Brian Aldiss - The Monster Trilogy

Having uttered the Almighty’s name, he fell into fits of laughter, as if the hallowed syllable contained all the world’s mirth.

‘Yes, I do believe,’ said the ginger man. ‘I think.’

‘Then you believe in Hell and Hellfire.’

‘That I certainly do believe in.’ He smiled wanly, and again the madman laughed.

‘I’m God. I’m God and I’m Hellfire. And where are these items contained? Why – in blood!’ He pronounced the word in savage relish, striking his skull violently as he did so. ‘In blood, in the head, the head, kind sir, the napper. The napper’s full of blood. There are things that peer in here of a night … things which cry and mew for the blood. You see, it’s scientific, kind sir, she said, because … because you need the blood to drown out the thought. You don’t need thought when you’re dead, or silver bells or cock-hole smells or pretty maids all in a row, because when you’re dead you can do anything. You can do anything, kind sir, I assure you. The dead travel fast. Ummmm.’

The ginger man sighed, as if in at least partial agreement with these crazed sentiments.

‘Can you tell me what these things look like which peer in at you at night?’

Renfield had rocked himself very close now.

He put a dirty finger against the wall, as if pointing to something unseen by others.

‘There, you see? They come from dead planets, kind sir. From the Moon and Mercury.’ He ground his teeth so violently that his intention might have been to eat his own face. ‘Ummmm, they’re a disease, wrapped in a plague, masquerading as life. Life – yes, that’s it, life ummmm. And we shall all become like them, us, by and by, if God so wills.’

On the last word, he sprang at the ginger man, screaming, ‘Give me a kiss of life, kind sir, she said!’

But the ginger man was alert, leaped to his feet in time, fended off the madman with his silver-headed cane.

‘Down, dog. Back to your kennel, beast, Caliban, or I’ll call in the warden and have you beaten black and blue.’

The madman retreated only a step and stood there raging or pretending rage, showing teeth, brandishing claws. When the ginger man caught him lightly over the shoulders with his cane, he desisted and crawled on hands and knees back to the far corner, by his mattress. There he sat, looking upward, innocent as a child, one finger stuck deep into his ear.

A rhombus of sunlight crept down the wall, making for the floor as noon approached, slow as time and as steady. The ginger man remained by the door, unmoving, in a less threatening attitude, though he still had his stick ready.

Almost as stealthily as the sunbeam, the madman began to roll on the stone floor. His movements became more exaggerated as he tried to tie himself into knots, groaning at the same time.

The normally genial face of Renfield’s visitor was grave with compassion.

‘Can I help in any way?’ he asked.

‘Why do you seek my company in this fortress?’

‘It’s a fair question, but I cannot deliver you the answer. Tell me if I can help you.’

Renfield stared at him from an upside-down viewpoint.

‘Bring me boxes of spiders to eat. Spiders and sparrows. I need the blood. It’s life, kind sir. Life’s paper. Seven old newspapers make a week in Fleet Street. The Fleet Ones can eat up a week with their little fingers, this little finger on the right.’

He started to scratch a figure with sharp teeth on the wall as he spoke.

‘Talk sense, man,’ said the ginger man, sternly.

‘There soon will come a scientist who will say even stranger things about space and time. We can’t comprehend infinity, yet it’s in our heads.’

‘Together with the blood?’ He laughed impatiently, turning to the door to be released.

As he rapped on the panel, the madman said, ‘Yes, yes, with the blood, with a whole stream of blood. You’ll see. It’s in your eyes, kind sir, she said. A stream of blood stretching beyond the grave, beyond the gravy.’

He made a jump for the distant spider as the door slammed, leaving him alone.

The ginger man walked with the doctor in the bloodstained coat. The doctor accompanied him gravely to the door of the asylum, where a carriage waited. As the ginger man passed over a guinea, he said, with an attempt at casual small talk, ‘So I suppose there’s no cure for dementia praecox, is that so?’

The doctor pulled a serious face, tilted his head to one side, gazed up into the air, and uttered an epigram.

‘I fear a night-time on Venus means a lifetime on Mercury.’

‘You wretches live in the dark,’ Joe Bodenland said. ‘Don’t you hate your own sickness?’

He expected no answer, speaking abstractedly as he finger-tipped the keyboard in the train’s chief control panel. The driver stood by, silent, offering no reply. The information had been squeezed out of him, like paste from a half-empty tube.

‘If you’ve told me right, we should be back in 1999 any minute.’

Bodenland watched the scattering figures in a globe-screen, peering through the half-dark.

As the time train slowed, the grey light lifted to something brighter. The driver screamed with fear, in his first real display of emotion.

‘Save me – I’m photophobic. We’re all photophobic. It would be the end —’

‘Wouldn’t that be a relief? Get under that tarpaulin.’

Even as he indicated the tarpaulin stacked on a rack with fire-fighting equipment, the driver pulled it out and crawled under it, to lie quaking on the floor near Clift’s body.

The light flickered, strengthened. The train jerked to a halt. Generators died. Silence closed in.

Rain pattered softly against the train body. It fell slowly, vertically, filtering down from the canopy of foliage overhead. All round the train stood mighty boles of trees, strong as stone columns.

‘What …’ Pulling down a handle, Bodenland opened the sliding door and stared out.

They had materialized in a swamp. Dark water lay ahead, bubbles rising slowly to its surface. Everywhere was green. The air hummed with winged life like sequins. He stared out in amazement, admiration mingling with his puzzlement.

The rain was no more than a drip, steady, confidential. The moist warm air comforted him. He stood looking out, breathing slowly, returning to his old self.

As he remained there, taking in the mighty forest, he became aware of the breath going in and out at his nostrils. The barrel of his chest was not unmoving; it worked at its own regular speed, drawing the air down into his lungs. This reflex action, which would continue all his days, was a part of the biological pleasure of being alive.

A snake that might have been an anaconda unwound itself from a branch and slid away into the ferns. Still he stared. It looked like the Louisiana swamps, and yet – a dragonfly with a five foot wingspan came dashing at him, its body armoured in iridiscent green. He dashed it away from his face. No, this wasn’t Louisiana.

Gathering his wits, he turned back into the cab. The train gave a lurch sideways.

The LCD co-ordinates had ceased to spin. Bodenland stared at them incredulously, and then checked other readings. They had materialized some 270 million years before his present, in the Carboniferous Age.

The cab rocked under his feet and tilted a few more degrees to one side. Black water lapped over the lip of the door up to his feet. Staring out, he saw that the weight of the train was bearing it rapidly down into the swamp.

‘You,’ he said, shaking the supine driver under his cover. ‘I’m going to pitch you out into that swamp unless you tell me fast how we get out of here.’

‘It’s the secret over-ride. I forgot to tell you about it – I’ll help you all I can, since you were merciful to me …’