Brian Aldiss - The Complete Short Stories - The 1950s

‘I am happy to come here in peace,’ Stevens said. ‘And shall be still happier to know why I have been brought here. My journey has been long and partially unexplained.’

At the word ‘peace’, Mordregon made a grimace like a smile, although his beak remained unsmiling.

‘Partially, perhaps; but partially is not entirely,’ Mordregon said. ‘The robot ship told you you would be collected to stand trial in the name of Earth. That seems to us quite sufficient information to work on.’

The automatic translators gave an edge of irony to the Ultralord’s voice. The tone brought faint colour to Stevens’s cheeks. He was angry, and suddenly happy to let them see he was angry.

‘Then you have never been in my position,’ he said ‘Mine was an executive post at Port Ganymede. I never had anything to do with politics. I was down at the methane reagent post when your robot ship arrived and designated me in purely arbitrary fashion. I was simply told I would be collected for trial in three months – like a convict – like a bundle of dirty laundry!’ He looked hard at them, anxious to see their first reaction to his anger, wondering whether, he had gone too far. Ordinarily, Stevens was not a man who indulged his emotions. When he spoke, the hen’s egg before his mouth sucked up all sound, leaving the air dry and silent, so that he was unable to hear the translation going over; he thought, half-hopefully, that it might omit the outburst in traditional interpreter fashion. This hope was at once crushed.

‘Irritation means unbalance,’ said Deln Phi J. Bunswacki. It was the only sentence he spoke throughout the interview. On his shoulders, a mighty brain siphoned its thoughts beneath a transparent skull case; he wore what appeared to be a garishly cheap blue pin-stripe suit, but the stripes moved as symbiotic organisms plied up and down them ceaselessly, ingurgitating any microbes which might threaten the health of Deln Phi. J. Bunswacki. Slightly revolted, Stevens turned back to Mordregon.

‘You are playing with me,’ he said quietly. ‘Do I abuse your hospitality by asking you to get down to business?’

That, he thought, was better. Yet what were they thinking? His manner is too unstable? He seems to be impervious to the idea of his own insignificance? This was going to be the whole of hell: to have to guess what they were thinking, knowing they knew he was guessing, not knowing how many levels above his own their IQ was.

Acidic apprehension turned in Stevens’s stomach. His hand fluttered up to the lump below his right ear; he fingered it nervously, and only with an effort broke off the betraying gesture. To this vast concourse, he was insignificant: yet to Earth – to Earth he was their sole hope. Their sole hope! – And he could not keep himself from shaking.

Mordregon was speaking again. What had he been saying?

‘… customary. Into this hall in the city of Grapfth on the planet Xaquibadd in the Periphery of the Dominion of the Sack are invited all new races, each as it is discovered.’

Those big words don’t frighten me, Stevens told himself, because, to a great extent, they did. Suddenly he saw the solar system as a tiny sack, into which he longed to crawl and hide.

‘Is this place Grapfth the centre of your Empire?’ he asked.

‘No; as I said, it is in a peripheral region – for safety reasons, you understand,’ Mordregon explained.

‘Safety reasons? You mean you are afraid of me?’

Mordregon raised a brow at Ped2 of the Sack. Ped2, under an acre of coloured, stereoscopic nylon, was animated cactus, more beautiful, more intricate than his clothing. Captive butterflies on germanium, degravitized chains turned among the blossoms on his head; they fluttered up and then re-alighted as Ped2 nodded and spoke briefly to the Earthman. ‘Every race has peculiar talents or abilities of its own,’ he explained. ‘It is partly to discover those abilities that you aliens are invited here. Unfortunately, your predecessor turned out to be a member of a race of self-propagating nuclear weapons left over from some ancient war or other. He talked quite intelligently, until one of us mentioned the key word “goodwill”, whereupon he exploded and blew this entire hall to bits.’

Reminiscent chuckles sounded round him as he told the story.

Stevens said angrily: ‘You expect me to believe that? Then how have you all survived?’

‘Oh, we are not really here,’ Ped2 said genially, interlocking a nest of spikes behind his great head. ‘You can’t expect us to make the long journey to Xaquibadd every time some petty little system – no offence of course – is discovered. You’re talking to three-dimensional images of us; even the hall’s only there – or here , if you prefer it (location is merely a philosophical quibble) in a sort of sub-molecular fashion.’

Catching sight of the dazed look on the Earthman’s face, Ped2 could not resist driving home another point. (His was a childish race: theologians had died out among them only some four thousand years ago.)

‘We are not even talking to you in a sense you would understand, David Stevens of Earth,’ he said. ‘Having as yet no instantaneous communicator across light-year distances, we are letting a robot brain on Xaquibadd do the talking for us. We can check with it afterwards; if a mistake has been made, we can always get in touch with you.’

It was said not without an easy menace, but Stevens received at least a part of it eagerly. They had as yet no instantaneous communicator! No sub-radio, that could leap light-years without time lag! Involuntarily, he again fingered the tiny lump beneath the lobe of his right ear, and then thrust his hand deep into his pocket. So Earth had a chance of bargaining with these colossi after all! His confidence soared.

To Ped2, Mordregon was saying: ‘You must not mock our invited guest.’

‘I have heard that word “invited” from you before,’ Stevens said. ‘This has all seemed to me personally more like a summons. Your robot, without further explanation, simply told me it would be back for me in three months, giving me time to prepare for trial.’

‘That was reasonable, surely?’ Mordregon said. ‘It could have interviewed you then, unprepared.’

‘But it didn’t say what I was to prepare for ,’ Stevens replied, exasperation bursting into his mind as he remembered those three months. What madness they had been, as he spent them preparing frantically for this interview; all the wise and cunning men of the system had visited him: logicians, actors, philosophers, generals, mathematicians … And the surgeons! Yes, the skilful surgeons, burying the creations of the technologists in his ear and throat.

And all the while he had marvelled: Why did they pick me ?

‘Supposing it hadn’t been me?’ he said to Mordregon aloud. ‘Supposing it had been a madman or a man dying of cancer you picked on?’

Silence fell. Mordregon looked at him piercingly and then answered slowly: ‘We find our random selection principle entirely satisfactory, considering the large numbers involved. Whoever is brought here is responsible for his world. Your mistakes or illnesses are your world’s mistakes or illnesses. If a madman or a cancerous man stood in your place now, your world would have to be destroyed; worlds which have not been made free from such scourges by the time they have interplanetary travel must be eradicated. The galaxy is indestructible, but the security of the galaxy is a fragile thing.’

All the light-heartedness seemed gone from the assembly of Ultralords now. Even Ped2 of the Dominion of the Sack sat bolt upright, looking grimly at the Earthman. Stevens himself had gone chill, his throat was as dry as his sleeve. Every time he spoke he betrayed a chunk of the psychological atmosphere of Earth.