figures in the little projection were badly disorted from this angle. He rose and went to the door of the hut.

The trundler stood outside, ever alert, ignoring him. An untrustworthy light lay over the clearing. Deep twilight reigned, shot through by the rays of the newly risen moon; he was surprised how fast the day had drained away.

Suddenly, he was conscious of himself as an entity, living, with a limited span of life, much of which had already drained away unregarded. The moment of introspection was so uncharacteristic of him that he was frightened. He told himself it was high time he traced down the werewolf and got back to the city: too much solitude was making him morbid.

As he stood there, he heard Cyfal come up behind. The man said, ‘I’m sorry if I was surly when I was so genuinely glad to see you. It’s just that I’m not used to the way city people think. You mustn’t take offence – I’m afraid you might even think I’m a werewolf myself.’

‘That’s foolish! We took a blood spec on you as soon as you were within sighting distance.’ For all that, he realised that Cyfal made him uneasy. Going to where the trundler guarded the door, he took up his laser gun and slipped it under his arm. ‘Just in case,’ he said.

‘Of course. You think he’s around – Gondalug, the werewolf? Maybe following you instead of you following him?’

‘As you said, it’s full moon. Besides, he hasn’t eaten in days. They won’t touch synthfoods once the lycanthropic gene asserts itself, you know.’