Nova 3 Read online

  “Do you have any orders for me?” Veerhe asked.

  “I’ll want to review all the data about the Ancient Dynasty fleet. But first I think a coronation would be in order. No, first a referendum electing me emperor, then a coronation. Can you arrange all that?”

  “I shall begin at once,” the Chief Planner said.

  For Earth, the standard nightmare had finally taken place. An advanced alien civilization was about to impose its culture upon Earth. For Loris, the situation was different. The Lorians, previously defenseless, had suddenly acquired an aggressive alien general, and soon would have a group of mercenaries to operate their spacefleet. All of which was not so good for Earth, but not bad at all for Loris.

  It was inevitable, of course. For the Lorians were a really advanced and intelligent people. And what is the purpose of being really intelligent if not to have the substance of what you want without mistaking it for the shadow?

  THE EXPENSIVE

  DELICATE SHIP

  By BRIAN W. ALDISS

  Literature would be the poorer without Brian Aldiss who is an artist with a novel, a poet of the short story. The title of this one is taken, fittingly, from a poem by W. H. Auden, Musee de Beaux Arts, which ends with these lines:

  But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

  As it had on the white legs disappearing into the green

  Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

  Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

  Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

  IN THE OLD days, there used to be a suspension bridge across from Denmark to Sweden, between Helsing0r and Halsingborg. It’s scrapped now. It became too dangerous. But it had a moving walkway, and my friend Goran Svenson and I often used to use it. At one time, taking the walkway grew into a pleasant afternoon habit.

  We got on the bridge one day, complaining as everyone does occasionally, about our jobs. “We worked so damned hard,” I said. “When do we have time to live?”

  “I’ve got a theory,” he said, “that it’s the other way about.” When Goran announces that he has a theory, you can be pretty sure that something crazy is going to come out. “I think we work so hard, and do all the other things we do, because living—just intense pure living—is far too painful to endure. Work is a panacea which dilutes life.”

  “Good old Goran, you mean life is worse than death, I suppose?”

  “No, not worse certainly, but the next most severe thing to death. Life is like light. All living creatures seek the light, but a really hard intense white light can kill them. Pure life’s like that.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk about a pure life, you old lecher!”

  He gave me a pained look and said, “For that, I shall tell you a story.”

  We climbed on to the accelerating rollers, and so on to to the walkway proper. We were carried out over Helsing0r docks, and at once the Oresund was beneath us, its gray waters looking placid from where we stood.

  This is Goran’s story, as near as I can recall to the way he told it, though I may have forgotten one or two of his weird jokes.

  He was aware that he was on a boat in a fearful storm. He thought the boat was sailing up the Skagerrak toward Oslo Fjord but, if so, there must have been some sort of a power failure, because the interior of the ship was miserably lit by dim lanterns swinging here and there.

  Maybe it was a cattle boat, to judge from the smell. He was making his way up the companionway when a small animal—possibly a wallaby—darted by. He nearly fell backward, but the ship pitched him forward at just the right moment, and he regained his balance.

  When he got on deck—my God! What a sea! It couldn’t be the Skagerrak; the Skagerrak was never that rough! Goran had spent several years at sea before the last vessels were completely automated, but he had never encountered an ocean like this. The air was almost as thick with water as the sea, so furiously was rain dashing down, blown savagely by high winds. There was no sign of coast, no glimpse of other vessels.

  An old man made his way up to Goran, going hand-over-fist along the rails. His robes were dripping water. Something about his wild ancient look gave Goran a painful start. What sort of vessel was he aboard? He realized that the rails were made of wood, and the companion way, and the entire ship as far as he could see—roughly made, at that!

  The old man clutched his arm and bellowed, “Get up to the wheel as fast as you can! Shem needs a hand!”

  Goran could smell strong liquor on the old man’s breath.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  The old man laughed drunkenly. “In the world’s pisspot, I should reckon! What a night! The windows of Heaven are open and the waters of Earth prevail exceedingly!”

  As if to emphasize his words, a great mountain of water as big as an alp went bursting by, soaking them both completely as it went.

  “How—how long’s this storm likely to last?” Goran asked.

  “Why, long as the good Lord pleases! What a night! I’ve got the chimps working the pumps. Even the crocodiles are seasick! Keep your weather-eye open for a rainbow, that’s all I can say. Now get to the wheel, fast as you can! I’m going below to secure the rhinos.”

  Goran had to fight his way first uphill and then downhill as the clumsy tub of a boat wallowed its way through the biggest storm since the world was created. He knew now that the Skagerrak would be a mere puddle compared to this all-encompassing ocean. They sailed on a planet without harbor or land to obstruct wind and wave. Small wonder the seas were so monstrous!

  Forward, Shem was almost exhausted. Between them, the two men managed to lash the wheel to hold it. Every moment was a fight against elemental forces. The cries of animals and the groan of timbers were almost lost in the roaring wind, picked up and scattered contemptuously into the tempest.

  Finally, between them, they had the ship heading into the storm, and clung to the wheel gasping for breath.

  Goran thought himself beyond further fear when the ship was lifted high up a great sliding mountainside of water, up, up, to perch over a fearful gulf between waves. Just before they sliced down into the gulf, he saw a light ahead.

  “Ship ahoy!” That was Shem, poor lad, pointing a finger in the direction Goran had been looking.

  Ship? What ship? What possible ship could be sailing these seas at this time? What para-legendary voyage might it be on?

  The two men stared at each other with pallid faces, and in one voice bellowed aloud for Noah. Then they turned to peer through the murk again.

  At this point in his narrative, my friend Svenson broke off, to all appearances overcome by emotion. By now, the bridge had carried us halfway across to Sweden; beneath us sailed the maritime traffic of the tranquil 0resund. But Goran’s inner eye was fixed on another rougher sea.

  “Did you catch a second glimpse of the phantom ship?” I asked.

  You’ve no idea what it was like to sail that sea! The water was not like sea water. It was black, a black shot through with streaks of white and yellow, as if it were a living organism with veins and sinews. There were areas where fetid bubbles kept bursting to the surface, covering the waves with a vile foam . . .

  Yes, we saw that phantom vessel again. Indeed we did! As the ark struggled up the mile-long side of yet another mountain of water, the other vessel came rushing down the slope upon us.

  It was as fleet, as beautiful, as our tub was heavy and crude, was that expensive delicate ship! And it was lit from stem to stem; whereas the ark—that old fool Noah had not thought to provide navigational lights, reckoning his would be the only boat braving those high waters.

  We stared aghast, Shem and I, as that superb craft bore down on us, much as two children in an alpine valley might gaze at the avalanche plunging down to destroy them.

  Japheth had fought his way through the gale to cling beside us. His arrival made no impression on my consciousness until I heard him scream and turned to see his face�
�so pale and wet it seemed luminescent—and it was only on seeing him that I could realize the extent of my own terror!

  “Where’s your father? Where is he?” I shouted, seizing him by the shoulders.

  “He stubbed his foot down below!”

  Stubbed his foot! In sudden wild anger, I flung Japheth from me and, turning, pulled out my sheath knife. With a few slashes, I had cut the wheel free and flung it over with all my might, fighting the great roar of tide under our keel with every fibre of my being.

  Sluggishly, our old tub turned a few degrees—and that great beautiful ship went racing by us to port, slicing up foam high over our poop, missing us, as it seemed, by inches!

  It went by, and, as it went by—towering over us, that incredible ship—I saw a human face peer out at me. For the briefest moment, our gaze met. I tell you, it was the gaze of doom. Well, such was my deep and ineradicable impression—the gaze of doom!

  Then it was gone, and I saw other faces, faces of animals, all staring helplessly across the churning waters. Those animals—it was an instant’s glimpse, no more, yet I know what I saw! Unicorns, gryphons, a centaur with lashing mane, and those superb beasts we have learned to call by Latin names—megatherium, stegosaurus, a tyrannosaur, triceratops with beaked mouth agape, diplodocus. . .

  Of course, they all sliced by in a flash as the miraculous ship—that doppelganger ark!—sped down the waters. And then they were lost in the murk and spume. A flicker of light, and once more our ark was all alone in the hostile sea, with the windows of heaven open upon us.

  And I was wrestling with the wheel, on and on—maybe forever . . .

  I burst out laughing.

  “Great story, great performance! You are trying to persuade me that you sailed on the ark with Noah? Who were you! Ham, no doubt!”

  He looked pained.

  “You see, you are so coarse, old chap! Your scepticism does you no credit. Concentrate your attention on that fine ship which almost rammed us. What was it? Where was it sailing? Who built it? And what happened to it, what happened to all the creatures aboard?”

  “An even bigger mystery—did poor old Noah’s toe get better?”

  He made a gesture of disgust. “You refuse to take me seriously. Just consider the tragedy, the poetry, the mystery, of that apocalyptic encounter. I sometimes ask myself if the wrong vessel survived that gigantic storm. You know that God was very angry with that drunken old sot, Noah. Did the wrong set of men and animals survive to repopulate the Earth?”

  “I can’t imagine a pterodactyl bringing a sprig of olive back into the ark.”

  “Laugh if you will! Sometimes I wonder what alternate possibilities and possible world flashed past my eyes in that moment of crisis. You haven’t my fine imaginative mind —such speculations would mean nothing to you.”

  “You began this sermon by talking about just pure intense living—I suppose in contrast with all the muddled stuff we get through. Are you saying that this moment when you saw this—‘doppelganger ark’, as you call it, was a moment of intense living?”

  He glanced down at the docks of Halsingborg, now rolling under our feet. The new art museum loomed ahead. We had almost arrived on the Swedish shore.

  “No, not at all. Being so imaginative, my moment of intense living was to invent this little mysterious anecdote for you. I live in imagination! Too bad you are too much of a slob to appreciate it!”

  Then he dropped his solemn expression and began to laugh. Roaring with laughter, we moved down the escalator to terra firma.

  Next day, we saw in the newscasts that two small children, a boy and a girl, had been drowned in the 0resund just outside Halsingborg harbor, and at about the time we were passing overhead.

  DREAMING AND CONVERSIONS:

  TWO RULES BY WHICH TO LIVE

  By BARRY N. MALZBERG

  If science fiction, and science, and perhaps the world, has a conscience, the name of that conscience is Barry N. Malberg.

  THE DESTRUCTION AND EXCULPATION OF EARTH

  SUBJECT WAS PERSUADED to no longer refer to himself in the egomaniacal first-person quite recently. Sometimes I forget but am trying to control myself. It is a matter of self-disciplined. God help me. Someone must. I cannot take the responsibility any more.

  Subject was encouraged to this “sense of depersonalization” by two aliens who visited him at quarters in the early evening hours some days ago. Visitors convinced subject that they were “aliens” through the use of persuasive devices too strong and distasteful to be recorded in these notes. Initial doubt gave way to unquestioning acceptance. These boys do not fool around. They are serious. They mean to accomplish their purposes and they will because they are beyond us. We are one of the least intelligent of all the intelligent races in the galaxy as we have had cause to be reminded over and again.

  Subject said, “Yes, you are aliens. Even though you seem to look like humans, I believe that you are aliens. I believe. No more, no more; how can I help you?” I have never been able to bear physical pain. My specialty is moral anguish.

  The aliens responded—that is, just one of them spoke, the other being “unequipped with vocal devices”—that subject could be of great help in accomplishing the reform of his planet so that said planet could, its corrupt elements removed, join the “galactic federation of peaceful, peace-loving, peace-oriented civilizations.” Subject, whose record on the war has been clear for many years, said that he was interested and more than willing to help but did not quite grasp what role he could play toward this end, no matter how willing he was to cooperate.

  Alien spokesman gave detailed instructions, too livid and technical by turns to find a place in this memoir which must be kept brief. Ego-removal was broached. “The trouble with you creates,” stated the spokesman, “is that you are selfish and limited. You are so involved in filtering reality through your narrow, superficial personality-referent that you miss the span of it. The first thing for you to do is to stop taking yourself personally. Think of yourself instead as a machine, a device, a means of enactment through which important messages and activities will pass. The exculpation of Earth. Eliminate once and for all the curse of ego.”

  Subject eagerly agreed to try this. He had always wanted to be a machine, finding emotions more burdensome than otherwise because of an unfortunate personal life, which I will not discuss. I will not discuss my personal life in these notes, even under threat of torture. I agreed to cooperate with the aliens in any way possible in order to bring about the exculpation of earth, an era of galactic progress and their hasty exit from his rooms.

  “That is good,” said the alien with a wondrous and sparkling grin, which quite moved me since I am rarely the recipient of smiles. “We know that we picked the proper contact.” Aliens then left with subject: one detailed pamphlet summarizing the overall plan, one list detailing subject’s duties and necessary supplies, and one threat. The threat had to do with what would happen if I crossed them; I will say no more. The list and plan I memorized and then incinerated as per instruction, so that no evidence would be left.

  Aliens were assured that subject would serve them. Aliens said that he had better and that there would be no further contact of any sort. They will not return but merely observe and report for further action from their headquarters. Despite the fact that there is, then, no physical evidence of this meeting, I swear that I am telling the truth.

  In accordance with earlier plans, subject then attended a “postgraduate and nurses’ mixer” at a local hotel. Nothing was supposed to happen until the next day. Outfitted in his good suit and with a photostat of his college degree in case credentials were actually checked, subject paid three dollars to a deaf mute at the door and with some trepidation joined the postgraduates and nurses within. Never had I had any luck with girls, godammit.

  But still I push on; smiling for the world, hopeful, honest, and doomed. Subject decided to put into effect the process of ego-removal urged by the alien and to act like a machine.
To think of himself as a machine. Much to his surprise, aided by a mild drink, subject found himself deep in conversation with Beverly M—(out of delicacy for who knows to what uses this memoir will be put I am concealing specific identities), a psychiatric social worker from the Bronx who, like he, was there alone. Beverly, in her midthirties and unmarried appeared to be delighted with the machine. We left at an early hour and returned to this very apartment. I have never been so surprised in my life.

  Subject and the psychiatric social worker engaged in the act or acts of generation three times between midnight and seven a.m. of the day of the First Exculpation. His chiseled features, so alert and fine, congealed with lust! His heart overflowed with secrets devious and terrible he wished to tell his first love but cunningly the machine fed the secrets into binary code, concentrating only upon the detailed and mechanical intricacies of performance. I was superb, gentlemen. You would not have thought I had it in me.

  As a result of this, Beverly left the subject quite reluctantly to return to her job, promising that she would return to the apartment that very evening and “really go at it for once and for all.” Subject smiled ironically, thinking of many things and permitted his webbing and tentacles to drift over Beverly’s dress during a passionate kiss.

  He then phoned his employer and told the employer to “go and shove it,” carefully omitting any details of the exculpation however. The aliens had told me to concentrate upon the tasks fulltime and to live on savings which fortunately I had. When employer became abusive, subject told him to “fuck himself up a tree” and hung up rather blithely. I then dressed and took the subway uptown to purchase the weaponry on the list.