Хилари Бэйли: The Ramparts

Here is a deceptively quiet story of a future Earth where mankinds ills of aggression and violence have been done away with, and a calm, near-pastoral Utopia prevails. But it is a mysterious, ominous Utopia of civilized townships surrounded by wild and dark forests— and the forests are once again encroaching.

Hilary Bailey’s full name is Hilary Bailey Moorcock: her husband is the well-known writer and editor Michael Moorcock. She’s the author of “The Fall of Frenchie Steiner” and “Dogman of Islington,” among a number of other first-rank sf stories, and after you’ve read this understated but trenchant story, you’ll want to watch for her byline in the future.

This afternoon, at last, I can put down my instruments, push aside my drawing board and watch the sunlight undulating over the long sweep of shadowed lawn in front of my house, see the waves of light playing over the grass right down to the first scattering of trees where the forest begins. From the glass-walled room at the top of the house the great curve of the lawn is like an ocean. And I can look up at the dark sky through the glass ceiling, gazing at the clouds which gather, part and move. When I turn my head I see the white city lying behind me — the straight, tree-lined avenues, the large houses with their pillared porticoes, the gardens brilliant with flowers and bushes. To right and left the lawns sweep down into the forest, darkening and lightening under the erratic sun. This house is a promontory of the city, an isthmus between it and the forest.

Below, the house is silent. Regan and Arthur are resting because Regan is playing tonight in our concert hall and Arthur is being allowed to stay up and hear her.

Tomorrow I shall be driving her along the Mendip Road to Juram, where she is to play for the citizens there. Our new car is ready, all but the batteries. If we decide to go. It would be pleasant to glide along the smooth paths through the forest — if, that is, we decide to go.

I must get ready soon for the council meeting where my plans are to be discussed. What a fuss over such a small, obvious project! But I think everything is settled at last and approval will be automatic.

I can remember going into the forest as a boy, on a dare, edging slowly through the trees and tangled brushwood, wondering if I had gone far enough to win the dare, with the darkness increasing as the trees grew thicker, bare legs scratched by fern and bramble, hearing the scutterings and flapping of wings in the gloom, tense with listening, forcing one foot in front of the other — oh, the tales that circulated about the Headless Man and the Hunchbacked Monsterwoman of the Forest — but, good heavens, enough of this. It’s quite time to get ready for the meeting. I must begin to lay the things out — but how dark it was in there. There were the terrifying little scratchings and scrapings in the undergrowth, no light, my feet cracking fallen branches at one moment and up to the ankles in mud the next. Day was like night in the forest. And at night — no, nothing could increase that blackness. No one could endure it. It is too dark.

I say hi, ho, but no one answers. The woman is by the fire with the babe. I crash down entangled and struggle up again. Why don’t the bastards come? That on my leg is the dripping of blood from my sacks. Hi! Ho! No answer. Why don’t the bastards come? I’ll smash her hands, the bitch. Up again and stumble on. Move, move, move.

A note before we leave for the performance. The council has decided that the work is to begin next week. Keeney, the town clerk, continued to oppose but was overruled in the end. Why all this fuss about a simple, useful item? Regan says the children tell tales about how he traps rabbits from the forest — his house being on the outskirts on the other side of the town — and then eats them. One boy says he saw him burying the bones in his garden. But all this is nonsense. Goodness knows what makes children dream up these gruesome horrors to frighten each other. Keeney certainly has a gross and ruddy look. His eye is wild and distant too. He must be a throwback to more savage times. It makes you wonder how such a man could ever be elected to office by our citizens. Yet I do seem to remember a time when Keeney was quieter, paler, probably even a bit thinner. Is it my imagination?

I seem to be using these pages to gossip about fellow citizens, which would be much disapproved of if it were known. Looking through these pages, which I have kept since I gained my architectural qualifications at the town of London (and I must say I was thankful to gain them and leave that vast community, a dismal specter of history repeating itself), I notice that it is only in the past year that I have started to make comments not directly connected with my work. A sign of approaching oddity? I hope not. The city cannot afford eccentrics.

at last they come. I can see their fire. They need my sacks, old bloody sacks. Hi, ho, hee, hee. I’ll hide the other sack. Let them roast hedgehogs while we feast in secret. Hallo, hallo, I’m here. Come on, you bastards, hurry.

The glide and hum of our cars through the streets did not sound over the birdsong, and as we went past the quiet, white houses with their colorful gardens, the birds were just settling for the night. The concert hall was full. Regan’s playing was charming — some short pieces by Bach and Chopin and two of the delightfully intricate songs for the piano by our neighboring citizen, Jones of Piwelli. Nevertheless I wish Regan would take up writing music again. If only she had been more persistent, could have ironed out those roughnesses and unevennesses which she was so unprepared to work at Nevertheless, as I sat in the concert hall I myself designed, surrounded by our friends and listening to the music rippling from the fingers of my wife at the piano, I wondered if any existence could be happier. We have our small lovely towns, interconnected but distant from each other. We have our beautiful homes; our children are reared according to the most humane principles, carefully guided into adulthood by all the citizens. Machines free us from drudgery so that we can all lead self-motivated lives. Our small numbers mean that creating and maintaining the machines occupies only a few of us, those who love the work, for a proportion of their time. And, of course, our simple dietary wants are easily met by a small number of dedicated men and women among the citizens.

No work, no want, no misery — as I sat in the hall with the sweet summer scents wafting through the open windows, I rejoiced. The past seems like a long horror story of grinding toil, men and women teeming like rodents — and, of course, the final self-inflicted end as the world went up in flames, roasting the men and women in it like the corpses of animals over one of their own spits.

Thank God we are now at peace.

As I write, men arrive with rules and markers and go down over the lawn to within a hundred and fifty yards of the forest’s edge. The next few months, while the work continues, will be trying for those of us with houses on the city boundaries, but common sense must be served.

tug a spine from my soft mouth to hell with these hedgehogs and the lazy women cooking them while the music and dancing go on. Lie on my back with the child beside me playing some trick with beetles and ants. I can see some stars above through the branches. The sky’s a fine thing if you’re not afraid of it. There are places where it’s all sky. Well, I’m not afraid of the sky. Thrum, thrum of the music. I’ll go down and dance soon, oh, that tall, deep, wide sky, how mad it is.