The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Wyvern had no doubt at all as to what it all meant. Experimentally, he tugged at the terminal set in his left nipple and felt the network of wires like capillary veins tighten under his skin. They had taped him up. The innermost meaning of his innermost chromosome was being syphoned out of him and on to the panel. He could feel his slightest sensation, an itch on the pores of his leg or the stir of bile in his gut, register in micro-amps and flick up a reading on a dial. He could feel his thoughts scuttle along the wires and whistle through the machine’s mazes. He was ready to be coupled up to Big Bert.

Sighing, he lay down again. A small metal box was fixed between his shoulders – a fuse box? He wondered – and he could not lie comfortably. So he lay uncomfortably.

Four men entered the room. They wore white overalls. Two of them took great interest in Wyvern, examining him, prodding him, checking the instruments; the other two stood to one side rather boredly, and began chatting together. Wyvern could hear snatches of their conversation.

‘… nasty bust up on Twenty One last night. Three of our boys had it.’

‘My mate Alfred was down there. Apparently he picked up with some French tart …’

It was a reminder of a world which might have ceased to exist for Wyvern.

The examination took the best part of an hour. At the end of it, the examiners showed themselves satisfied and left. They returned in ten minutes with Colonel H’s secretary.

The secretary came over to the table and stared down at Wyvern. Viewed from this angle, he looked less the pukka officer than usual, more the thug; his mouth had that stupid set to it observable in men of callous natures.

‘You see we managed to bring you through,’ he said, mock-brightly. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I want a drink,’ Wyvern said. But, he reflected as he asked, he did no longer need a drink; the trolley had automatically supplied the shortage. The secretary, in any case, paid no heed to the request.

‘I regret the Colonel could not come,’ he said. ‘He is attending to a little source of irritation outside. We are going to get the computer to work draining you straight away – it has already been given its instructions. Results should be coming through by late afternoon, shortly after the Colonel is officially proclaimed Beloved Leader.’

‘I’m not interested,’ Wyvern said sourly.

‘You should be – it concerns you,’ the secretary said. He turned and talked in a low voice to the men in white. After some consultation, one of them left the room; he was gone only a minute, and when he returned he said, ‘Yes, they’re all standing by at Computer Central.’

‘Splendid,’ the secretary said. ‘You’d better switch on straight away.’

The other nodded and went over to the green panel.

Wyvern tensed himself, not knowing what to expect, unless it was a form of electrocution. He lay there on the devilish rack, eyes probing the others. Apart from some signs of strain, their faces were blank. Of all the winds loose from Pandora’s box, Wyvern thought, only the wind of science blows today; untempered by human kindness, it’s a cold wind. I die of mere cleverness.

But several toggle switches clicked over and he did not die. Indeed, at first he felt nothing. Then a not unpleasant vibration crept through his body. It worked steadily through him, learning every cell, and so into his brain.

An indescribable sensation of a myriad doors being flung open attacked Wyvern. But for that moment he was not Wyvern; his identity was gone, sucked into the giant computer for inspection. Then it was back, packed into the correct cubicles it had come from. Then silence.

The white-overalled men glanced anxiously up at H’s secretary, then turned back to the board. Without a word, they commenced checking across the wide expanse of instruments.

‘What’s up?’ asked the secretary sharply.

‘Power’s packed in,’ one of the men said in an equally sharp tone.

The secretary strode over to the board.

‘You mean to say –,’ he began.

‘Everything’s perfectly in order here,’ the other interrupted. ‘Our readings are all OK. It’s the pipe to Bert where the failure’s occurred. You’d better get them on the blower – maybe the rioters have cut the line!’

‘Get them yourself, as quickly as possible,’ the secretary ordered. As he spoke, the phone gonged. He grabbed it and listened, barking every now and again.

‘Damned incompetence,’ he remarked, putting the receiver down as if he were lowering an enemy into a cobra’s hole. ‘That was Computer Central. They say that Bert itself has shut down. They are at a loss to account for it, but are working on the problem. No faults detected as yet. I’m going over there. See that this fellow Wyvern does not die.’

He left.

The white coats promptly lit cigarettes. They looked quizzically at Wyvern, then gave him one.

‘Thanks,’ Wyvern said.

‘Think nothing of it. Smoke while you can.’

‘I mean thanks for realising I was still human.’

‘Oh that.’ They laughed uneasily, and lapsed into silence.

Wyvern was not letting them off so lightly. Confidence had returned to him. For one thing, it was clear that the machine was not going to kill him: it had to learn from him, and therefore there was the possibility that he could enlist it on his side. For another thing, the knowledge that had been, so to speak, drawn from him and put back now showed itself to contain an item he had overlooked. For another, nobody had a thing on him legally, and when Bert had finished its task Wyvern should again be a free man – provided he could engineer himself free of the Colonel’s house party.

‘Answer a straight question, will you,’ he said to the technicians. ‘Just what do you think I’ve done that squares your consciences with this inhuman job you are carrying out on me?’

They exchanged looks.

‘Do you think we don’t know about you?’ one asked. ‘The whole Sector knows about you!’

‘Knows what about me?’ Wyvern said.

For answer, the other fished a copy of ‘Lunareview’ from his pocket. It was the latest edition. It bore Wyvern’s photograph and headlines which ran:

MURDER BY EX-CRUXTISTICIAN

DUMB MAN DIES IN BRAWL OVER BLONDE

VI

Now Wyvern was alone in the room except for a guard. The guard called himself a male nurse; his name was William. He was very big and pale, and had been born on the moon; his father was dead, his mother worked in the Imbrium Dyes Factory and he had three sisters, Katie, Joyce and Joy, all of whom were married except Joy, and she was engaged.

This Wyvern had learnt when William first arrived. Now the big fellow settled down in a chair beside the couch and absorbed himself in part three of a four part serial entitled ‘Shall Love’s Affairs Be Hushed?’ contained in a magazine Joy had lent him.

Wyvern lay back, glad of a chance to collect his wits. So much had happened, he found himself marvelling he was still whole and hopeful. Part of the hope lay in the fact that he realised he knew the identity of Dorgen’s murderer.

During the disorienting periods of ego-union he had spent with Parrodyce and Dorgen, many impressions had soaked in on him. He had scarcely heeded them at the time, and had shrunk from trying to sort them later, so unprepossessing had most of them been. Yet hidden information lay in them; he might, for instance, have discovered in them the severing of Dorgen’s tongue, had he attempted the analysis.

An analysis was precisely what Big Bert had performed in the few moments before its mysterious breakdown. It had coupled like with like, and this orderly process inevitably left an imprint on Wyvern’s mind; indeed it might almost be said to have altered the whole organisation of his mind. It left two hitherto separate facts significantly side by side: Dorgen’s mental picture of his killer; Parrodyce’s mental picture of his assistant. The pictures dissolved and merged; they were one: Parrodyce’s assistant was Dorgen’s killer.

Why? Wyvern asked himself Why? How? But the truth had lain there undeniably in his mind waiting to be developed, like a film in a dark drawer. He was able even to piece together a name with the portraits: Joe Rakister; for though the name had never actually been formulated to him in the state of ego-union, face and name were one symbol.

If only Wyvern could get that knowledge through to a neutral authority, he would be cleared of the spurious charge H had framed him with. That meant getting himself clear of the Sector. Of a sudden, he longed for a free, straightforward life again. He was not dead yet: and better be dead than waiting here for he knew not what.

He slid his legs off the table.

‘Here, you’ve got to stay on there,’ William said, looking up from his magazine.