Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1950s

Buildings loomed about him. He simply ran for the nearest light and burst into the nearest door. Then he pulled up sharp, panting and blinking the harsh illumination out of his pupils.

The walls of the room were covered with graphs and charts. In the centre of the room was a wide desk with vision-screen and loudspeaker on it. It was a businesslike room with overloaded ashtrays and a state of ordered untidiness. A thin man sat alertly at the desk; he had a thin mouth.

Four other men stood in the room; all were armed, none seemed surprised to see him. The man at the desk wore a neat suit; the others were in uniform.

Harley leaned on the doorjamb and sobbed. He could find no words to say.

‘It has taken you four years to get out of there,’ the thin man said. He had a thin voice.

‘Come and look at this,’ he said, indicating the screen before him. With an effort, Harley complied; his legs worked like rickety crutches.

On the screen, clear and real, was Calvin’s bedroom. The outer wall gaped, and through it two uniformed men were dragging a strange creature, a wiry, mechanical-looking being that had once been called Calvin.

‘Calvin was a Nititian,’ Harley observed dully. He was conscious of a sort of stupid surprise at his own observation.

The thin man nodded approvingly.

‘Enemy infiltrations constituted quite a threat,’ he said. ‘Nowhere on Earth was safe from them; they can kill a man, dispose of him, and turn into exact replicas of him. Makes things difficult … We lost a lot of state secrets that way. But Nititian ships have to land here to disembark the Non-Men and to pick them up again after their work is done. That is the weak link in their chain.

‘We interrupted one such shipload and bagged them singly after they had assumed human form. We subjected them to artificial amnesia and put small groups of them into different environments for study. This is the Army Institute for Investigation of Non-Men, by the way. We’ve learned a lot … quite enough to combat the menace … Your group, of course, was one such.’

Harley asked in a gritty voice: ‘Why did you put me in with them?’

The thin man rattled a ruler between his teeth before answering.

‘Each group has to have a human observer in its very midst, despite all the scanning devices that watch from outside. You see, a Nititian uses a lot of energy maintaining a human form; once in that shape, he is kept in it by self-hypnosis which only breaks down in times of stress, the amount of stress bearable varying from one individual to another. A human on the spot can sense such stresses … It’s a tiring job for him; we get doubles always to work day on, day off – ’

‘But I’ve always been there – ’

‘Of your group,’ the thin man cut in, ‘the human was Jagger, or two men alternating as Jagger. You caught one of them going off duty.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Harley shouted. ‘You’re trying to say that I …’

He choked on the words. They were no longer pronounceable. He felt his outer form flowing away like sand, as from the other side of the desk revolver barrels were levelled at him.

‘Your stress level is remarkably high,’ continued the thin man, turning his gaze away from the spectacle. ‘But where you fail is where you all fail. Like Earth’s insects which imitate vegetables, your cleverness cripples you. You can only be carbon copies. Because Jagger did nothing in the house, all the rest of you instinctively followed suit. You didn’t get bored – you didn’t even try to make passes at Dapple – as personable a Non-Man as I ever saw. Even the model spaceship jerked no appreciable reaction out of you.’

Brushing his suit down, he rose before the skeletal being which now cowered in a corner.

‘The inhumanity inside always gives you away,’ he said evenly. ‘However human you are outside.’

It was Christmas. Snow fell by courtesy of Home-Count Climatic.

Rick Sheridan came off shift early, flying his helic deftly through the white clouds, and keeping by long custom between the altitude levels prescribed for his particular consumer-class. As far as he might be said to have a character, his character was cheerful. He exhibited this cheerfulness now by whistling.

The sound filled the little cockpit, competing with the bope music issuing from the 3-inch screen telly strapped on his wrist.

Christmas! It was proverbially the time of festivity and maximum consumption. It was a period when everyone would be happy – except, possibly, he warned himself, his wife, Neata. Her moodiness had become trying of late. The mere thought of it knocked his whistle off key.

For the difficult business of landing, Rick switched on to auto. This luxury had been fitted by Happy Hover Ltd. only two months ago. With the faintest of sighs, the helic leafed down, below the clouds, below the aerial levels, below the rooftops, and squatted in the Sheridan back garden.

The garden was a large one, as gardens went, ten feet by sixteen, and covered by neo-concrete. Rick jumped out and stretched himself. Although he was all of twenty-eight, he suddenly felt young and healthy again. Appetite stirred sluttishly in his stomach.

‘Oh for a bowl of tasty, toothable Cob Corners!’ he cried exultantly, and bounded for the back door.

He was high enough up the consumer hierarchy to own a magnificent two-room dwelling: Walking through the Disposing room, he entered the Gazing room and called: ‘Neata!’

She was sitting quietly at the Relaxtable, laboriously mending a little labour-saving device, her fair head bent in concentration. Her smile of welcome formed easily and naturally round her new teeth, and she jumped up, throwing her arms round him – carefully, so as not to crumple his teddy tie.

‘Ricky, darling, you’re early!’ she exclaimed.

‘I hit my quota ahead of schedule,’ he explained proudly. ‘Thanks to Howlett’s.’

Their only child, Goya, jumped up and ran to greet her daddy. She managed to do it backwards, thus keeping her eyes fixed on the wall screens, where Sobold the Soap King was facing three dirty-looking criminals single-handed.

Rick’s eyes glistened behind their contact lenses. He reflected how affectionate the child was for a three-year-old, but something in the little girl’s actions must have displeased her mother, for Neata said irritably: ‘Why don’t you welcome your father properly?’

‘Wanna see old Sobold slosh the slashers,’ Goya said defiantly.

‘You’re old enough to guess what will happen,’ Neata said crossly. ‘He’ll catch them and make them all wash in that creamy, dreamy lather that only Little Britches Soap provides.’

‘Don’t get angry with her,’ Rick said. ‘Remember, it’s Christmas.’

He took Goya on his knee, and settled down with her to watch Sobold, his hunger forgotten. The wall-screens filled two walls. Before the end of next year, if he worked as well as he was working now, they might be able to afford a third screen. And one day … he blushed with excitement at the thought of being surrounded by an image in quadruplicate on all four walls.

A flicker of interference burst over the bright screens. Rick tutted with annoyance; the terrific technical accomplishment of telly was something upon which every civilised consumer prided himself, but it was nevertheless obvious that just lately there had been more misting than usual on the screens. Rick found himself recalling the rumours, dim and evasive, which he heard while at work; rumours of a vile movement to overthrow the present happy regime, of determined men with new weapons at their command.

Dismissing the idea irritably, he turned full attention on to the screens. Justice and cleanliness having overtaken Sobold’s opponents, the next Quarter of an hour was to be devoted to ‘Mr. Dial’s Dairy’, a comic serial lampooning twentieth-century farm life, presented by the makers of Grinbaum’s Meat Bars.