The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

      The fish again, and the water. No peace in the pool now. Cool pool, cruel pool, pool … The waters whirl toward the brink.

      I am the fish-foetus. Have I dreamed? Was there a voice talking to me? It seems unlikely. Something I had to ask it, one gigantic fact which made nonsense of everything; something – cannot remember.

      Perhaps there was no voice. Perhaps in this darkness I have taken a wrong choice between sanity and non-sanity.

       … thank heavens for hot spring water …

      Hello! Father?

       How long will they let me lie here in this pool? They must realize I’m not long for this world, or any other.

      I’m awake and answering!

       Just let me lie here. Son, it’s man’s first pleasure and his last to lie and swill in hot water. Wish I could live to know you … However. Here’s what you have to do.

      Am powerless here. Unable to do anything.

       Don’t get frightened. There’s something you already do very expertly – telemit.

      Non-comprehension.

       We talk to each other over this growing distance by what is called telepathy. It’s part gift, part skill. It happens to be the only contact between distant planets, except spaceships. But whereas spaceships take time to get anywhere, thought is instantaneous.

      Understood.

       Good. Unfortunately, whereas spaceships get anywhere in time, thought has a definite limited range. Its span is as strictly governed as – well, as the size of a plant, for instance. When you are fifty light-years from Mirone, contact between us will abruptly cease.

      How far apart are we now?

       At the most we have forty-eight hours more in contact.

      Don’t leave me. I shall be lonely!

       I’ll be lonely too – but not for long. But you, son, you are already halfway to Earth, or as near as I can estimate it you are. As soon as contact between us ceases, you must call TRE.

      Which means?

       Telepath Radial Earth. It’s a general control and information centre, permanently beamed for any sort of emergency. You can raise them. I can’t.

      They won’t know me.

       I’ll give you their call pattern. They’ll soon know you when you telemit. You can give them my pattern for identification if you like. You must explain what is happening.

      Will they believe?

       Of course.

      Are they real?

       Of course. Tell TRE what the trouble is; they’ll send out a fast ship to pick Judy and you up before you are out of range.

      I want to ask you –

       Wait a minute, son … You’re getting faint … Can you smell the gangrene over all those light-years? … These blue horrors are lifting me out of the spring, and I’ll probably pass out. Not much time …

      Pain. Pain and silence. All like a dream.

       … distance …

      Father! Louder!

       … too feeble … Done all I could …

      Why did you rouse me and not communicate with my mother?

       The village! We’re nearly there. Just down the valley and then it’s journey’s end … Human race only developing telepathic powers gradually … Steady, you fellows!

      The question, answer the question.

       That is the answer. Easy down the slope, boys, don’t burst this big leg, eh? Ah … I have telepathic ability but Judy hasn’t; I couldn’t call her a yard away. But you have the ability … Easy there! All the matter in the universe is in my leg …

      You sound so muddled. Has my sister this power?

       Good old Mendelian theory … You and your sister, one sensitive, one not. Two eyes of the giant and only one can see properly … the path’s too steep to – whoa, Cyclops, steady, boy, or you’ll put out that other eye.

      Cannot understand!

       Understand? My leg’s a flaming torch – Steady, steady! Gently down the steep blue hill.

      Father!

       What’s the matter?

      I can’t understand. Are you talking of real things?

       Sorry, boy. Steady now. Touch of delirium; it’s the pain. You’ll be OK if you get in contact with TRE. Remember?

      Yes, I remember. If only I could … I don’t know. Mother is real then?

       Yes. You must look after her.

      And is the giant real?

       The giant? What giant? You mean the giant hill. The people are climbing up the giant hill. Up to my giant leg. Goodbye, son. I’ve got to see a blue man about a … a leg …

      Father! Wait, wait, look, see, I can move. I’ve just discovered I can turn. Father!

      No answer now. Just a stream of silence. I have got to call TRE.

      Plenty of time. Perhaps if I turn first … Easy. I’m only six months, he said. Maybe I could call more easily if I was outside, in the real universe. If I turn again.

      Now if I kick …

      Ah, easy now. Kick again. Good. Wonder if my legs are blue.

      Kick.

      Something yielding.

      Kick …

       T

      By the time T was ten years old, his machine was already on the fringes of that galaxy. T was not his name – the laboratory never considered christening him – but it was the symbol on the hull of his machine and it will suffice for a name. And again, it was not his machine; rather, he belonged to it. He could not claim the honourable role of pilot, nor even the humbler one of passenger; he was a chattel whose seconds of utility lay two hundred years ahead.

      He lay like a maggot in the heart of an apple at the centre of the machine, as it fled through space and time. He never moved; the impulse to move did not present itself to him, nor would he have been able to obey if it had. For one thing, T had been created legless – his single limb was an arm. For another, the machine hemmed him in on all sides. It nourished him by means of pipes which fed into his body a thin stream of vitamins and proteins. It circulated his blood by a tiny motor that throbbed in the starboard bulkhead like a heart. It removed his waste products by a steady siphoning process. It produced his supply of oxygen. It regulated T so that he neither grew nor wasted. It saw that he would be alive in two hundred years.

      T had one reciprocal duty. His ears were filled perpetually with an even droning note and before his lidless eyes there was a screen on which a dull red band travelled forever down a fixed green line. The drone represented (although not to T) a direction through space, while the red band indicated (although not to T) a direction in time. Occasionally, perhaps only once a decade, the drone changed pitch or the band faltered from its green line. These variations registered in T’s consciousness as acute discomforts, and accordingly he would adjust one of the two small wheels by his hand, until conditions returned to normal and the even tenor of monotony was resumed.