The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

He sang and waved his arms, a tall figure that woke in Anderson untraceable memories. The dancers – if their rhythmic shuffle might be called a dance – responded with low cries. The total effect, if not beautiful, was oddly moving.

Hypnotised, Anderson watched. He found that his head was nodding in time to the chant. There was no sign of Kay here, as he had half-anticipated. But by his carrot-coloured beard and his prominent nose the priest was distinguishable even in the uncertain fire light. It was Frank Arlblaster.

Or it had been Frank Arlblaster. Items that most easily identify a man to his friends are his stance and his walk. Arlblaster’s had changed. He seemed to sag at the knees and shuffle now, his torso no longer vertical to the ground. Yet the high timbre of his voice remained unaltered, though he called out in a language unknown to Anderson.

The dancers shuffled eagerly, clapping their hands, nodding their shaggy heads. Gradually it dawned on Anderson what they looked like. Beyond doubt they were the inhabitants of Swettenham; they were also, unmistakably, pre-homo sapiens. He might have been witnessing a ritual of Neanderthal men.

Mingled repulsion and elation rooted Anderson to the spot where he lay. Yes, unarguably the faces of Ell and his friends earlier had borne the touch of Neanderthal. Once the idea took, he could not shake it off.

He lay in a trance of wonder until the dance had stopped. Now all the company turned to face the spot where he lay concealed. Anderson felt the nerves tingle along his spinal cord. Arlblaster lifted an arm and pointed towards him. Then in a loud voice he cried out, the crowd shouting with him in chorus.

‘Aigh murg eg neggy oggy Kay bat doo!’

The words were for Anderson.

They were unintelligible to him, yet they seemed to penetrate him. That his whereabouts was known meant nothing beside an even greater pressure on his brain. His whole being trembled on the threshold of some great disastrous revelation.

A magical trance had snared him. He was literally not himself. The meaningless words seemed to shake him to his soul. Gasping, he climbed to his feet and took himself off at a run. There was no pursuit.

He had no memory of getting back to Menderstone’s place, no recollection of crossing the rough bridge, no recollection of tumbling through the window. He lay panting on the bed, his face buried in the pillow.

This state in its turn was succeeded by a vast unease. He could not sleep. Sleep was beyond him. He trembled in every limb. The hours of night dragged on for ever.

At last Anderson sat up. A faint dawn washed into the world. Taking a torch from his kit, he went to investigate the other empty rooms next to his.

A dusty corridor led to them.

Alice had said that this had been the HQ of Swettenham’s original intellectual coterie. There was a library in one room, with racked spools gathering dust; Anderson did not trouble to read any titles. He felt vague antipathy for the silent ranks of them. Another room was a small committee chamber. Maps hung on the walls, meaningless, unused. He saw without curiosity that the flags stuck to one map had mostly fallen on the floor.

A third room was a recreation room. It held a curious assortment of egghead toys. There was even a model electric railway of the type fashionable on Earth a couple of centuries ago. A lathe in the corner suggested that rail and rolling stock might have been made on the premises.

Anderson peered at the track. It gleamed in his torchlight. No dust on it. He hesitatingly ran a finger along it.

A length of siding raised itself like a snake’s head. Coiling up, it wrapped round Anderson’s wrist, snapped tight He pulled at it, yelling in surprise. The whole layout reared up, struggling to get at him.

He backed away, beating at the stuff as it rolled up from the table. The track writhed and launched itself at him, scattering waggons and locomotives. He fired his revolver wildly. Loops of railroad fell over him, over his head, wrapping itself madly about him.

Anderson fell to the floor, dropping his gun, dropping the torch, tearing at the thin bands of metal as they bit tighter. The track threshed savagely, binding his legs together. He was shouting incoherently.

As he struggled, Menderstone ran into the room, rifle in hand, Alice behind him. It was the last thing Anderson saw as he lost consciousness.

When he roused, it was to find himself in Menderstone’s living-room, sprawled on a bunk. Alice sat by him, turning towards him as he stirred. Menderstone was not in the room.

‘My God …’ Anderson groaned. His brain felt curiously lucid, as if a fever had just left him.

‘It’s time you woke up. I’ll get you some soup if you can manage it,’ Alice said.

‘Wait, Alice. Alice …’ His lips trembled as he formed the words. ‘I’m myself again. What came over me? Yesterday – I don’t have a sister called Kay. I don’t have a sister at all! I was an only child!’

She was unsurprised. He sat up, glaring at her.

‘I guessed as much, said so to Stanley. When you brought your kit in from the vehicle there was nothing female among it.’

‘My mind! I was so sure. … I could have pictured her, described her … She was actual! And yet if anyone – if you’d challenged me direct, I believe I’d have known it was an – an illusion.’

His sense of loss was forced aside as another realisation crowded in on him.

He sank down confusedly, closing his eyes, muttering. ‘Aigh murg eg neggy oggy Kay bat doo. … That’s what they told me on the hillside: “You have no sister called Kay.” That’s what it meant. … Alice. It’s so strange. …’

His hand sought hers and found it. It was ice cold.

‘Your initial is K, Keith,’ she said, pale at the lips. ‘You were out there seeking yourself.’

Her face looking down at him was scared and ugly; yet a kind of gentle patience in it dissolved the ugliness.

‘I’m – I’m some sort of mad,’ he whispered.

‘Of course you’re mad!’ Menderstone said, as he burst open the door. ‘Let go of his hand, Alice – this is our beloved home, not the cheap seats in the feelies on Earth. Anderson, if you aren’t insane, why were you rolling about on the floor, foaming at the mouth and firing your damned gun, at six o’clock this morning?’

Anderson sat up.

‘You saw me entangled in that jinxed railroad when you found me, Menderstone! Another minute and it would have squeezed the life out of me.’

Menderstone looked genuinely puzzled. It was the first time Anderson had seen him without the armour of his self-assurance.

‘The model railroad?’ he said. ‘It was undisturbed. You hadn’t touched it.’

‘It touched me,’ Anderson said chokingly. ‘It – it attacked me, wrapped itself round me like an octopus. You must have peeled it off me before getting me through here.’

‘I see,’ Menderstone said, his face grim.

He nodded slowly, sitting down absent-mindedly, and then nodding again to Alice.

‘You see what this means, woman? Anderson’s N-factor is rising to dominance. This young man is not on our side, as I suspected from the first. He’s no Crow. Anderson, your time’s up here, sorry! From now on, you’re one of Arlblaster’s men. You’ll never get back to Earth.’

‘On the contrary, I’m on my way back now.’

Menderstone shook his head.

‘You don’t know your own mind. I mean the words literally. You’re doomed to stay here, playing out the miserable life of an ape! Earth has lost another of her estimable nonentities.’

‘Menderstone, you’re eaten up with hatred! You hate this planet, you hate Earth!’

Menderstone stood up again, putting his rifle down on the table and coming across to Anderson with his fists bunched.

‘Does that make me crazy, you nincompoop? Let me give you a good hard fact-reason why I loathe what’s happening on Earth! I loathe mankind’s insatiable locust-activities, which it has the impertinence to call “assuming mastery over nature”. It has over-eaten and over-populated itself until the only other animals left are in the sea, in zoos, or in food-factories. Now it is exhausting the fossil fuels on which its much-vaunted technology relies. The final collapse is due! So much for mastery of nature! Why, it can’t even master its own mind!’

‘The situation may be desperate, but World Government is slowly introducing economies which –’