Brian Aldiss - The Monster Trilogy

‘As we existed once, so we shall again. You’re – but a moment.’

Again a kind of telepathic picture of the highest mountains brimming over with glaciers, slow-growing glaciers crowned with snow. And, by their striped flanks, thorn bushes growing, stiff against the wind.

Oh, it was beautiful. He longed for it. Ached.

‘The great Lord Dracula will guide our decisions. All of us will have a voice. Possibly extermination, possibly total enslavement. All of you penned within …’

She named a place. Had she said ‘green land’ or ‘Greenland’?

‘Understand this, Joe. We are much stronger than you can imagine. As we possessed the past, so we are in possession of the far future.’

‘The present? You’re nothing, Bella.’

‘We must have back the time train. You have to surrender it. That is what you have to do, and only that, in order that we become immortal lovers, borne on the storm of ages, like Paolo and Francesca.’

While she said these things and uttered these inhuman promises, she lightly roamed the room, as a tiger might pace.

He watched. She gave no reflection as she passed the mirror on the dressing-table or the glazed map of the British Empire, or any of the pictures which lay behind glass.

He sat on the side of the bed, unable to control his trembling.

‘What does this mean – you possess the future?’

‘No more talk, Joe. Talk’s the human skill. Forget the future when we can together savour the present.’

The dark voice ceased. She unfolded great wings and moved towards him.

Something in her movements woke in Bodenland the promptings of a forgotten dream. All that came back to him was a picture of the thing that had rushed towards him down the corridor of the time train, covering infinite distance with infinite speed. He had time to appreciate the gloomy chamber in which, it seemed, every vertical was ashily outlined by the glare of the gas, caging him into this block of past existence, until the very scent of her, the frisson of her garments, drowned out all other impressions.

She stood by him, over him, as he remained sitting on the side of the bed, arms behind him to prop his torso as he gazed up at her face. The red lips moved and she spoke again.

‘I know of your strength. Eternal life is here if you wish it. Eternal life and eternal love.’

His mouth was almost too dry to speak. He could force no derision into his voice. ‘Forbidden love.’

‘Forbidden by your kind, Joe, not mine.’

And with a great rustle of wings, she embraced him, pressing him into folds of the eiderdown.

Even as his body’s blood flowed thick and heavy with delight, he was also living out a vision. It was antique yet imperishable, like something engraved on stone. It flowed from Bella to him.

Bella’s memory was of what would one day be called Hudson Bay, and a chill part of Canada. Now the clouds rolled back like peeling skin and heat roared like breath. In the fairer climate of seventy million years past, what would be water and ice and drifting floes was all land, bush-speckled savannah or forest. The kneedeep grasses were rich to the teeth of great blundering herbivores – hadrosaurs that grazed by slow-winding rivers, brontosaurs that blundered into the marsh by the rivers.

These and other ornithischians were herded into pens and thorncages by the Fleet Ones, who arrived on wing and foot. They drove their captives, fat with blood and blubber, into the makeshift fields, from which they would be culled.

The savannah fills with their numbers. The beasts lumber and cry. The ground heaves.

The bed heaves. Bodenland cries aloud.

Larry was in an absolute rage. He shook with it. The mortician had said, ‘I don’t think you should take your mother’s death like that, sir. We must show respect for the dead,’ and Larry had brushed the little man aside.

He ran out of the parlour to the sidewalk, cursing and gesticulating. Kylie followed reluctantly, her pretty face pale and drawn.

In the cheerful morning sunlight, the main street of Enterprise was choked with traffic, mainly rubberneckers come to see what was going on at Old John, lured by the news that mankind’s history had been overturned. The cars moved so slowly that both drivers and passengers had plenty of time to watch this man performing on the sidewalk, under the mortician’s sign. Many called insults, thinking they knew a drunk when they saw one.

‘Stop it, Larry, will you?’ Kylie seized his arm. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you back to the motel.’

‘What have I done, Kylie? What have I done? I’m going to hang one on in the nearest bar, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

‘No, please … It would be better to pray. Prayer gives you more strength than whisky.’

He appeared not to have heard her.

‘That was my momma lying in there, all white and withered. Stuck in that freezer …’ Tears rolled down his face. ‘Like some little pressed flower she was, her colour all faded …’

‘Larry, darling, I know, I know. It’s terrible. Poor Mina. But getting drunk won’t help it one bit …’

Cajoling, crying herself, Kylie managed to persuade her husband back to the convertible. Wiping her tears, she managed the slow drive to the Moonlite Motel. The management had been insensitive enough to offer them Mina’s old room. No other was available, owing to the unexpected influx of sightseers. They took it. In the hastily cleared room, Kylie found in the waste can a crumpled sheet of notepaper. On it her late mother-in-law had begun a letter. ‘Joe you bastard —’

‘What I fail to understand,’ said Larry, heading straight for the mini-bar, ‘is what this “Premature Ageing” bit means. I don’t trust the Utah doctors – probably bribed by the motel. Hon, go down the corridor and get some ice, will you?’

She stood before him. ‘I love you, Larry, and I need your support. Don’t you see I’m still trembling? But you are like a greedy child. Your parents neglected you, yes, I know, I’ve heard it a million times. So you keep on grabbing, grabbing, just like a baby. You grabbed. Okay, so you want to keep me, so you must stop being a baby and grabbing for these other things.’

‘You ever hear of a baby drinking the old Wild Turkey, hon? I’m never going to get over the death of my mom, because I should have taken better care of her. She loved me. She loved me, Kylie. Something my father never did.’

‘Larry!’ She screamed his name. ‘Please forget about yourself! Worry about what happened to Mina. What the hell are we going to do? All human love has its failings, okay, but Joe does love you, best he knows how. But he’s missing —’

‘I’ll go and get the ice myself, don’t you worry.’ He stood up. ‘You always take Joe’s side. I’m used to that by now, and I’m going to get a drink while you yack, if you must.’

She went over to her suitcase, which lay on the bed. She had opened it without unpacking it. They had checked in only an hour ago and gone straight from the motel to the funeral parlour.

‘I’m yacking no more, husband of mine. I just can’t get through to you. I’ve had enough. I’m off. You quit on me in Hawaii. Now I’m quitting on you in Enterprise, Utah.’

She snapped the suitcase shut. As she made for the door, Larry ran in front of her. Kylie swung the suitcase hard and hit him in the stomach.

Gasping, he made way for her.

When she had gone, Larry walked doubled up to the sofa, making what he could of the pain. After sufficient gasping, he picked up the quart bottle of Wild Turkey he had brought with him in his case. Lifting it high until it gleamed in the light from the window Kylie had opened, he saluted it.

‘Only you and me now, old friend,’ he said.