Brian Aldiss - Enemies of the System

Title Page Enemies of the System BRIAN ALDISS

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Also part of The Brian Aldiss Collection

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About the Publisher

Some Futures last for ever, when even the Past has gone past. Long ago, in the nineteen-seventies, it was possible to imagine that the good old democratic world might be overcome by a darker and more savage world to the East.

In 1976, a literary conference was held in Posna´n, Poland. The creative science fiction writers of the time, American and British, artists of darkened worlds, were greatly interested by the prospect of a Communist conference, there in the heart of the Other Side.

I accepted the invitation and drove across divided Europe to Posna´n. The conference was well arranged. Everyone was polite. We talked a lot; we drank a lot; we attended long and rather tedious sessions; we walked the streets of this country town, where considerable reconstruction had revived districts ruined by the Nazi armies in the Second World War.

During one of the long academic sessions, we were introduced to a novel with impeccable Communist antecedents.

My memory – always unreliable concerning future or past – tells me that this polemic was a kind of satire in which the world has been over-run by democracy. Of course, this transition does not work very well, which made (so we were told) the tale all the more hilarious.

The academic explaining this master work to us rocked with laughter. Applause broke out (who knows, carefully rehearsed applause?) among the audience.

The academic concluded by saying, ‘Certainly no writer in the West would dare to write a story in which Communism had conquered the world.’

I couldn’t help it. I found myself immediately itching to get back to my Oxford desk …

And this is the book I wrote about the universal triumph of Communism. Jonathan Cape published it in hardcover early in February 1978, and Harper and Row in the States a little later. Heyne in Germany followed suit, and Timbro in Sweden shortly after that. Since which, I’ve lost count.

But never was my novel published in a Communist country – at least, not to my knowledge …

Inspirational music played as they moved from the terminal buildings into the ferry.

Without fuss, without pushing, they settled into relaxers and waited for the ferry to depart. Fifty-two of them took their places, the sexes about equally balanced. Their clothes were so similar in cut, and so subdued in colour and material, as to resemble a uniform; their hair, whether male or female, was trimmed to approximately the same length; their faces were all bland, even blank. They sat without restlessness. They were the elite of the system, allowed to vacation on the Classified planet of Lysenka II.

The ferry rose silently, dead on time. World Peace City, the Earth itself, shrank behind them. They watched the planet dwindle, then turned and smiled circumspectly at each other. They were strangers and nobody knew who was who; even among the elite there were many power grades.

From the ferry, the passengers transferred to a gulfhopper awaiting them in a parking orbit round the Moon. As soon as the ferry dropped away, the gulfhopper established a charm-field and began its expensive cratobatics. Earth disappeared like an eyeball dropping down a drain; the sun was transformed into an icicle of light, and vanished. Time became a series of equations.

Oblivious to alarm, the tourists could now settle down and become acquainted with one another. The distance from the Solar System to the Lysenka System was 50.2 light years, in Ordinary Space terms, so passengers had forty hours on the transference from system to system in which to indulge in social intercourse or related activities.

The gulfhopper was a spacious craft, well provided with lounges, restaurants, view-chambers, an aquatics suite and private rooms. Most of the tourists, being important people, kept their importance in repair by walking about the public rooms in a dignified manner. Hostesses in blue Gulfways uniform assisted some passengers to meet the partners that Extra-System selectors had chosen for them, if they had not had time to meet before embarking at World Peace City.

One of the smiling hostesses introduced two tall people, a man and a woman, who briefly touched fingertips and then stood regarding each other. Nodding, the hostess left them to themselves.

‘My name is Jerezy Kordan, World Citizen 692,’ the male said, smiling to soften the familiarity of using only his last three numbers on first meeting. ‘I am pleased that we are to be associated for this vacation.’