Brian Aldiss - The Monster Trilogy

‘Okay, you remember now. What do we do?’

The dark water came washing in as the driver said, ‘The override is designed to stop unauthorized persons meddling with the time-controls. Only the space controls responded to your instructions, the rest went into reverse.’

While he was speaking, the train tilted again and Clift’s body slid towards the door.

‘What do we do, apart from drown?’

‘The train is programmed for its next stop and I can’t change that. Best thing is to complete that journey, after which the programme’s finished and the over-ride cuts out. So you just switch on, cancelling the previous co-ordinates you punched in.’

The water was pouring in now, splashing the men. A bejewelled fly swung in and orbited Bodenland’s head.

‘Where’s this pre-programmed journey taking us?’

With an extra surge of water, a warty shape rose from the swamp, steadying itself with a clumsy foot at the doorway. A flat amphibian head looked at them. Two toad eyes stared, as if without sight. A wide mouth cracked open. A goitre in the yellow throat throbbed. The head darted forward as Bodenland instinctively jumped back, clinging to a support.

The lipless frog mouth fastened on Clift’s body. With a leisurely movement, the amphibian withdrew, bearing its meal with it down into the waters of the swamp. It disappeared from view and the black surface closed over it.

Bodenland slammed the sliding door shut and staggered to the keyboard. He punched on the Start pressure-pads, heard the roar of generators, which died as the engine seemed to lift.

The outer world with its majestic colonnades of trees blurred, whited out, faded to grey and down the colour spectrum, until zero-light of time quanta came in. The driver sat up in the dirty water swilling about him and peered haggard-faced from his tarpaulin.

Drained by the excitements of the last few hours, appalled by the loss of his friend, Bodenland watched the numerals juggling with themselves in the oily wells of the display panel. He came to with a start, realizing he might fall asleep.

Making an effort, he got down a length of thin cable and secured the driver with it, before locking the door to the corridor.

He stood over his captive, who began to plead for mercy.

‘You don’t have a great store of courage.’

‘I don’t need courage. You need the courage. I know you have ten thousand adversaries against you.’

Bodenland looked down, contemplating kicking the creature, before overcoming the impulse.

‘Where are we programmed for?’ he asked, thinking that almost anywhere was preferable to the Carboniferous.

‘We have to visit Transylvania,’ said the driver. ‘But the programme is set only as far as London, in year 1896, where we let off a powerful female agent.’

‘Oh yes? And what’s she up to?’

‘She has business at the home of a man living near London, a man by the name of Bram Stoker.’

She went over to look at the little glass panel of the air-conditioning unit. It was functioning perfectly. Nevertheless, the motel suite felt arid to her, lifeless, airless, after her flight through the sky.

Mina Legrand’s rooms were on the second floor. Her years in Europe prompted her to open a window and let in a breeze, sanitized by the nearby desert. Enterprise sprawled out there, the park and sign of the Moonlite Motel, and, beyond them, the highway, on which were strung one-storey buildings, a store or two, and a used car lot, with a Mexican food joint marking the edge of town. Pick-ups drove by, their occupants preparing to squeeze what they could from the evening. Already dusk was settling in.

Turning from the window, she shucked off her green cover-alls and her underwear and stepped into the shower.

Despite the pleasure of the hot water coursing over her body, gloom settled on her. She hated to be alone. She hated solitude more of late. And perhaps Joe had been absent more of late. Now she would be seeing less of Larry, too. And there were the deaths in the back of her mind, never to disappear. Sky-diving was different; paradoxically, it took her away from loneliness.

She was at that age when wretchedness seeped very easily through the cracks in existence. A friend had suggested she should consult a psychoanalyst. That was not what she wanted. What she wanted was more from Joe, to whom she felt she had given so much.

She discovered she was singing in the shower.

‘Well, what did I do wrong

To make you stay away so long?’

The song had selected itself. To hell with it. She cut it off. Joe had let her down. What she really needed was a passionate affair. Fairly passionate. Men were so tiresome in so many ways. In her experience, they all complained. Except Joe, and that showed his lack of communication …

With similar non-productive thoughts, she climbed from the shower and stood under the infra-red lamp.

Later, in a towelling robe, she made herself a margarita out of the mini-bar, sat down, and began to write a letter to Joe on the Moonlite Motel notepaper. ‘Joe you bastard —’ she began. She sat there, thinking back down the years.

Finishing the drink, she got a second and began to ring around.

She phoned home, got her own voice on the answerphone, slammed off. Rang through to Bodenland Enterprises, spoke to Waldgrave. No one had heard from Joe. Rang Larry’s number. No answer. In boredom, she rang her sister Carrie in Paris, France.

‘We’re in bed, for God’s sake. What do you want?’ came Carrie’s shrill voice, a voice remembered from childhood.

Mina explained.

‘Joe always was crazy,’ Carrie said. ‘Junk him like I told you, Minnie. Take my advice. He’s worth his weight in alimony. This is one more suicidal episode you can do without.’

Hearing from her sister the very words she had just been formulating herself, Mina fell into a rage.

‘I guess I know Joe light years better than you, Carrie, and suicidal he is not. Brave, yes, suicidal, no. He just believes he leads an enchanted life and nothing can harm him.’

‘Try divorce and see what that does.’

‘He was unwanted and rejected as a small kid. He needs me and I’m not prepared to do the dirty on him now. His whole career is dedicated to the pursuit of power and adventure and notoriety – well, it’s an antidote to the early misery he went through. I understand that.’

The distant voice said, ‘Sounds like you have been talking to his shrink.’

Mina looked up, momentarily distracted by something fluttering at the window. It was late for a bird. The dark was closing swiftly in.

‘His new shrink is real good. Joe is basically a depressive, like many famous men in history, Goethe, Luther, Tolstoy, Winston Churchill – I forget who else. He has enormous vitality, and he fends off a basic melancholia with constant activity. I have to live with it, he classifies out as a depressive.’

‘Sounds like you should chuck Joe and marry the shrink. A real smart talker.’

Mina thought of Carrie’s empty-headed woman-chasing husband, Adolphe. She decided to make no comment on that score.

‘One thing Joe has which I have, and I like. A little fantasy-world of mixed omnipotence and powerlessness which is very hard to crack, even for a smart shrink. I have the same component, God help me.’

‘For Pete’s sake, Mina, Adolphe says all American woman are the same. They believe —’

‘Oh, God, sorry, Carrie, I’ve got a bat in my room. I can’t take bats.’

She put the phone down and stood up, suddenly aware of how dark it was in the room. The Moonlite sign flashed outside in puce neon. And the bat hovered inside the window.

Something unnatural in its movements transfixed her. She stood there unmoving as the pallid outline of a man formed in the dusky air. The bat was gone and, in its place, a suave-looking man with black hair brushed back from his forehead, standing immaculate in evening dress.