The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

‘My name’s K. D. Anderson. Your friends suggested I came to see you.’

‘My what? Friends? If you wish to speak to me you’d better take more care over your choice of words.’

‘Mr Menderstone – if you are Mr Menderstone – choosing words is at present the least of my worries. I should appreciate hospitality and a little help.’

‘You must be from Earth or you wouldn’t ask a complete stranger for such things. Alice!’

This last name was bawled back into the house. It produced a sharp-featured female countenance which looked over Menderstone’s shoulder like a parrot peering from its perch.

‘Good afternoon, madam,’ Anderson said, determinedly keeping his temper. ‘May I come in and speak to you for a while? I’m newly arrived on Nehru.’

‘Jesus! The first “good afternoon” I’ve heard in a lifetime,’ the woman answering to the name of Alice exclaimed. ‘You’d better come in, you poetical creature!’

‘I decide who comes in here,’ Menderstone snapped, elbowing her back.

‘Then why didn’t you decide instead of dithering on the step? Come in , young man.’

Menderstone’s rifle barrel reluctantly swung back far enough to allow Anderson entry. Alice led him through into a large miscellaneous room with a stove at one end, a bed at the other, and a table between.

Anderson took a brief glance round before focusing his attention on his host and hostess. They were an odd pair. Seen here close to, Menderstone looked less large than he had done on the step, yet the impression of a formidable personality was more marked than ever. Strong personalities were rare on Earth these days; Anderson decided he might even like the man if he would curb his hostility.

As it was, Alice seemed more approachable. Considerably younger than Menderstone, she had a good figure, and her face was sympathetic as well as slightly comical. With her bird-like head tilted on one side, she was examining Anderson with interest, so he addressed himself to her. Which proved to be a mistake.

‘I was just about to tell your husband that I stopped by to see an old friend and teacher of mine. Dr Frank Arlblaster –’

Menderstone never let Anderson finish.

‘Now you have sidled in here, Mr K. D. Anderson, you’d be advised to keep your facts straight. Alice is not my wife; ergo, I am not her husband. We just live together, there being nobody else in Swettenham more suitable to live with. The arrangement, I may add, is as much one of convenience as passion.’

‘Mr Anderson and I both would appreciate your leaving your egotistical self out of this for a while,’ Alice told him pointedly. Turning to Anderson, she motioned him to a chair and sat down on another herself. ‘How did you get permission to come here? I take it you have a little idea of what goes on on Nehru II?’ she asked.

‘Who or what are those shambling apes outside?’ he asked. ‘What makes you two so prickly? I thought this was supposed to be a colony of exiled intellectuals?’

‘He wants discussions of Kant, calculus, and copulation,’ Menderstone commented.

Alice said: ‘You expected to be greeted by eggheads rather than apes?’

‘I’d have settled for human beings.’

‘What do you know about Arlblaster?’

Anderson gestured impatiently.

‘You’re very kind to have me in, Mrs – Alice, I mean, but can we have a conversation some other time? I’ve a tourer parked back up the hill with my sister Kay waiting in it for me to return. I want to know if I can get there and back without being waylaid by these ruffians outside.’

Alice and Menderstone looked at each other. A deal of meaning seemed to pass between them. After a pause, unexpectedly, Menderstone thrust his rifle forward, butt first.

‘Take this,’ he said. ‘Nobody will harm you if they see a rifle in your hand. Be prepared to use it. Get your car and your sister and come back here.’

‘Thanks a lot, but I have a revolver back near my vehicle –’

‘Carry my rifle. They know it; they respect it. Bear this in mind – you’re in a damn sight nastier spot than you imagine as yet. Don’t let anything – anything – deflect you from getting straight back here. Then you’ll listen to what we have to say.’

Anderson took the rifle and balanced it, getting the feel of it. It was heavy and slightly oiled, without a speck of dust, unlike the rest of the house. For some obscure reason, contact with it made him uneasy.

‘Aren’t you dramatising your situation here, Menderstone? You ought to try living on Earth these days – it’s like an armed camp. The tension there is real, not manufactured.’

‘Don’t kid me you didn’t feel something when you came in here,’ Menderstone said. ‘You were trembling!’

‘What do you know about Arlblaster?’ Alice put her question again.

‘A number of things. Arlblaster discovered a prehistoric-type skull in Brittany, France, back in the eighties. He made a lot of strange claims for the skull. By current theories, it should have been maybe ninety-five thousand years old, but RCD made it only a few hundred years old. Arlblaster lost a lot of face over it academically. He retired from teaching – I was one of his last pupils – and became very solitary. When he gave up everything to work on a cranky theory of his own, the government naturally disapproved.’

‘Ah, the old philosophy: “Work for the common man rather than the common good”,’ sighed Menderstone. ‘And you think he was a crank, do you?’

‘He was a crank! And as he was on the professions roll as Learned Man, he was paid by World Government,’ he explained. ‘Naturally they expected results from him.’

‘Naturally,’ agreed Menderstone. ‘Their sort of results.’

‘Life isn’t easy on Earth, Menderstone, as it is here. A man has to get on or get out. Anyhow, when Arlblaster got a chance to join Swettenham’s newly formed colony here, he seized the opportunity to come. I take it you both know him? How is he?’

‘I suppose one would say he is still alive,’ Menderstone said.

‘But he’s changed since you knew him,’ Alice said, and she and Menderstone laughed.

‘I’ll go and get my tourer,’ Anderson said, not liking them or the situation one bit. ‘See you.’

Cradling the rifle under his right arm, he went out into the square. The sun shone momentarily through the cloud-cover, so hotly that it filled the shadows with splodges of red and grey. Behind the splodges, in front of the creaking houses of Swettenham, the people of Swettenham squatted or leaned with simian abandon in the trampled dust.

Keeping his eye on them, Anderson moved off, heading for the hill. Nobody attempted to follow him. A haphazardly beaten track led up the slope, its roughness emphasising the general neglect.

When he was out of sight of the village, Anderson’s anxiety got the better of him. He ran up the track calling ‘Kay, Kay!’

No answer. The clotted light seemed to absorb his voice.

Breasting the slope, he passed the point where he had seen the woolly rhinoceros. His vehicle was where he had left it. Empty.

He ran to it, rifle ready. He ran round it. He began shouting his sister’s name again. No reply.

Checking the panic he felt, Anderson looked about for footprints, but could, find none. Kay was gone, spirited away. Yet there was nowhere on the whole planet to go to, except Swettenham.

On sudden impulse he ran down to the two boulders where he had encountered the brutish Ell. They stood deserted and silent. When he had retrieved his revolver from where it had fallen, he turned back. He trudged grimly back to the vehicle, his shirt sticking to his spine. Climbing in, he switched on and coasted into the settlement.

In the square again, he braked and jumped down, confronting the chunky bodies in the shadows.

‘Where’s my sister?’ he shouted to them. ‘What sort of funny business are you playing at?’

Someone answered one syllable, croaking it into the brightness: ‘Crow!’