by Michael G. Coney
It was as though Bronsil had been reborn a grown man but without any memory of an earlier life. Certainly, it was more than amnesia, although as events progressed he was forced to make more and more decisions which seemed to fit a pattern he felt were logical.
* * * *
Bronsil woke.
He woke with reluctance; his mind craved oblivion, his body betrayed him into increasing consciousness. His first awareness was of gravity; he was this way up, rather than that way. He was lying on his right side. His knees were drawn up towards his chest and his elbows lay close to his ribs. His right arm was pinned beneath his body, but not uncomfortably; the floor was soft and yielding.
His eyes were still closed, a pink glow filtered through the lids, disturbing him further. He shifted his position petulantly, willing the light to go away. He buried his face in the soft floor but his body remained alert and demanding.
Wearily he tried to think; to analyse the ache in his abdomen. He could not remember a time when he had suffered discomfort, so had no point of reference from which he could explore this new sensation. The concepts of good and bad, like and dislike, had long ceased to have any meaning. He had dispassionately liked everything; all was mildly good.
For a long time previous to waking, Bronsil had known amiable perfection.
Now, suddenly and inexplicably, he knew an existence which was not good and with knowledge came fear. Fearfully, therefore, he rolled on to his back, opened his eyes, and the Scarlet Room was illuminated.
The light was diffused and an ancient memory came to him; the light must have a source. Somewhere, he would see a glowing orb which would also provide warmth. But there was no orb and no warmth. He shivered and decided that he was cold and could not remember ever having been cold before. He further analysed and knew that he was hungry.
Frightened, cold and hungry, Bronsil shuddered into a heightened awareness. When he had screamed away a part of the fear, he lay exhausted and gradually he knew curiosity. With new purpose behind his unaccustomed eyesight, he examined his surroundings.
He was lying naked on his back in a perfectly egg-shaped chamber. It was small, barely larger than himself and the curved ceiling was so low that he could almost have touched it from his prone position, had he thought to raise his arm. The walls which blended curving into the floor were translucent pink; and soft. The rosy glow of diffused light came from behind the walls.
The room had two features. At the more pointed end of the ovoid, beyond Bronsil’s feet, was a concave darker panel flush with the walls, with a circular grille set in the centre. From the ceiling, directly above his head, hung a flexible black tube. Murmuring softly, Bronsil seized the end of the tube and thrust it into his mouth.
He sucked uselessly, sucked again, chewing the resilient plastic, but received no satisfaction.
Whimpering, he shifted position again, rolling over to his knees.
Later, Bronsil began to crawl towards the dark panel. It was the only thing to do.
* * * *
The panel pushed outwards and swung away, locking into the open position with a startling metallic click, causing Bronsil to freeze into a huddled position of fear, his body in the oval chamber, his head at the new opening, eyes closed and hands covering his ears. The concept of sound was long forgotten; it was a little while before he opened his eyes again and looked into the room beyond.
The new room was rectangular, a terrifying geometry of plane surfaces and angular intersections. A table and chair stood centrally on the rich carpet; and around the walls were further chairs, deeply upholstered, recognisable to some dim corner of Bronsil’s mind. He knew he had seen such items before, although at this time it did not occur to him that they might have a purpose. Apart from the plastic tube in the oval room, the idea of purpose was unknown to him.
At the table a man sat watching him, from time to time making notes in a spiral-backed pad. He wore strange clothes. As Bronsil shifted his position again, the man spoke.
‘It’s warmer in here,’ he said. ‘Are you hungry?’ He indicated a bowl on the table, then stood and left the room by a door set in the far wall, closing it quietly.
Bronsil knew speech! He marvelled, as he lay half in and half out of the oval chamber. The creature in the other room was a man and he had spoken, and Bronsil had understood! He was overwhelmed by new sensations, amazed at his power of perception. Amazed that he had the capacity to be amazed for a while he forgot fear and lay wondering in the warm air which flowed from the rectangular room.
Soon hunger nagged him forward and he began to crawl down the step to the floor. He stopped, he thought, and fear returned.
He could not see all the room. He was moving into a region of unfamiliarity and he could not see his entire surroundings. There was an area hidden from him; that circular area behind the open panel. He regarded it fearfully, wondering if it contained an unknown discomfort. He moved his head from side to side, but from his present position it was impossible to see the entire wall behind that hinged circular panel.
Justifying his hesitation, a voice spoke close into his ear, a voice which could only have come from the hidden area.
‘We are very sorry. You must enter the room.’ The voice was not that of the man Bronsil had seen; this new voice was harsh and metallic and formed its words differently. It was infinitely sad, yet commanding; and Bronsil, despite his fear, crawled down the step and on to the soft carpet of the rectangular room.
Then he turned round slowly, three times on his hands and knees, gazed about him, curled up and went to sleep.
* * * *
He was awakened by a sharp click; the panel had swung closed and he was trapped. He tensed, lifted his head and gazed around sniffing, animal-like. The rectangular room was unchanged, full of strange, vivid colours. The closing of the panel had revealed a square pane of opaque glass. As he watched, the glass brightened and the metallic voice spoke again.
‘Primary Justification number one,’ it grated. ‘Watch the screen carefully, please.’ The voice still betrayed sadness.
A picture appeared on the screen. Bronsil backed away, crouched on all fours, his heart pounding uncomfortably. The floor beneath the deep carpet was hard. Still he watched the screen, fearful yet fascinated.
The image of a creature appeared. He knew it was living because it moved; yet the contours of the body were unfamiliar. Its shape was amorphous, constantly changing as it moved against a curious background of rough grey rocks by extending sudden tentacles, then contracting to a new position.
‘This is the adult Prell.’
The creature had arrived at a dome-shaped building. It reared up, a shapeless blob of protoplasm and extended a pseudopod, pressing at a certain point on the silvery structure. A circular hole appeared, and the Prell passed inside.
Now the picture changed and Bronsil readily comprehended that he saw the inside of the dome, which in shape was similar to the Scarlet Room he had recently left. This was the only similarity however; the walls were silver and the flat floor blue; rectangular red objects, furniture, were positioned at intervals around the dome.
The Prell slid across the room, climbed to one of the low platforms and became still. The camera moved in closer; through the semi-transparent skin of the creature a dark nerve centre could be seen radiating black threads which branched and branched again, infusing a fine tracery of veins throughout the body.
‘Please observe this closely.’
The dark blob became elongated, assumed an hour-glass shape and, over the course of a few moments, divided. Each half now carried its own web of veins. The camera retreated and Bronsil observed that the entire body of the Prell was dividing, also. Before long, two Prells lay on the red platform, where previously there had been one. Soon they moved, began to flow to the floor. They left the dome. The screen went blank.
The voice spoke. ‘At present, we only want you to remember. Explanations will be made in due course, when you are ready for them. Remember that you have seen the reproduction of a Prell.’
So Bronsil understood that the creature was called Prell, that it was unlike himself and that he had seen it reproduce. It had been one; it was now two.
The speaker went dead; the faint background hum ceased.
Bronsil felt suddenly lonely and wondered if the person behind the screen wished him to reproduce in like manner. He didn’t think he could achieve it. He began to think about his body and became aware again of his gnawing hunger.
He crawled across the floor weakly, towards the table, impelled by the memory of the clothed man he had seen sitting on the chair and the similarity of that position to the Prell on the platform. In order to feel better, to lose fear and gain confidence, it was necessary to get off the floor.
Later he was sitting at the table, arms splayed across the fiat surface, feeling that he had been wrong. It was dangerously insecure; he was more frightened than before; he was in imminent danger of falling. But on the table was a bowl of fluid, and instinctively he knew that it was intended to relieve his hunger. But how?
It was a long time before he drew the bowl to him, bent his head to the rippling surface, pursed his lips and sucked.
In the days that followed Bronsil gained strength and confidence steadily. He explored the room, ascertained the uses of the various items of furniture and learned to obtain bowls of nutrient fluid by pressing a red button on the wall and withdrawing the bowl from a hatch beneath. For a while he was troubled by his own waste matter which smelled unpleasant—in the Scarlet Room he had never had this problem. Or, as he now presumed with growing insight, the problem had existed but had been solved by someone other than himself. Now, he divined, he had to deal with it alone; and presently he found an open seat provided with a container beneath. He learned that when he pressed the handle, the faeces disappeared. He learned quickly, and at the back of his mind was the notion that he had known all this before.
During these days the clothed man appeared once and looked around the room briefly. He made Bronsil lie on the couch and examined him, prodding him and listening to his heartbeat. He murmured a few words of encouragement and left before Bronsil could ask any questions. Bronsil had intended to ask questions; his initial mindless occupation of the room had gradually been replaced by a dawning curiosity as to its purpose and the overall purpose in moving him into it. But when he tried to ask the clothed man, he found that he could not easily formulate his thoughts into words; and before he had had time to utter a few croaks, the man was gone.
Bronsil began to feel good; total familiarity with his surroundings lent him confidence which, in time, was tempered with a further sensation arising from the same familiarity. He began to feel bored. Due to this, due also to the example of the clothed man’s obvious superiority to himself, he began further to experiment with his body, testing his capabilities.
One day Bronsil stood erect, gripping the table for support. Soon, he walked.
* * * *
The speaker hummed, the screen became alive, points of light spattered like stars on the grey background. Bronsil sat down to watch.
‘Secondary Justification number one. Regard the screen carefully, please. Do not become disturbed if you cannot understand. Remember what you see.’ There was a peculiar echo effect to the final sentence: the screen flashed in synchronisation with the syllables.
Rectangular structures then filled the screen, white and stark beneath a blue sky. Dominating the buildings stood an immense lattice tower, tall, dwarfing the men who scurried like beetles beneath. Voices chattered excitedly. In the background, a slow reverse count.
The tower clutched a silver needle, released it as dense clouds boiled beneath. The voices grew frenzied, the needle stirred, lifted, fire spurting from below.
Bronsil was spellbound as the rocket rose into the blue sky, tilting with distance, the flame from its tail a bright, unvarying spark. Almost, he remembered. He experienced a vague pride.
The screen switched itself off and the clothed man appeared.
‘Who are you?’ Bronsil asked carefully.
‘You can call me Doctor, I suppose. Your name is Bronsil.’
‘I mean who are you?’ Bronsil struggled to make his meaning clear.
‘Jonas Foster,’ answered the doctor unhelpfully. He crossed the room to the wall and made a curious movement with his hand. A panel opened. He turned a knob, reclosed the panel and made for the door.
Bronsil seized him by the shoulder. ‘What?’ he cried, waving his arm at the room, the furniture, the screen, everything.
The doctor smiled and disengaged himself. ‘Keep trying,’ he said gently, and departed, leaving the door open.
Bronsil sat down, trembling. He was aware of a fierce emotion; he hated the doctor. He hated the man’s clothes, his superior air, his confident manner. For a while he allowed the waves of hatred to engulf him and he wept as the room grew colder.
Shivering, he stood suddenly, noticed the open door and-slammed it shut. He clutched his naked body in his arms and curled up on a couch, trying to preserve his warmth and fight off the recurrence of increasing fear. He thought of food. The nutrient fluid was warm. He got to his feet, crossed the room, pressed the red button and opened the food hatch. The bowl was empty.
Sobbing, trembling violently, he tore with his fingernails at the flush-fitting hatch which led back to the security of the Scarlet Room. He made no impression; his nails broke short, he battered at the panel, screaming with fear and frustration. The alien appearance of his surroundings gathered in his mind; the colours, the shapes, the temperature.
His breath formed white puffs of condensation in the chill air.
* * * *
Bronsil opened the door.
He stepped into a brightly-lit corridor; it was warm here and the walls were lined with doors similar to the one through which he had passed. The walls were grey and hard, rough to his touch and the light came from circular globes in the ceiling set at regular intervals down the length of the long corridor. He looked at the globe immediately above; it glowed pink, was spherical and it touched a chord in his memory. He looked at it for some time, wondering why it filled him with indefinable dissatisfaction: his neck began to ache.
He opened the door immediately opposite and found himself in a room exactly similar to the one he had just left. Reassured, he ignored the sudden cold and made for the food hatch, pressed the button and was again confronted by an empty bowl.
About to leave, an unfamiliar shape caught his eye. A man was lying on the couch. He was curled up, his back to Bronsil, who hesitated, then bent over the still form.
The flesh was cold to his touch. Intending to question the man, Bronsil took hold of him and with an effort rolled him over. The body, flaccid, fell to the floor and lay still. Bronsil regarded it in bewilderment. It appeared to be ... not alive. Dead.
More than that, it was not a man in the sense that Bronsil considered himself a man. He noted interesting physical differences which stirred in him emotions he could not identify. This creature was, he knew instinctively, a woman. Thin, scrawny, she had a face webbed with fine wrinkles; her ribs stood out plainly beneath the flesh except where partially covered by sunken breasts. Her skinny legs were asprawl; Bronsil experienced a curious sensation of pity and revulsion. He left the room quickly.
In the corridor he hesitated, considering his next move. For the first time he could remember he was faced with a decision. Should he explore further rooms, or should he find out what lay at the end of the corridor? His immediate need was food, so he decided to try another room. He opened a door.
Again, identical surroundings, with the exception that on the table lay a full bowl. Eagerly he entered, ignoring the cold. He reached the table and was about to seize the bowl when he was startled by a high-pitched whining sound. Wheeling round, he found that he was being observed.
It took him a moment to realise that the creature was a man. It crouched in a corner, regarding him with bright, sunken eyes from between boney knees, around which were clasped its hands, long and skeletal. It gibbered, flexing its knees rhythmically so that the eyes jigged up and down; now hidden behind the thin legs, now peering at him fiercely from a skull-like face with simian, idiot wisdom. A puddle of filth lay beneath the creature and as Bronsil watched with horror it defecated, spasmodically.
Bronsil’s hand was still outstretched towards the bowl. The creature in the corner continued to bob up and down, gabbling nonsense, and after a while hunger overcame Bronsil’s fear. He grasped the bowl.
The other screamed thinly and bounded across the room, clutched Bronsil about the knees and began to bite at his shins; a futile toothless champing. Bronsil struggled away in disgust, beating at the boney head.
‘Hold it, Bronsil!’ The doctor forced his way between them, kicking the madman aside. It cowered on the floor, mouthing gibberish, blinking rapidly.
‘Where did you come from ?’
‘Never mind that. What are you doing in here?’
‘The door was there.’ Bronsil was beginning to find it easier to communicate; in his relief he forgot his dislike of the doctor.
‘You were going to take that bowl?’
‘He didn’t want it.’ Bronsil gestured at the object on the floor.
‘Didn’t it occur to you that he might not know how to deal with it?’
Bronsil thought. ‘You show him,’ he said at last.
Suddenly, the doctor looked very tired; his face was grey. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn yourself, Bronsil,’ he said harshly. ‘Now get out, and don’t go in any of the rooms. I suggest you’—he checked himself—’just get out of here,’ he muttered.
Bronsil found himself in the corridor again. The door slammed behind him.
* * * *
The decision had been taken out of his hands; he walked warily along the corridor which was featureless apart from the endless succession of doors and light globes. After a period of hours, or days, the corridor terminated at a blank wall. He regarded it, baffled. Where was he? Again he remembered the Scarlet Room and longed for its comforting familiarity. He pushed against the wall as if to walk on and surprisingly it yielded.
He was in a large area, high-ceilinged, with easy chairs scattered around small circular tables, the whole having as its focus a large construction placed centrally. He stared about in amazement; the whole set-up was so vast. Almost infinite space was contradicting his previous ideas as to the nature of the environment. His astonishment was increased by the appearance of the doctor; obviously there were other ways of reaching this room and other ways implied more space still. The existence of such space was disturbing.
‘The bar is over there,’ said the doctor, pointing at the central construction. ‘Drink what you want. Food is obtainable from the hatches sited around the walls. Please use the cutlery provided.’ He departed, having given more information in a few short sentences than Bronsil had heard from him before.
Bronsil made for the bar. He found a gap in the otherwise continuous circular shelf, passed through and examined a bewildering array of bottles. He selected one at random, shaking it to assure himself it contained liquid. After some deliberation he removed the cork.
‘Don’t drink it!’
He turned. A woman was watching him, a girl, he realised with an effort; her face was young and unlined, her breasts round and firm with neat pink nipples.
‘Why not?’
‘It makes you feel bad. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not good. There’s better in the food hatches.’
He left the bar and joined her. ‘Show me,’ he said.
The hatch dispensed a plate of solid objects together with a glass of clear liquid. There was also a knife and fork. The girl took Bronsil to a table where he hesitated, then sat down regarding the plate, perplexed.
‘I’ll show you.’ The girl cut some of the presumed food into small pieces and held it before him. He ate, chewing with difficulty. ‘I’ve been here two days,’ she explained. ‘I like this food. It’s strange at first, but you get used to it. My name’s Marion.’
‘I’m Bronsil.’ He spoke indistinctly through a full mouth.
‘It’s different here, Bronsil, but after a while—oh. It’s coming on again.’
The lights dimmed suddenly, a large screen on the wall lit up.
‘Secondary Justification number two.’
A number of men were shown working among apparatus which Bronsil was unable to identify. They wore long white coats; from time to time they would exchange these for dark suits and sit round a table, talking.
Frequently the camera cut to scenes of conflict; blunt-prowed boats laden with men approached beaches, the men poured out, stormed across the sand and frequently died.
Aerial shots showed larger ships, the sea around them acned with bursting shells and bombs.
Taken from the deck of a ship: the camera unsteady, an airplane diving in, the foreground gunners swinging in their turret, the plane exploding into the deck in a blanket of smoke.
Bronsil saw all this and wondered, but he did not understand. The concept of death in action was beyond his experience.
The screen went blank after a brief shot of a giant column of smoke rising into the sky, rolling outwards at its summit, spreading across the clouds...
Bronsil was disturbed by this and whimpered softly.
The speaker said: ‘It would appear that man is an aggressive, adventurous creature,’ and became silent.
Bronsil stood; leaving Marion staring blankly at the dead screen, and wandered aimlessly about the large room, his mind a maelstrom of whirling half-memories. As he walked he became aware that he and the girl were not the only persons present. A few of the easy chairs were occupied. Expressionless faces gazed into the distance. He squatted beside an old man who sat clutching his stomach.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Take me back to my Scarlet Room.’ Dull eyes focused on Bronsil with difficulty; the voice was petulant.
‘You won’t be able to get in,’ said Bronsil gently. ‘And the rooms are cold, now.’
‘I don’t care. Please take me back,’ the old man wheedled.
‘I can’t.’ Bronsil turned away. The old man rolled sideways in the easy chair and drew his knees up to his chin. His thumb crept into his mouth and he mumbled softly.
Disgusted, Bronsil looked around for some distraction and found himself being observed by a girl; younger than Marion, he decided; little more than a child.
‘Hello,’ she said, smiling brightly. ‘So they got you, too?’
‘Got me?’
‘The aliens, the Prells. They’ve taken over the world, didn’t you know? Oh, boy.’ She raised her glass and drank deeply.
Bronsil was interested. He sat beside her on the soft couch; she moved closer to him, confidentially. ‘The world?’ he asked.
‘Didn’t you see the screen? That was them. My name’s Joanna, so they tell me, but I wouldn’t depend on that, either. What’s yours?’
‘Bronsil.’
‘Why don’t you drink, Bronsil ? It’s great, almost like...’ She hesitated; suddenly she looked like a lost child. ‘Almost like being in the Scarlet Room again,’ she muttered, drinking quickly.
‘No, thanks.’
‘Suit yourself. Ah...’ Recovering quickly, she gave him a sideways look.’Shall we ... go for a walk?’
‘Where to?’
‘Over there.’ She gestured towards the far corner of the room; in the distance, Bronsil saw a vast heap of stacked couches. ‘It’s quiet over there.’
He regarded her curiously. ‘Why should we go over there?’
Suddenly she flung herself at him, her arms about his neck, her face buried in his shoulder. He could feel her heart beating fast under the immature breasts; he smelled alcohol. ‘Oh, God, I’m scared!’ Her muffled wail came from beside his ear and he started back in alarm. ‘I want to go over there and I want you to come with me, we can crawl in between the couches and it’s dark and safe. You can hold me tight in there, you can...’ Her voice trailed off uncertainly. ‘You can...” He felt tears, warm on his shoulder.
‘I can what?’ he asked, disengaging himself with distaste. This unaccustomed proximity of bodies was not to his liking.
‘It’s just like my Scarlet Room, between those couches,’ she pleaded desperately as he stood up and he was unable to meet her eyes.
As he walked away he began to wonder exactly how long he had been in his Scarlet Room, and how much he had forgotten during that time; if, for him, there had been a time before the Scarlet Room.
He glanced back at the tearful face of the young girl from a safe distance and experienced a curious sensation of loss.
* * * *
During the days that Bronsil spent in the Community Room, (the doctor vouchsafed this name one day, in a rare informative moment) a few more terrified, bewildered men and women drifted through the large doors and joined the group. At the time Bronsil arrived, the group had numbered six; himself, Marion, Joanna and three men, all elderly. One of the men, the one with whom Bronsil had had his early, inconclusive conversation, had disappeared. He had taken to sitting on the floor beside the entrance doors which, they discovered, only opened inwards. He had waited for a long time, swaying and moaning; then, as eventually the doors swung in to allow an unsteady woman to stagger into the room, he had sprung to his feet with surprising agility and darted through the door before it shut. He was not seen again.
The group now numbered fifteen; nine men and six women of varying ages. A system had evolved for welcoming new arrivals; somehow a community spirit had arisen and it was tacitly agreed that the group was totally inter-dependant; the weaker members must be assisted. This practice was discouraged by the doctor but his visits were rare and quick; he merely checked over his patients, gave unsatisfactory answers to their questions, and left. Joanna had set up residence in the stack of couches and shrank from the doctor when he arrived to examine her. Bronsil and Marion usually had to drag her from her den by force and hold her down while the doctor favoured her with an examination infinitely more thorough and lingering than he gave the others. Bronsil was perturbed by this; he was acknowledged as leader of the group and felt responsible for the girl. He was unable to decide, however, whether the doctor in some obscure way enjoyed his examination of Joanna, or whether the girl was of greater importance than the rest of the group. So far as he could see, her only distinction was that she was considerably younger than the rest of them.
The reactions of the various members of the group to their situation varied; some remained comparatively active, like Bronsil and Marion, others retreated to the stack of couches with Joanna forming a parasitic splinter group which had to be fed by the remainder. In general this group, numbering three men and one woman beside Joanna, tended to be the most avid consumers of liquor from the bar, whimpering frequently for a drink which they sucked straight from the bottle, ignoring the plastic cups which were offered. After a while their corner of the room began to smell unpleasant and Bronsil found the work of sustaining them falling almost entirely on himself.
A third and fortunately smaller group of two men and two women became antisocial in a different fashion. Ignoring both the bar and the couches, they sat in a small huddle near the doors, gazing with unfocussed eyes and occasionally breaking into weird chants praising the Prells, their benefactors. It appeared that Bronsil represented the material manifestation of the Prells and they praised him too, lauding him in dissonant song and thanking him effusively when he brought them food, before once more relapsing into communal stupor.
Bronsil’s own group of four men and two women made every attempt to keep themselves active, engaging in discussion and speculation, watching the occasional broadcasts and passing on the information to the other groups.
The broadcasts, which became known as Justifications, continued to be interesting though baffling. It appeared that Primary Justifications concerned the Prells and they were seen in varying situations at work and play, which it seemed was intended to emphasise their dissimilarity from the human race. They appeared to be slow-moving, easygoing to the point of idleness, non-competitive and gentle. Humans, on the other hand, were presented as being imaginative, belligerent, inventive and selfish. These latter presentations were known as Secondary Justifications.
Watching a particularly bloody battle in which human had slain brightly clad human and the air was thick with flying arrows and flashing lances, Marion said, lounging back in her chair sipping a drink: ‘Sometimes it makes you wonder which is which. I mean, look at us lying here, eating and sleeping and helping those idlers in the corner. We look like what they call humans, but we act like Prells.’
Bronsil spent a long time pondering the truth of this remark.
* * * *
One night Joanna disappeared.
Night was the period when the globes in the ceiling were extinguished. Many of the community favoured the night and, indeed, had tried to simulate it by throwing bottles at the globes in an endeavour to break them, but without success. The soft darkness of night was reminiscent in many ways of the Scarlet Rooms and Bronsil found this worrying, feeling instinctively that darkness was a regression; he was always relieved when the lights came on again, signifying day. Some of the group members, particularly those among the couches, would set up a screaming on the commencement of day which could only be assuaged by liquor.
One morning Bronsil approached the couches with an armful of bottles, passing them as usual to the hands which protruded demanding from within the stack of furniture. This particular morning, Joanna’s hand was missing. Bronsil pulled the stack apart at this point, eliciting sullen moans of protest from the other occupants, but could see no sign of the young girl. Concerned, he called Marion across.
‘What’s up?’ Her nose wrinkled in distaste as she observed the soiled furniture.
‘Joanna’s gone.’
‘Oh...’ She shrugged; it was no concern of hers.
‘But don’t you see?’ Bronsil persisted, ‘we haven’t found a way out of here except by the doors we came in. And if she went out that way, someone must have opened them from the outside. Why?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the Godly?’
This was the name by which the group at the doors had become known, Bronsil approached them. Three appeared to be in some sort of trance; their heads lolled back and their eyes were turned up whitely; but the fourth, a man, was comparatively alert. He greeted Bronsil with a lupine smile.
‘Hello ... We’re conducting a little experiment here, Bronsil.’ His eyes were frighteningly intent; the smile which slashed the lower part of his face left them unamused. He had the look of a fanatic.
‘Joanna seems to have disappeared. I wonder if you------’
‘In their wisdom the Prells have not seen fit to communicate with us direct, leaving we, their children, to seek the way to praise them in a manner by which they may be informed of our love.’
‘Their children?’
‘I do not speak in metaphor. Prell is the essence of life; the primeval form which first developed and from which we are descended; they themselves having ascended to a higher plane of existence. That is what they are telling us by means of the screen. You will have noticed the contrast between the divine Prell way of life and the base stragglings of Man. You will have realised that they are tracing the history of Mankind in reverse, preparing us for the moment of revelation when Prell and Man, good and evil, split from the same creeping spark of life.’
Bronsil stared at the man, hypnotised by his eyes, unable to comprehend half of what he heard.
‘You see, Bronsil, I am beginning to remember. For me, there was a time before the Scarlet Room. I know this as clearly as I know your intellect cannot grasp such a concept. My friends’—he indicated the supine three—’are also tracing their history, Mankind’s history, the infinite backwardness which is in all------’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Wilkinson.’
The doctor had appeared, suddenly; Bronsil had been so engrossed he had not seen the man enter. Wilkinson continued his flow—’men, but which only the privileged few------’
Abruptly, the doctor slapped Wilkinson’s face.
What did you do that for?’ Bronsil asked, in the sudden silence.
The doctor’s face was haggard; he examined his hand, which was trembling violently. ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he muttered. ‘Bronsil ... Just do as you think fit, eh ? I mean, don’t be ... influenced by people. Follow your own ideas. You’ve made out pretty well so far, haven’t you ?’
‘Have I?’
‘You’re doing fine, Bronsil, fine.’ The doctor hesitated; grasped Bronsil’s shoulder. ‘Great work, Bronsil. Keep it up.’
‘Joanna’s gone.’
For a moment he thought the doctor was going to collapse; the man turned grey and a sudden spasm seized him. ‘Gone,’ he repeated woodenly. It was not a question.
‘You knew, of course,’ said Bronsil with sudden insight.
‘What makes you think that? Breathe deeply. Say “ah”.’
The change of subject took Bronsil by surprise and unresisting he allowed the stethoscope to be placed against his chest. The doctor listened, head cocked to one side, for a long time; then straightened with an air of satisfaction. ‘You’re fine, Bronsil,’ he repeated as he walked away.
* * * *
The doctor had been in the habit of restocking the bar at regular intervals, wheeling in a trolley loaded with bottles and stacking them on the shelves, taking out the empties. Following the incident with Wilkinson, however, the supply of liquor ceased and before long existing stocks dried up amid vociferous complaints from the occupants of the couches. Within a week two of that group were dead; the doctor wheeled them away on the same trolley as he used for the bottles and with about as much emotion.
Bronsil began to get the feeling that they were all in some way expendable. No further additions had arrived for many days and it appeared that the community, having reached its optimum, was now on the decline. In discussion Marion agreed with him, but unlike himself she seemed resigned to the situation.
He explored his memory, urged by the ravings of Wilkinson and his small sect, but was unable consciously to recall anything prior to his period in the Scarlet Room. He admitted that there must have been something; perhaps there had always been something, but he could pin down no definite recollections. Yet he knew and could understand simple speech and the concepts which developed in discussion with Marion and the larger group. He could assimilate a large part of the information shown on the screen too, and appreciated that intelligent beings were of two types, human and Prell. The reason for the great divergence in appearance and behaviour of the types he could not however grasp, and the Justifications were uninformative on this point. He found Wilkinson’s explanation unsatisfactory and obscure.
Joanna reappeared; one morning her arm was protruding from among the couches as he made his early tour of inspection.
‘You’re back,’ he observed, peering into the small space and seeing her dim outline.
‘Please give me a drink,’ she requested quietly, with unaccustomed politeness.
‘There’s none left.’
‘Oh, God...’ She fell silent.
Bronsil reported back to Marion who expressed no surprise at the return of the girl. Nobody expressed surprise at anything any more; Bronsil found this disturbing. Interest in discussion had waned lately and even the members of his own group spent most of their time gazing at the blank screen with lack-lustre eyes.
The Justifications had become infrequent; the most recent having been days previously, merely a brief shot of a few hairy, bestial men emerging from a cave and walking across a forest glade, carrying sticks. The only remarkable point about the scene was that it had shown, for the first time, Prells and humans in the same surroundings. The shot panned from the hunting party to a pair of Prells concealed in a tree.
Four days after Joanna’s return the doctor made his next visit and Bronsil was alarmed at his appearance. The man looked thinner, older; his hair straggled limply across his forehead, his face was glossy with dried sweat. His examination of the members of the community was cursory and disinterested with the exception of Bronsil himself, whom he treated with a strange deference.
Then, calling for Bronsil’s assistance, he made for the stack of couches. Together they dragged the occupants into the light.
When it came to Joanna’s turn the doctor hesitated.
‘All right, I’m coming out.’ Her voice was curiously defiant. She emerged head first, crawling, blinking at the light.
She wore a crumpled green dress. Bronsil gaped at her in astonishment.
‘There’s no need to stare. You’d look better with some clothes on, yourself.’ She jerked open the front of her dress, exposing her small breasts. ‘Feel away, old man,’ she said contemptuously.
Averting his eyes, the doctor gingerly held his stethoscope to her heart. She lay quietly, looking at him, her gaze inscrutible. With obvious reluctance he carried out a thorough examination, checking her pulse, her temperature, flashing a light into her eyes, inspecting her scalp, her ears. When he took the hem of her skirt between his forefinger and thumb and lifted it away from her thighs she smiled slowly.
‘A valuable piece of property, that’s me,’ she remarked obscurely.
At last the doctor straightened up, his face red.
‘We need some more liquor,’ said Bronsil.
The doctor turned on him furiously. ‘Damn you, Bronsil,’ he hissed. His fists were clenched; he was trembling violently. ‘You think you own this place, don’t you?’ He glanced down at Joanna and back to Bronsil. ‘You bastard,’ he muttered, turning away with an effort. ‘You superior bastard, Bronsil...’
He walked quickly from the room.
* * * *
From that time Joanna’s stature in the community increased; in some way she had established supremacy over the doctor, the representative of the Prells. The doctor himself had never hinted at such a relationship between he and the aliens; the community had tacitly made up its collective mind on the subject.
Bronsil was vaguely uneasy about Joanna’s new position. It did not affect his own standing in any way; he was still acknowledged as leader of the community, but Marion was definitely fading into the background, becoming listless as the young girl took her place as Bronsil’s lieutenant. Following the episode with the doctor Joanna had left the stack of couches and now sat with the larger group near the Justification screen. She even tried to promote discussion, refusing to be discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm around her. She never, however, referred to her period of absence.
‘It seems we’re ... fading out,’ murmured Bronsil one day as he lay back in an easy chair, scanning the room. Nobody had spoken for some hours apart from Joanna; many eyes were closed and Wilkinson’s group had achieved a trancelike state which had lasted for a day or more; their expressed search for knowledge had deteriorated into a mindless attainment of Nirvana.
Marion roused herself. ‘We’re OK,’ she asserted. ‘There’s plenty of food and it’s just as well the liquor ran out. Why worry?’
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit... sad, that we should lie here and wait to die ? That’s all there is to do, now. We don’t find out anything new. The Justifications seem to have finished.’
‘Find out?’ An elderly man named Jackson spoke. ‘But we know everything, I thought we’d decided. We know all about our environment. It’s only the Justifications that make us unsettled, make us wonder if there’s somewhere else.’
‘We don’t know why,’ Joanna pointed out.
‘Why what? Does there have to be a reason?’ Old Jackson had become alert; Joanna’s presence had introduced a new factor, a new mind to pit oneself against. There was a noticeable quickening of interest within the small group. ‘Conceive this room,’ Jackson was saying. ‘Conceive outside this room, containing it, another larger room. And another one containing that, and another, and another, bigger and bigger. It’s got to stop somewhere. Why not now, at the extent of these four walls? Why should there be anything else ? Here is, why or how can there be a reason ?’
‘There were the Scarlet rooms, and the square rooms, and where the doctor comes from,’ Joanna pointed out practically.
‘I’m speaking in general terms. One large room enclosing all that can be the full extent of everything. All that we have seen can be all there is.’ An acid note crept into the old man’s voice. ‘Of course, I realise you’ve been outside here recently, young lady; but that doesn’t mean you know it all.’
‘That’s just what I’m saying,’ Joanna persisted. ‘None of us know it all.’
Jackson replied: ‘I’m not sure I want to know. If I’m not right and all this is indeed infinite, then I’m scared.’ For a moment he considered Joanna’s ideas; he seemed to shrivel in his chair and his hand crept towards his mouth.
‘We should find out.’
‘How?’
‘Get out of here, of course. Have a look around.’
‘Why?’
‘Look.’ Joanna was bouncing in her chair with irritation. ‘You’re all wrapped up in dreaming. You really don’t want to know. Now I don’t know all the reasons, but I can guess some. We were in Scarlet Rooms, right? We were driven out by cold and hunger. Then we were in square rooms. The same thing happened. We had to leave, or we would have died. Now we’re here. We’ve got food and warmth and this time they haven’t been cut off. But we’re still dying, one by one. I feel we’re being told to get out of here, not so directly as before, but told to get out just the same. Get out, or die. The choice is the same as it was in the Scarlet Rooms.’
Jackson sniffed. ‘If you took that dress off, you wouldn’t feel so superior to the rest of us, young lady. If man had been intended to wear clothes, he would have grown fur.’
Silence fell. Joanna looked sulky.
Depressed at the collapse of the discussion, Bronsil scanned the group for further participants, but they had all fallen asleep again.
* * * *
‘You were right,’ Bronsil said to Joanna the following day. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. The sooner the better.’
‘I’m willing. What about the others ?’
‘I’ll try...’ He walked over to the group; they sat relaxed, breakfast finished, waiting for Bronsil to clear away the soiled plates. ‘It’s time we went,’ he informed them.
‘What ?’ Faint alarm showed on their faces.
‘Yes. We’re going. We can’t stay here for ever. We’re going now, right away.’
‘How are you going to get out?’ Jackson asked.
‘We. We’re going through the door when the doctor arrives.’
‘The doctor hasn’t been for days.’
Joanna spoke. ‘I can show you a way out. Look. Are you coming or aren’t you?’
There was no reply. They stared blankly. Bronsil spoke to Marion. ‘Are you coming with us?’
She looked at him vaguely. ‘I’m sure I don’t know.’ She had put on weight considerably over the last few weeks; she lay in her chair content, like a prize sow. Bronsil felt a great sadness; he had left it too late. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated uncertainly.
‘We like it here, Bronsil.’ Jackson summed up the feeling of the group. ‘You and Joanna go. We may follow you, soon ... Tomorrow, maybe. It’s no good rushing into things. It’s a big decision. It’s got to be carefully thought out.’ He yawned.
Exasperated, Bronsil strode over to the doors where Wilkinson’s group lay with their heads back, supine in their presumed mental striving for enlightenment. He seized Wilkinson by the shoulder. ‘Come on, we’re leaving,’ he said roughly.
‘What?’ Wilkinson blinked and focussed with difficulty.
‘Get out of that chair. Now. We’re on our way.’ Bronsil saw that two of the group had ignored their breakfast; the plates lay untouched in their laps. He shook the nearest woman violently.
She toppled out of the chair and fell slackly to the floor. She lay motionless. She was dead.
‘You see?’ Bronsil’s irritation became the rage of fear. ‘You’ve killed her! She’s dead! And him too, I expect ... Get out of that chair!’
Wilkinson was staring at the sprawled figure on the floor. ‘My God ...’ he muttered. ‘This is serious, Bronsil.’ He stirred, flexing his limbs, his eyes wide; he glanced at his other motionless companions fearfully.
‘It’s too late now. Wake the others up and come with us.’
He moved over to the stack of couches and pulled them aside under Joanna’s direction. Bloated forms rolled to the floor, complaining weakly. The stench was overpowering.
‘There’s a hatch, here.’ Joanna pointed.
Set low in the wall was a small metal plate, hinged. It swung outwards at Bronsil’s kick, revealing an illuminated floor beyond. He bent down and peered through the hole, seeing a corridor similar to the one by which he had arrived at the Community Room. Wilkinson joined him, squatting at his side.
‘I... couldn’t get anyone else to come,’ he said, not meeting Bronsil’s eyes. ‘Where does this go, do you think?’
Joanna answered from behind. ‘It’s a corridor with doors leading off ... I only saw one room. It wasn’t like the square room but it was about the same size. There were ... things in it. The doctor showed me...’
Bronsil stood, looked around the Community Room. ‘Well ... I suppose we’d better gather a few things together ...’ His voice trailed off irresolutely.
‘Come on,’ said Joanna, pushing past. She knelt and crawled through the opening. ‘Are you coming?’ Her voice came from the other side.
Bronsil followed, then Wilkinson, and they stood in the corridor.
‘Which way?’ asked Bronsil uncertainly. The corridor stretched endlessly in either direction.
Joanna settled the matter, walking off to the right; Bronsil quickly took up position beside her and Wilkinson followed, trailing behind.
‘It’s weird out here,’ he grumbled nervously. ‘Doesn’t this passage have an ending? I mean, I’d like to see the end. It’s sort of ... infinite, here.’
Bronsil felt the same way; his mouth was dry and he found that he was holding his breath. He exhaled noisily. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of,’ he assured Wilkinson loudly, with assumed heartiness. ‘Joanna’s been here before.’
‘Only as far as there.’ The young girl pointed ahead.
The blank walls of the corridor were interrupted a few yards on by a succession of doors on either side. Just beyond the first door to the left a pane of glass was set into the wall; a window. ‘If we don’t want them to see us, we keep below the level of the window,’ she informed them.
They bent low and scuttled past. Beyond, a door was ajar. Bronsil paused, hearing voices. ‘Wait a moment,’ he whispered.
They gathered around the door, listening.
‘You must pull yourself together, Doctor.’ The voice was soft. ‘You must not give up. We were assured of your unselfish motives in this matter and we trusted you on that basis. After all, we could have conducted the whole affair ourselves.’
The doctor’s voice replied; he sounded dispirited. ‘You don’t realise what it’s like,’ he said. ‘That’s your trouble. You never did realise. If you’d had the slightest knowledge of what you were doing in the first place, all this would never have happened.’
‘We know that.’ The voice held regret. ‘But your help is needed at this juncture. You’ve been keeping information from us, for your own selfish motives. Then you found that your motives were ... ah ... invalid, and you cracked up. No matter. What’s the latest position?’
There was a pause before the doctor replied, then his voice was firmer; he appeared to have got a grip of himself. ‘The majority of the subjects are relapsing into lethargy now that the stimuli of hunger and cold are removed. The exceptions are, so far as I can tell, the man Bronsil and the woman Marion. These two may yet respond to the concealed stimulus of enforced inactivity.’
‘Is there any point in cutting off the heat and the food?’
‘I don’t think so. They’ve gone as far as they can. Only the two I mentioned would be likely to react.’
‘And ... the young girl Joanna ?’
‘An incipient nymphomaniac, with tendencies towards alcoholism.’
‘She sounds promising. Why do you not cite her as a possibility? Why do you inform us of her human qualities rather than her prospects? We want an unbiased opinion Doctor.’
‘The girl Joanna is a possibility/ muttered the doctor.
‘Good. Now get back in there and find out what’s going on. Pay special attention to those three. It would be tragic if, at this point, they contracted disease through your neglect. It is in your own interests, Doctor. Do we need to remind you?’
‘You hypocritical bastards,’ said the doctor quietly.
Sounds of movement came from within the room. The three listeners hurried away; Bronsil tried a door; found it locked. They pressed themselves against the wall and waited.
The doctor emerged; without a glance in their direction he walked slowly away down the corridor towards the Community Room. His shoulders were sagging; he scuffed his feet along the floor like an unutterably dispirited child.
* * * *
Eventually the corridor ended at a blank wall. To the right of this was a door; Bronsil tried the handle and found it was unlocked, alone of all the doors they had encountered. This gave him the chastening impression that they had been intended to enter this room, all along. Despite the inaccuracies in the overhead conversation the Prells still had complete control; the group’s every move had been planned in advance—only the personalities involved were incorrect. Marion should have been with them; Wilkinson was an unexpected factor.
The room they entered was unlike any they had seen before. It was oblong, a little larger than the square room, with two further doors in the adjacent wall. Furniture was scattered around; tables, chairs, a carpet, and sundry other items the purpose of which they could not immediately divine. But the feature which drew their fascinated attention was a window.
It occupied most of one wall, a huge pane of glass affording a view which at first Bronsil found totally alien. The overall impression was of green, with blue and white above; the light was sharp and illuminated the strange scenery with an exaggerated reality. Frightened yet at the same time curious, he drew closer; felt the glass with fingers that trembled, looked up, and saw the sun ...
Half-forgotten memories flowed from the recesses of his mind; gradually he came to understand what he saw. This was the outside world, as depicted from time to time in Justifications. This was where men fought and died with axes, swords and bombs. This was a terrifying, dangerous place...
‘What is it?’ asked Wilkinson shakily.
‘I rather think it must be the final Justification,’ Bronsil replied. ‘But this time it’s real, outside the glass.’
‘Can it get in?’
‘I don’t think so. We’ll have to be careful. First, let’s find out where these doors lead.’
Joanna had already opened one; it gave on to a smaller room, one wall of which was entirely taken up with rectangular items of metallic equipment. At the far end was a door which, judging by its position, led to the outside world.
‘Don’t open that,’ Bronsil warned.
Meanwhile Wilkinson had opened up the front of one of the pieces of equipment. He bent down and peered inside; reached and took out an object which he sniffed, loudly.
‘I think this is food,’ he said. ‘But it’s cold.’
During the next hour they thoroughly explored their surroundings. The third room proved to be a bedroom; there were two beds and they found clothes. Urged by Joanna, Bronsil dressed himself and, after a moment’s hesitation and cynical comment, Wilkinson did likewise, reluctantly pulling on a shirt and pants. In some obscure fashion, Bronsil enjoyed the feel of clothes against his body; he gained confidence and felt less at the mercy of his surroundings. Wilkinson denied this sensation, but it was noticeable that he ceased to start at each move the others made; before long he was pulling open drawers and experimenting on the items he found, speculating as to their use. Back in the room with the window, they sat down to discuss the situation.
Bronsil was already thinking ahead. ‘Sooner or later, we’re going to have to go outside,’ he forecast.
Wilkinson laughed shortly. ‘You must be mad.’
‘I don’t mean now. I mean in a few days. There’s a pattern to all this. You heard what the Prell said. A ... stimulus will be applied to make us move on. By then we’ll be used to the appearance of the outside world, and we’ll go out of that door.’
‘Let’s think of one thing at a time,’ urged Joanna with unaccustomed nervousness.
Suddenly the doctor was in the room, staring at them, his jaw slack. ‘You people get around,’ he muttered at last.
Bronsil seized the initiative. ‘So you didn’t go to the Community Room like the Prells told you,’ he accused.
‘How much do you know?’ The doctor’s face was pale; his tongue flickered over his lips. He looked at Wilkinson. ‘What are you doing here ?’
‘Any objection?’ Wilkinson followed Bronsil’s example of belligerence.
‘No ... No ... I didn’t expect... Never mind.’
‘Marion’s back there.’
The doctor was silent, staring from one to the other. ‘Now you’re here, I’d better show you around,’ he said at last, reluctantly.
He took them into the next room and showed them the working of the refrigerator, the cooker, and the various other items. He informed them that further food was in the cans, and demonstrated how to open them. He took them through the bedroom and showed them the washroom. He did all this quickly, perfunctorily, and left, giving the impression that he no longer wished to be bothered with them. ‘You’re on your own, now,’ were his final words.
They looked at each other. An artificial light burned in the ceiling; outside the window it was dark.
‘That’s real night,’ said Bronsil. His fear had left him, to be replaced by a sense of adventure.
‘Time for bed,’ remarked Joanna, yawning.
Suddenly they felt uncertain in one anothers’ presence. They drifted into the bedroom, eyeing the beds.
Joanna took the initiative, reaching for the hem of her dress and drawing it over her head, very slowly. Beneath the dress she was naked. As her face reappeared, flushed and shadowed by strands of hair, she was looking at Bronsil with peculiar directness.
He felt an unaccustomed churning in his stomach and a forgotten stirring. He moved forward uncertainly...
Wilkinson was beside Joanna, grasping for her, his face intent, his breathing harsh.
Bronsil seized him by the arm, swung him away and hit him flush on the jaw. As the older man sprawled back to the floor, holding his face, Bronsil commanded: ‘You sleep in the other room, Wilkinson.’
Climbing into the bed beside Joanna, Bronsil felt powerful, all-conquering and ... in a last instant of analysis before intelligence sank beneath the sea of instinct, he knew that he had become ... primitive.
* * * *
They sat at the table eating breakfast, an unappetising mess inexpertly cooked by Wilkinson. It was Bronsil who had suggested that Wilkinson prepare the food. Now he was wondering if this had been a mistake. Not only from the quality standpoint; he felt somehow that Joanna should have performed the duty but had been disinclined to ask her. It had appeared necessary to establish unquestioned superiority over the other man.
‘Look!’ Joanna pointed out of the window.
An animal was moving among the trees; slender and graceful, it suddenly turned towards them with cocked ears, then bounded away silently.
‘What was it?’ The girl asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Bronsil was puzzled. ‘Another form of life, I suppose.’
Further speculation was cut short by a humming sound. A panel in the wall swung open revealing the familiar sight of a Justification Screen.
‘Tertiary Justification number one. A grounding has already been given which should enable you to understand the basic differences between the psychology of the Prell and human races. You will also have learned certain physical differences; the importance of all this will become apparent in the course of the Tertiary Justification series. Try to understand what you will see.’
A huge globe appeared on the screen, blue and green, and motionless yet swirling silver. It grew larger and the colours more distinct, their boundaries clearly denned. Abruptly the globe disappeared; the screen was blue, the tops of buildings could be seen at the lower margin, a silver object was descending from a clear sky.
The ship had landed, globular on stilt legs; the dust-storm abated. A commentator jabbered in the background; his voice was frenzied. People were running; tiny figures scuttling for shelter. The snouts of long guns nosed past the camera, covering the ship.
A circular hatch opened and the camera zoomed into close-up. A creature emerged, amorphous, flowing to the ground. A Prell. There was a flash as the shell of a trigger-happy gunner exploded against a force-shield; the Prell froze, then moved again, away from the ship, inexorably towards the camera.
It paused and a cavity opened near the centre of the shapeless mass of protoplasm.
‘We bring you hope,’ it boomed clearly.
The screen receded into the wall, the hatch closed, the three humans looked at each other.
‘Something must have happened, unless it was all a trick,’ Bronsil speculated. ‘For some reason the Prells turned into jailors. Why?’
‘Maybe we turned on them,’ said Wilkinson, looking at Bronsil meaningly. ‘Humans can get aggressive. Above themselves. So they locked us up.’
‘The Prells must have been around for a long time,’ Bronsil murmured, ignoring Wilkinson, ‘And they’re still here. What’s happened to us? Where are all the rest?’ He stared out of the window at the forest. ‘When is now?’ he asked slowly, remembering the apparent retrogression of the Secondary Justifications. As if in answer, there was a movement among the trees.
An animal, similar to the one they had seen before, bounded across the clearing. Pursuing it, yelling and waving clubs, were three men, filthy and clad in ragged loincloths.
* * * *
Bronsil was soon proved to be right in his supposition as to the intended length of their stay in the rooms; the previous pattern repeated itself. The food they ate was not replaced and before long Wilkinson announced that the cupboards and refrigerator were empty. They sat around gloomily, from time to time looking out of the window. . ‘What now?’ asked Wilkinson after a silence which had lasted for a long time. ‘I mean, you’re the boss. What do you suggest we do next ? Sit here and starve ?’
‘We’ve got to go outside,’ Bronsil stated. ‘We join those men outside and hunt... meat. Food.’
‘Catch that animal and kill it, you mean? You can’t be serious. You can go if you like. I’ll stay here with Joanna.’
‘I’m going with Bronsil,’ the girl stated definitely.
Wilkinson’s voice rose to a whine. ‘You’d leave me here to die?’
‘If that’s the way you want it.’ Bronsil stood, his mind made up. ‘Come on, Joanna. We can take two of the knives from the kitchen. They’ll be better than clubs.’
Wilkinson followed them into the next room. ‘Look here,’ he was saying desperately, ‘let’s discuss this thing. Let’s find out a bit more before we go. You know, observe through the window and so on. See what’s happening out there.’
‘We’ve observed enough.’ Bronsil opened a drawer and took out two long knives. He made for the door.
‘Wait!’ Wilkinson’s voice was sharp. Bronsil whirled round. The other man had his arm around Joanna from behind; he held a sharp knife to her neck. ‘You go, you go alone, Bronsil. The girl stays with me.’ He was grinning feverishly, an expression of fear and triumph combined. His hand moved upwards over Joanna’s body, caressing, squeezing. A thin trickle of blood showed at her throat where the blade trembled. Her eyes were wide with terror. There was a sharp, startling report. An expression of blank amazement appeared on Wilkinson’s face, then he slid to the floor and lay still.
The doctor stood in the doorway; Bronsil recognised the object in his hand as a gun.
‘Life’s so simple for you, isn’t it, Bronsil ?’ the doctor said bitterly. ‘You don’t have to take decisions. Everything’s mapped out for you. You move safely from one point to the next, gathering impressions, learning, all the time protected from reality.’ His voice shook. ‘Have you ever thought about those poor bastards back in the Community Room, while you’ve been fighting out your cosy little threesome in this cosy little house? Have you ever thought about Marion?’
‘No,’ admitted Bronsil, still staring at the body of Wilkinson.
‘Allow me to inform you that she died yesterday. There are three people left alive there, now. That’s all, three of them, waiting to die, while you enjoy yourself here ... And that’s not all. Do you realise, Bronsil, that you are one of the only nine people left alive out of thousands in this place?’
‘Why blame me for that?’ asked Bronsil, at last concentrating on the doctor’s words, and finding them puzzling.
‘Blame you?’ the doctor shouted; the gun trembled dangerously. ‘I’m congratulating you, you bastard! You’re the sort of man we want! You’re the man who will invent the napalm bomb!’ He was becoming hysterical. ‘You’ve got initiative. And you’ve just forced me to kill the man who might have fathered philosophers, and nurses, and teachers.’ His eyes narrowed suddenly, became cunning. ‘It might have been an accident,’ he murmured. ‘I could have fired two shots at Wilkinson, and hit you with one ... There’s no room for you, Bronsil.’
‘All the room in the world, Doctor, if what you say is true.’ Joanna spoke suddenly; her tone was startlingly adult. ‘And don’t forget that I’m here, a witness. And you wouldn’t shoot me, would you, Doctor? We know that’s something you just couldn’t do.’
The man wrenched his gaze from Bronsil, looked at her, the maniac gleam dying from his eyes. He tried to speak, but failed.
Joanna pursued him remorselessly. ‘I can count, Doctor. Eight people. Three in the Community Room, dying. Bronsil and me. Three more outside. That’s seven. Who is the eighth, Doctor? It’s you, isn’t it? You were the first out of the Scarlet Rooms, the first to go through the mill of this ... place. And you joined up with the Prells, to help them.’
The doctor nodded, dumbly.
Joanna continued. ‘And you had dreams, didn’t you? You were in charge. You could drop hints here and there to help the people you thought might win through. You didn’t do much of that, because I reckon the Prells want us to make it unassisted, for some reason. The only person you helped was me. Why, Doctor?’ She paused, regarding him, but he gave no reply. ‘Because I was the only woman, that’s why. You had a shrewd suspicion Marion wouldn’t make it, yet you tried to fool the Prells, because of your great dream. And what was that dream?’
‘With my willing assistance, you dreamed you would father a new breed of Men out of the disaster of this place.’
The doctor seemed to have forgotten the gun; it hung limply from his fingers. ‘You just don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he muttered. He turned like an automaton and walked slowly to the door, his shoulders bowed against the words which followed him.
‘But you didn’t realise the one important requirement, did you? In order to father Men, you’ve got to be a man yourself!’
Bronsil was watching the young girl’s face as the doctor left; he shuddered inwardly at the contempt he saw there.
They wandered slowly through the forest along a worn track pitted by the passage of countless animals. Around them the trees bulked huge and formless, their upper branches rippling and gesturing in the cool wind. The random appearance of the world about them was eerie; nothing possessed regular shape or position; all was confusion, unexpected sounds, smells; and the strange, unpredictable play of light and shadow as the sun shafted through the rustling leaves.
Colours too; infinitely varying shades of green and brown, with sudden unexpectedly flaming reds and yellows from small flowers beside the path. Glancing upwards, they saw russet animals quick among the branches and glimpses of blue sky beyond the pattern of emerald and brown. What they saw was a beauty which man had not enjoyed for many years, yet it filled them with misgivings.
‘It frightens me, this place,’ said Joanna as they walked.
Bronsil led; she was a few paces behind. He was not frightened. Alert, nervous maybe, but at least reasonably confident of his ability to deal with the unexpected. As he walked he mused on the unpredictability of Joanna’s reactions. In any of the human problems which had arisen over the past months she had shown herself confident and unafraid, in contrast to his own ineptitude. Yet the unknown terrified her; he could still remember her fear in the Community Room, her retreat to the couches and bottles, her longing for the security of her Scarlet Room.
As for himself, these fears and longing had abated over the months. He scarcely thought of retreat; he wanted to go forward, to find out...
It struck him that he and Joanna made a pretty good team.
It was Bronsil who dealt with the large, tawny animal when it dropped from a branch before them, spitting and snarling, while Joanna cowered behind a tree and he knifed it as it sprang.
It was Joanna who took the initiative when they encountered the roving band of three men; she insisted they joined up and eased Bronsil into position as leader of the group.
By day they hunted. At first they carried their kill back to the building and cooked the meat in the kitchen, sleeping indoors. Later they found the door locked, the building barred to them. An attempt to explore the perimeter failed; there were other entrances likewise locked, but the place was too vast for a complete circuit. They gave up and struck off into the forest again, sleeping under the trees and eating their food raw.
They found the doctor on one of their rare excursions to the vicinity of the building. He lay in a clearing. As they approached there was a scuttling and rustling as scavengers retreated. The gun was in his hand; the back of his head was blown out. His eyes had been removed by birds; the sockets stared sightlessly at the sky with an expression of empty surprise, as though at the last instant he had discovered a belated, unexpected truth.
Remembering the incident between Joanna and the doctor, Bronsil expected her to indulge in self-recrimination; he put his arm around her and led her gently away from the distressing scene, muttering awkward words of comfort.
‘It would have happened, whatever,’ she said with surprising calm. ‘He’d done his work. He was a stop-gap, a transition, and he knew it. There was no place for him out here. I expect he tried it, he walked through the door and into the forest, with his stethoscope and his bitterness and he found no use for either. So he died. He needn’t have used the gun. He died in the same way as the people in the Community Room. He wasn’t fitted for progress.’
Bronsil thought. ‘This means we are the only ones left,’ he said slowly.
Beyond the clearing, white through the trees, the vast building extended to infinity.
‘There must be something ... next,’ said Bronsil.
* * * *
Next came to them, without their seeking. The stimuli were completed; they were in their natural element among the trees, predatory animals gifted with intelligence. They hunted, they killed, they ate. The retrogression period undergone in the huge building was ended, the humans had returned to a condition where they could survive without . assistance. In this reversal of evolution, only the fittest had survived ... The cycle began again almost immediately; one of the group had discovered how to make fire and they ate their food cooked, outside a hut made of saplings, leaves and creepers.
Already recollections of the Scarlet Room were fading although occasionally Bronsil thought of the Community Room, Marion and the doctor; but before that ... it was akin to the time of infancy, a memory invoked only by chance associations. One night, as he lay with Joanna in the hut, a stray creeper from the roof brushed his face. He woke with a start, a bitter taste in his mouth, to find himself sucking on the hanging strand. He spat it out, disgusted, and chased an elusive memory for a few moments before sleep came again.
They often spoke of the Justifications in the evening as they sat before the fire, watching the embers collapse into glowing ash and the glow fade to a grey mound drifted by the cool breeze, darkening with night into an indistinct smudge signifying it was time for bed. They remembered the Justifications well; there had been something hypnotic in the presentations on the screen, and often Bronsil felt that the events depicted had actually occurred in his presence. They were more real than the Community Room, for instance. The others felt the same and soon came to discuss the Justifications as exciting events in which they had all, as a group, participated. The evenings were thus frequently spent in speculation and it was agreed that a future had been lost which it was the purpose of the group to recapture. In this way they progressed, working with the primitive tools they possessed to strive for a culture they already knew, experimenting with cookery, leather, simple timber machinery, pottery and other projects.
Bronsil was satisfied that their environment had not, as previously, become a barrier against advancement. The only danger lay in a return to the building and this, it was apparent, the group would not attempt to do. It was tacitly agreed that the building represented stagnation and eventual death; the joy of work and discovery in the forest was too great for them to consider that...
* * * *
He scrambled over the last few yards of loose rock and dust and stood, alone and triumphant, at the summit of the knoll. He turned. Before him lay the forest, the treetops below his level, a carpet of rippling viridescence spreading away to the distant stark white expanse of the building. Even from here he could not determine the extent of the building which curved below the horizon flat roofed; but he knew that the size did not matter; and wheeling round again he contemplated the opposite horizon, where further forest stretched like the future into the mystery of distance.
It was moments before he realised that he was not alone. He heard a noise and moved forward, notching an arrow to his bow, expecting some small ground animal. He descended quietly, treading carefully and trying not to disturb the loose surface. Feeling his way around a jagged rock corner he stopped abruptly, staring.
Before him was a silver dome, instantly recognisable as a photograph from the album of his memory. The door was open, the Prell was watching him.
‘Bronsil,’ It said clearly from the shapeless gap of its mouth.
‘Firstly, I want you to watch this,’ the alien said, setting up a portable Justification screen.
In a laboratory, men and Prells could be seen working together. In the fields, dense green shoots were harvested by giant machines. Areas of the sea were netted off; fat fish swam lazily. Huge mindless beasts, lumps of shapeless flesh, grew even larger as they grazed steadily on lush grass. In the cities, in the countryside, people went about their business joyfully; there were frequent carnivals and the streets glittered with spectacular costumes. Everywhere were the Prells, helping, advising, dealing merciful justice in the courts. The development of science accelerated with the fresh infusion of knowledge; miracles were depicted...
‘Utopia was achieved in a few years,’ the Prell said, switching off the screen. ‘Together, Prell and Man made an invincible partnership; Man’s forcefulness and curiosity complementing the Prell’s gentle inventiveness and scientific knowledge. Things got done, as never before. We had been observing Earth for many centuries and picked the moment for revealing ourselves carefully—the moment when Man, at the summit of his achievements, paused in real danger of destroying himself. We prevented this and we set progress in motion again.’
Bronsil’s feelings were mixed. He understood that he had witnessed another chapter in the history of mankind but was unable to relate it to his present situation. Indeed, he did not particularly care. Justifications were interesting as topics of conversation, but they bore little relationship to real life. ‘It’s only history,’ he said, feeling in some way obliged to reassure the Prell who was obviously wondering how to phrase his explanation of the subsequent disaster. ‘It doesn’t signify.’
‘We are very sorry for what happened,’ said the Prell.
‘You imprisoned us,’ said Bronsil, ‘but you’ve released us. I daresay you had your reasons.’ His mind was on Joanna and the rest of the group; he felt it was time to get back. The curiosity he used to experience in the building had been engendered by inactivity; now there was plenty to do. He was busy. He could not afford the time to listen to all this.
‘All those people who died in the building,’ the Prell continued. ‘Thousands more than you realise. And when we released you, we had to be so ... cruel. Forcing you from circumstance to circumstance, impelling you to learn again all the things you had forgotten ... We could not even confide completely in the doctor. It is not in the nature of the Prell to be unmerciful. It was hard; we wanted to help you, but we could only compel you, stage by stage.’
‘Are there any others, besides my group?’ Bronsil asked.
‘I’m afraid not. You are now in ... I suppose you would call it a game reserve. When you are fully recovered, we will ship you back to Earth, if you wish.’
‘Isn’t this Earth?’ At last Bronsil was startled out of his disinterest.
This is my home world, although you would call it Earth-type. You and your group are the only survivors of a large team of adults and children which arrived several years ago with the object of turning our world into a virile Utopia like Earth, preparatory to further joint conquests. We needed you. We have known space travel for a long time, but we are not... aggressive and dynamic.
‘We constructed a building for you, as similar as possible to such buildings on Earth. Whatever you suggested, we installed. In time, we were puzzled by the further additions you requested and your gradual retreat from a lively communal life to a solitary existence...
‘And we thought you were evolving in some way unknown to us and would presently emerge from your chrysalis transformed. But you did not emerge. Until we had to force you, and then it was too late ...’
‘We did not understand the psychology of your peculiar sexual reproductive system which provides you with that hidden memory of a period of ultimate safety and comfort.’ The alien’s voice grew defensive. ‘How could we, we who reproduce asexually?’
‘How could we know that, for all his toughness, when faced with the ultimate strangeness of permanent living on an alien planet, Man would creep into a pink little egg-shaped room and suck nourishment from a tube ?
‘Man is not suited to the conquest of space; he cannot thrive in alien surroundings. Now, we know that the Prell must advance alone.’
Bronsil had lost interest again; he shrugged, looking at the forest. There was a lot to discover in this new world. It was his world; he had, in a sense, been born here. He muttered a brief farewell and set off down the hill, wondering if the others had made a kill for supper. He was a little worried about Joanna; she had been temperamental lately, demanding strange foods, and she seemed to be putting on weight.