The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

‘World Government! You dare mention World Government? A pack of computers and automata? Isn’t it an admission that man is a locust without self-discipline that he has to hand over control piecemeal to robots?

‘And what does it all signify? Why, that civilisation is afraid of itself, because it always tries to destroy itself.

‘Why should it try to do that? Every wise man in history has asked himself why. None of them found the answer until your pal Arlblaster tumbled on it, because they were all looking in the wrong direction. So the answer lies hidden here where nobody on Earth can get at it, because no one who arrives here goes back. I could go back, but I don’t because I prefer to think of them stewing in their own juice, in the mess they created.’

‘I’m going back,’ Anderson said. ‘I’m going to collect Arlblaster and I’m going back right away – when your speech is finished.’

Menderstone laughed.

‘Like to bet on it? But don’t interrupt when I’m talking, K. D. Anderson! Listen to the truth while you have the chance, before it dies for ever.’

‘Stop bellowing, Stanley!’ Alice exclaimed.

‘Silence, female! Attend! Do you need proof that fear-ridden autocrats rule Earth? They have a star-drive on their hands, they discover a dozen habitable planets within reach: what do they do? They keep them uninhabited. Having read just enough history to frighten them, they figure that if they establish colonies those colonies will rebel against them.

‘Swettenham was an exceptional man. How he pulled enough strings to get us established here, I’ll never know. But this little settlement – far too small to make a real colony – was an exception to point to a rule: that the ruling régime is pathologically anti-life – and must be increasingly so as robots take over.’

Anderson stood up, steadying himself against the bunk.

‘Why don’t you shut up, you lonely man? I’m getting out of here.’

Menderstone’s reaction was unexpected. Smiling, he produced Anderson’s gun.

‘Suit yourself, lad! Here’s your revolver. Pick it up and go.’

He dropped the revolver at his feet. Anderson stooped to pick it up. The short barrel gleamed dully. Suddenly it looked – alien, terrifying. He straightened, baffled, leaving the weapon on the floor. He moved a step away from it, his backbone tingling.

Sympathy and pain crossed Alice’s face as she saw his expression. Even Menderstone relaxed.

‘You won’t need a gun where you’re going,’ he said. ‘Sorry it turned out this way, Anderson! The long and tedious powers of evolution force us to be antagonists. I felt it the moment I saw you.’

‘Get lost!’

Relief surged through Anderson as he emerged into the shabby sunshine. The house had seemed like a trap. He stood relaxedly in the middle of the square, sagging slightly at the knees, letting the warmth soak into him. Other people passed in ones or twos. A couple of strangely adult-looking children stared at him.

Anderson felt none of the hostility he had imagined yesterday. After all, he told himself, these folk never saw a stranger from one year to the next; to crowd round him was natural. No one had offered him harm – even Ell had a right to act to protect himself when a stranger charged round a rock carrying a gun. And when his presence had been divined on the hillside last night, they had offered him nothing more painful than revelation: ‘You have no sister called Kay.’

He started walking. He knew he needed a lot of explanations; he even grasped that he was in the middle of an obscure process which had still to be worked out. But at present he was content just to exist, to be and not to think.

Vaguely, the idea that he must see Arlblaster stayed with him.

But new – or very ancient? – parts of his brain seemed to be in bud. The landscape about him grew in vividness, showering him with sensory data. Even the dust had a novel sweet scent.

He crossed the tree-trunk bridge without effort, and walked along the other bank of the river, enjoying the flow of the water. A few women picked idly at vegetable plots. Anderson stopped to question one of them.

‘Can you tell me where I’ll find Frank Arlblaster?’

‘That man sleeps now. Sun go, he wakes. Then you meet him.’

‘Thanks.’ It was simple, wasn’t it?

He walked on. There was time enough for everything. He walked a long way, steadily uphill. There was a secret about time – he had it somewhere at the back of his head – something about not chopping it into minutes and seconds. He was all alone by the meandering river now, beyond people; what did the river know of time?

Anderson noticed the watch strapped on his wrist. What did it want with him, or he with it? A watch was the badge of servitude of a time-serving culture. With sudden revulsion for it, he unbuckled it and tossed it into the river.

The shattered reflection in the water was of piled cloud. It would rain. He stood rooted, as if casting away his watch left him naked and defenceless. It grew cold. Something had altered. … Fear came in like a distant flute.

He looked round, bewildered. A curious double noise filled the air, a low and grating rumble punctuated by high-pitched cracking sounds. Uncertain where this growing uproar came from, Anderson ran forward, then paused again.

Peering back, he could see the women still stooped over their plots. They looked tiny and crystal-clear, figures glimpsed through the wrong end of a telescope. From their indifference, they might not have heard the sound. Anderson turned round again.

Something was coming down the valley!

Whatever it was, its solid front scooped up the river and ran with it high up the hills skirting the valley. It came fast, squealing and rumbling.

It glittered like water. Yet it was not water – its bow was too sharp, too unyielding. It was a glacier.

Anderson fell to the ground.

‘I’m mad, still mad!’ he cried, hiding his eyes, fighting with himself to hold the conviction that this was merely a delusion. He told himself no glacier ever moved at that crazy rate – yet even as he tried to reassure himself the ground shook under him.

Groaning, he heaved himself up. The wall of ice was bearing down on him fast. It splintered and fell as it came, sending up a shower of ice particles as it was ground down, but always there was more behind it. It stretched right up the valley, grey and uncompromising, scouring out the hills’ sides as it came.

Now its noise was tremendous. Cracks played over its towering face like lightning. Thunder was on its brow.

Impelled by panic, Anderson turned to run, his furs flapping against his legs.

The glacier moved too fast. It came with such force that he felt his body vibrate. He was being overtaken.

He cried aloud to the god of the glacier, remembering the old words.

There was a cave up the valley slope. He ran like mad for it, driving himself, while the ice seemed to crash and scream at his heels. With a final desperate burst of strength, he flung himself gasping through the low, dark opening, and clawed his way hand-over-fist towards the back of the cave.

He just made it. The express glacier ground on, flinging earth into the opening. For a moment the cave lit with a green-blue light. Then it was sealed up with reverberating blackness.

Sounds of rain and of his own sobbing. These were the first things he knew. Then he became aware that someone was soothing his hair and whispering comfort to him. Propping himself on one elbow, Anderson opened his eyes.

The cave entrance was unblocked. He could see grass and a strip of river outside. Rain fell heavily. His head had been resting in Alice’s lap; she it was who stroked his hair. He recalled her distasteful remark about Jocasta, but this was drowned in a welter of other recollections.

‘The glacier. … Has it gone? Where is it?’

‘You’re all right, Keith. There’s no glacier round here. Take it easy!’

‘It came bursting down the valley towards me. … Alice, how did you get here?’

She put out a hand to pull his head down again, but he evaded it.

‘When Stanley turned you out, I couldn’t bear to let you go like that, friendless, so I followed you. Stanley was furious, of course, but I knew you were in danger. Look, I’ve brought your revolver.’