Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1960s

‘It’s easy enough to talk!’ Anthony said, and walked out of the terrace, leaving his coffee untouched.

When the others had gone home, my wife and I sat chatting and gazing into the night. Imago was clearing away the coffee cups. Unexpectedly, he said, ‘Sir!’

‘What is it, Imago?’

‘Subject, evening’s discussion, sir. Discussion revealed clearly marvellous variety and complexity of human existence. My deduction is correct, sir?’

My wife and I looked at each other.

‘I don’t think any of us would have regarded it in that light, Imago,’ she said – I thought a little uneasily.

‘Every few years, madam, irrespective of other factors, for humans different quality of experience. Is so? Different view of self? Correct deduction?

Somehow, I didn’t want to admit as much. So I said, ‘Certainly, one experiences such things as the passage of time differently at different periods of one’s life.’

‘Of one’s human life, sir. Exactly. Not only different quality of experience, also different quality of time-enjoyment.’

‘Take the cups, Imago, please.’

He stood his ground, against all robotic programming. ‘Robots, sir. Imago just realises: their only source of pride, that they are made in man’s image. But is not so. Are too simple. Are more made in image of dumb things like elevators, traffic lights, automobiles, clockwork acrobats. No enjoyment of time’s passage at all.’

‘What follows?’ my wife asked in a whisper.

Imago dropped a cup. ‘The poetry I secretly write can be no good. Am just – machine!’

He ran from the room, out into the night. We stood and saw him go, speeding towards the river, his head-light flickering. Even as he flung himself in, we noticed Anthony standing moodily on the bank. Maybe he was thinking of doing the same thing.

He entered the room with a dull air of triumph, waving a hand. ‘Remember when you bought Imago, on the day I was born? If you check on his guarantee, you’ll see he was eighteen too. It’s a difficult age.’

So that’s the truth and the end to rumours. Now you tell me what the truth means .

A Taste for Dostoevsky Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Introduction 1 A Difficult Age 2 A Taste for Dostoevsky 3 Auto-Ancestral Fracture 4 Confluence 5 The Dead Immortal 6 Down the Up Escalation 7 Full Sun 8 Just Passing Through 9 Multi-Value Motorway 10 The Night that All Time Broke Out 11 Randy’s Syndrome 12 Still Trajectories 13 Two Modern Myths (Reflection on Mars and Ultimate Construction) 14 Wonder Weapon 15 …And the Stagnation of the Heart 16 Drake-Man Route 17 Dreamer, Schemer 18 Dream of Distance 19 Send her Victorious 20 The Serpent of Kundalini 21 The Tell-Tale Heart-Machine 22 Total Environment 23 The Village Swindler 24 When I Was Very Jung 25 The Worm that Flies 26 The Firmament Theorem 27 Greeks Bringing Knee-High Gifts 28 The Humming Heads 29 The Moment of Eclipse 30 Ouspenski’s Astrabahn 31 Since the Assassination 32 So Far From Prague 33 The Soft Predicament 34 Supertoys Last All Summer Long 35 That Uncomfortable Pause Between Life and Art… 36 Working in the Spaceship Yards About the Author Also by Brian Aldiss About the Publisher

He was nearly at the spaceship now, had slithered down the crater wall and was staggering across the few feet of broken rock that separated him from safety. He moved with the manic action of someone compensating for light gravity, his gauntleted hands stretched out before him.

He blundered clumsily against the outcropping teeth of rock, and fell on them. The knee joint of his suit snagged first on the rock, bursting wide. Still tumbling, the man grasped at his knee, feebly trying to clamp in the escaping oxygen-nitrogen mixture.

But help was at hand. They had been tracking his progress through the ship’s viewer. The hatch was cycling open. Two men in spacesuits lowered themselves to the lunar surface and hurried over to the fallen figure.

Grasping him firmly, they pulled him back into the ship. The hatch closed on them. The audience applauded vigorously; they loved the old corn.

In the spaceship cabin, relaxing, the two rescuers lit mescahales and sat back. Eddie Moore sprawled on the floor, gasping. It had been a close one that time. He thought they were never coming for him. Slowly he sat up and removed his helmet. The others had gone by then; there were just a few technicians backstage, clearing up.

Still breathing heavily, Moore climbed to his feet and headed for the dressing room. The lunar gravity did not worry him at all – he had lived here ever since his mother died, three years ago.

When he had changed, tucking himself into his ordinary everyday one-piece, he made his way towards the players’ exit. Halfway there, he changed his mind and climbed down through the airlock of the mocked-up twentieth-century rocketship.

Most of the audience had left the big hall now; there were just a few of them at the gallery at the far end, admiring the cleverly recreated lunar landscape. Eddie trudged through the mock pumice, head down, hands in pockets.

Funny the way it wasn’t until the whole moon surface was built over and the artificial atmosphere working that people had recalled the terrific aesthetic pleasure they had derived from the old primeval landscape of the moon – and had been forced to recreate it here out of artificial materials. That was the way things went. They didn’t appreciate his once nightly performance as the dying spaceman; he so fully empathised with his role that he knew one day he would die of oxygen-failure even while breathing it – and then there might be those, the discerning ones, who would hold the name of Eddie Moore dear, and realise that they had once been in the presence of a great artist.

Looking up, he saw that a solitary figure stood on a ridge of rock, staring moodily up at the fake heavens. He identified it as Cat Vindaloo, the Pakistani director of their show, and called a greeting to him.

Cat nodded sourly and altered his position without actually coming any nearer to Moore.

‘We went over well tonight,’ Moore said.

‘They still pay to come and watch,’ Cat said.

‘Your trouble is, you’re obsessed with being a failure, Cat. Come on, snap out of it. If there’s anything wrong with the show, it is that it’s too realistic. I’d personally like to see less of a dying fall to end with – maybe a grand finale such as they’d have had at the end of last century, with all the crew parading outside the ship, taking a bow.’

As if the words were dragged out of him by compulsion, Cat said, ‘You’re beginning to over-act again, Eddie.’ Moore realised the director was not standing here purely by accident; he knew that Moore, alone of the troupe, often preferred to trudge home the hard way.

‘Let me tell you, I’m the only one of the whole damned batch who still throws himself into the part. You can have no idea of the sort of life I lead, Cat! I’m an obsessive, that’s what, like a character out of Dostoevsky. I live my parts. My life’s all parts. Sometimes I hardly know who I really am. …’ He saw the beginnings of a glazed expression on Cat’s face and grabbed his tunic in an effort to retain his attention. ‘I know I’ve told you that before, but it’s true! Listen, it gets so bad that sometimes – sometimes I’m you – I mean, I sort of take your role, because I worry about you so much. I mean, I suppose I am basically afraid – it’s silly, I know – afraid you may be going to sack me from the cast. I must tell you this, though of course it’s embarrassing for us both. I – don’t you sometimes feel I am being you?’

Cat did not seem particularly embarrassed, a fact that disconcerted Moore. ‘I was aware you were unbalanced, Eddie, of course. We all are in this game, and I suppose I may as well confess – since you are bound to forget every word I tell you – that my particularity is suffering any sort of insult people like to heap on me. So that’s why I attract your attentions, I suppose; it’s destiny. But I fail entirely to see how you mean you are being me.’