New Writings in SF 6 - [Anthology] Read online

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  New Writings in

  SF: 6

  Ed By John Carnell

  Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  CONTENTS

  Foreword by John Carnell

  The Inner Wheel by Keith Roberts

  Horizontal Man by William Spencer

  The Day Before Never by Robert Presslie

  The Hands by John Baxter

  The Seekers by E. C. Tubb

  Atrophy by Ernest Hill

  Advantage by John Rackham

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  FOREWORD

  by John Carnell

  It has been the policy in this series of New Writings In S-F to make the contents of each book as wide and varied as possible and this sixth volume proves no exception. Seven new science fiction stories, never before published, run the gamut of illusion, fear, alien invasion, empathy, immortality, the far future and the human mind.

  In this latter category, Keith Roberts’ long novelette, “The Inner Wheel”, is outstanding. Not for many years has there has been such a powerful story of a gestalt mind. (Gestalt: A shape or structure which as an object of perception, forms a specific whole and has properties which cannot be completely deduced from a knowledge of the property of its parts.—The Readers’ Digest Encyclopaedic Dictionary.) The story itself explains the complexity of the definition, but here are a few thoughts on the subject.

  Have you ever been thinking or speaking of someone whom you have not seen for a long time, when the telephone or doorbell rings or you walk round a corner—and there they are! Or received a letter days afterwards ? (You could have been thinking about them at the time they were actually writing the letter to you.) Telepathy? Clairvoyance? Empathy? Some people are more “sensitive” to the phenomenon than others. Whatever it is, it is a form of mental communication and we know very little about it, if anything at all. It is even possible that somewhere along the evolutional tree of Mankind we managed to lose some of these developing mental powers, just as our sense of smell has deteriorated and our teeth become a liability rather than an asset, and our eyesight requires artificial aids.

  Despite the fact that we now know the constituent parts of the human brain, can measure it, probe it, operate upon it, electrically stimulate it and even analyse some of its aberrations, this fantastic piece of biological machinery is still largely a mystery and we are not at all sure of its capabilities. It may be that the psi powers are developing, not diminishing, but, if so, we have a long way to go before we can understand them.

  “The Inner Wheel” starts simply enough, with a compulsive instinct to visit one place, but soon moves inexorably onward to a webwork of fascinating intrigue. It presupposes that homo superior may eventually be a mental giant rather than a physical one in the years to come.

  The shorter stories form a well-balanced potpourri wherein there is something for everyone, depending upon your favourite type of story. Leaning towards the macabre is Robert Presslie’s “The Day Before Never”, a story of vengeance against an oppressive alien domination, but with unexpected results, while John Baxter’s bizarre plot, “The Hands”, will make most readers shudder a little. Those who enjoy stories of the far future can first dip into the different prospects visualized in Ernest Hill’s “Atrophy”, depicting a benevolent Big Brother attitude of regimentation, or William Spencer’s new idea on the prospect of immortality and its soul-crushing ennui in “Horizontal Man”, while those who prefer interplanetary travel can first take a look at E. C. Tubb’s “The Seekers” or John Rackham’s “Advantage”. They all depict a wide variety of possibilities in the near and distant future.

  It has been said that anything Man can visualize is possible—in this series we can sit back and read about those possibilities, as entertainment.

  John Carnell

  August 1965

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  THE INNER WHEEL

  by Keith Roberts

  This is a rather grim story of compulsion—of one man trapped in a web of innocuous circumstances deliberately shaped by a mind not quite of this world, yet the world itself is exactly the same. Or is it?

  * * * *

  The voices are in a void. The void has no colour. Neither is it dark.

  There are formless Shapes in the void. There are soundless Noises. There are swirlings and pressures, twistings and squeezings. The voices fill the gaps between nothingness. The voices are impatient. “Where? they ask “Where . . . ?”

  “I told you where . ..”

  “See for us and tell again. . . . Where is he . . . ?”

  “Getting on a train....”

  “Tell us what you see.... Where is the train ... ?”

  “In a station, where do you think ... ?”

  There are hammers and whips and pincers.

  “Where is the train?”

  “T-Tanbridge. Please, the station is tanbridge...”

  There are flickerings. “Gently,” say the voices. “Gently, tell us what you see....”

  “I ... there are roses. The platforms are covered with them. The ... train is green. The sky is very bright blue. Everything is quiet, nobody moving about. The coach stands in its bay. I see the sunlight lying across it and on the platforms. It lies in s-squares on the platforms, on the footbridge. There is a breeze now. A piece of paper blows and skips, the roses sway. I hear the little thorny sound of leaves scratching together. Please, no more....”

  Somewhere there might be giggling. Somewhere there might be rage. “Tell us about him....”

  A lens moves, seeing but unseen, examining textures of glass and wood and leaves. The station is haunted in the hot, still afternoon.

  “He is ... sitting in the train. In the front seat just behind the driver’s cab. He is... tall. He is ... dark, his hair is dark and rather long. It hangs across one eye. His face is thin, his eyes are very blue. His hands look ... strong. Well-kept, bony. Square nails, white halfmoons where the cuticle is pushed back. He uses a good aftershave...”

  The giggling again. “You like him ...”

  “Leave me alone...”

  Jostlings. “See ... we want to see. . . .” The not-colours swirl.

  “No...”

  “... despatched in accordance with your order of the twenty-third....”

  “I’M TRYING TO WORK...”

  “Gently...”

  “Leave me then. Leave me, I’ll tell you....”

  “Good,” say the voices. “Good. Tell us what you see....”

  “He’s ... taking out his cigarettes. Lighting one. Flicking the match in the holder. The m-motorman is coming now. He gets in, starts the engines. Puts the ... handle thing on that works the brakes....”

  “No,” say the voices. “No, no.... See for us, see deep....”

  “No...”

  Awfulness. The un-shapes scramble and pulse. “Deep,” say the voices. “See deep....”

  “I shall ... be sick....”

  “Deep!”

  The camera, the lens, floating close and closer. Somewhere inside the train inside the man inside the eyes are other pictures for it, closed each within each like a nest of mirages. The pictures twinkle, fade and strengthen and fade again, reduce themselves to glimmering node-points, swell. ... Someone somewhere bites lips inside until they are salt. Only the voice is calm; it speaks from the grey place the other side of terror. It husks and limps, feeling shared pain.

  “I ... see the rain. It bounces on pavements, pours along gutters. I see houses. Rows of houses. Their bricks are bright with the rain. I see a church, or a chapel.... All round ... oh it’s a chapel, chapel of a c-cemetery. The ... houses all roun
d like a high grey wall in the rain.... The ... men walking, the thing they are pushing doesn’t make a noise because the trolley has rubber tyres.... The ... people are coming now. Their shoulders are bent in the rain. They say, “It always rains on days like this....” I see the f-flowers, the rain is on the flowers, on their petals. The earth is dark because of the rain. I see the ... coffin, going down into the grave...”

  “Gently,” say the voices. And “Gently, gently...”

  “I see the houses again. One house. The people are inside and the great whispering cars have gone.... The rain cries against the windows like a thing shut out wanting to get in, and the people don’t know what to say to each other, what to say to him...An old lady is making tea, there are sandwiches all ready, but he can’t eat, he knows the bread is full of flesh—please don’t make me see any more...”

  “Enough,” say the voices. “Gently, enough.... We know he’s coming now, he’s nearly here. It’s enough....” And the camera, the eye, withdraws itself silently, folding in, closing, shutting away....

  “... to our order number cee five, oh eight six....” The voices are in a void. The void has no colour. Neither is it dark....

  * * * *

  “In a fiercely mourning house in a crooked year....”

  Jimmy Strong lay back in the seat, blew smoke, regarded the Hush Puppies that terminated his slimly trousered legs. The rhythm of the line of poetry pattered in his mind, stressed by the carriage wheels that rang now fiercely-mourn-fiercely-mourn over the rail joints. A great artist had strung those syllables together some time before he died of ... was it eighteen Scotches, in a New York bar? Jimmy shook his head slightly, eyes vague. Before, the words had just been angry, lovely sounds; now he knew what they meant.

  Ahead the branch line stretched into sunhaze. A little halt swam into sight, platforms wreathed again with roses, standards and climbers that exploded like silent fireworks against the thick blue of the sky. He saw lampstandards wreathed to their tops with the brightness, fresh paintwork on railings and trellises, glowing flower beds edged with whitewashed stones. The train brakes came on in a series of diminishing whooshes, the coach breathed to a stop and the driver turned off his engines.

  Jimmy stroked ash from his cigarette into the tray, sat feeling the sun strike through glass to burn his cheek. Footsteps ticked somewhere, faded into silence. Above the carriage a wooden bridge spanned the single track; in front the rails curved slightly to the right and vanished between low mounded hills. Somewhere out there a town Jimmy had never seen existed in four o’clock drowsiness. He asked himself, will it be any good? Will it be a place I can stay in for a while? He told himself, somehow it’s crazy, but you’re a man on the run. Can you stop running there?

  Running. There are times when the mind balks, hits a fact it can’t take, throws up an equation that gives a batty answer. Then maybe the deep, the thinking part of you whimpers and arches back into stasis and after a time of that any course of action seems good. So you start to run. You’re not running to anywhere, just away from where you are. You’re an electric puppet; the impossibility rides there on your shoulder while your motor nerves twitch and your body takes you away and away....

  A problem like an equation is made up of elements. You can take them singly, it’s trying to fit them all together that makes your skull sing. Jimmy remembered an element. The Studio, back in Town. Light filtering through inadequate windows, littered drawing boards, filing cabinets topheavy with drifts of paper and card. The yellowing fluorescents, their tubes flyblown; flexes, Sellotaped here and there to the edges of desks, that fed tired Anglepoise lamps from a Medusa confusion. It was a place where you could work and work and see your dreams give up and curl at the edges and realize the ad game was a machine, a bloody machine that sorted the heavyweight souls from the middleweight, and the middleweight from the lightweight. ... The man who sat at your elbow, painting in the shine on endless successions of bright green lawnmowers, had been a Prix de Rome. Maybe he’d had dreams too, once.....

  An element, an aspect of existence. Farther back, buried deeper in the impossible matrix of Time, were others. His father.... Only the image of him was fading, losing itself under a rippling and a hotness, the glaring hopeful hopeless time people call adolescence. Strong rubbed his face. Adolescence is the time you want freedom. You take it, snatch it, eat it maybe before the folk round you grab it back. Nobody can help you. Not then. Least of all a tired old man trying to come to terms with life....

  So he’d shucked his father off and gone to London to learn how to be a Great Artist with capital letters, and maybe there’d been times over the years when he’d thought the old devil wasn’t too bad after all, one day he’d just breeze back home and say Hi.... But the day had never come. Instead there was a telegram. It told him, the thing he’d planned on doing, it wouldn’t get done now. It told him he’d run out of tomorrows....

  Jimmy stubbed the cigarette and lit another. A coach cleared the line ahead; a signal dropped its smoky-amber arm, the driver pulled back jerkily on the Deadman’s. The carriage began to gather speed. Moved out into the sunlight, nosed among the hills.

  Jimmy told himself, the old man had had it good in those last years. Better than he’d ever realized. He’d made the grade, in his own way; even got his name up over the gate of the yard in faded swaggering letters. “John Strong, Scrap Dealer”. And underneath, a motto, a legend. “Everything has its price.” ...

  Elements in a random equation. Strong nodded to himself bitterly, in the bright train. “Yeah,” he said. ‘Yeah....”

  He tried to remember the rain, visualize the sky outside, the carriage grey, the windows streaked with spots. Suddenly, the exercise was impossible. Like remembering a pain, trying to work out after it had gone why you threshed and rolled and felt like dying. But that was a defence mechanism. Maybe this was as well. Dear God protect me from the dullness and the rain....

  It had rained at the funeral. And afterwards. The morning after; Jimmy sitting in a little cluttered office, the man in front of him hemming and coughing and seeming as dusty and yellowed as the shelves of files that lined the walls. Jimmy listened to the voice again scratching its way from fact to monstrous fact while the rain pattered soft against the glass. Death duties of course, he understood a large amount would be lost. The affairs were confused, some little time would be needed.... But the money that had been left for him, the money he’d known nothing about ... yes, a fairly substantial amount by any standards. ...

  Jimmy licked his lips, beginning to sense the sheer size of the problem his father had left him by dying alone like that. He said, “How much ... ?” He knew his voice was unsteady, knew too that whatever he said that would be misunderstood. And the stranger had steepled his fingers, winced to drive his glasses back up his nose, looked at him with eyes that held every expression and no expression.

  “Immediately.... Well I would say, Mr. Strong ... in round figures you understand, in very broad figures ... Twelve thousand pounds....”

  The driver touched a control and the train hooted; a long double note full somehow with the sensation of summer evenings, like the chuckle of water, the sound of a lawn-mower. Jimmy shook his head again. His father had been what he never would be; a businessman. They’d told him, one of the strangers had told him after the funeral, they thought old Strong had gone crazy when he bought that ancient halftrack. Old Kraut job it was, streaked with rust; they’d dug it out of some rotting stockpile down in the Channel Islands. Then John had bought another and another, snapping them up where he could find them, even bringing them in from the Continent. Forty quid here, fifty there, a hundred, two.... Bren carriers, ancient beaten-up scout cars, lorries, Command trucks; German, British, American.... If it was old, and smashed, and had fought in the war, John Strong would buy. Because everything, has a price...Light tanks, sidearms, steel helmets, badges, flamethrowers...And it had paid off. Jimmy succeeded. Twelve thousand; say a big outfit wants to make a film, say t
hey need the props and you’re the only man they can come to. You can make that in a week.... You’ve got to know the ropes of course and get to the right boys and slip tenners to odd people for not being in such and such a place at such and such a time; but these things can be arranged....

  He stubbed a cigarette and caught himself lighting another almost instantly. He asked himself, angrily, could I help being born the sort of person I am with the sort of mind I’ve got? Slow to hate, slower to love, the brain forges relationships like links of a chain, slow, slow ... but when the job’s done, when the links are made, they’re good for the only part of eternity that interests me, my lifetime.... He told himself, my father was like that. He was a West country man, he might forget, but he could never forgive. Ten years of silence while he made the money he couldn’t give me when I was young and silly and wanted to cut a dash. That’s what the wallet in my pocket says. That’s what the new chequebook is telling me. The world owes you a living, my son.... So out thee can go, and live like a rich little king....