The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

We had the first movement on before I got the second record out of its envelope. I knew at once that it was odd, although it bore the correct red labels in the middle; when I touched them, they peeled off easily.

      We were left with a chocolate-coloured freak twice as fat as the usual record, only one side grooved and those grooves highly extraordinary looking. Of course, I should have noticed it in the shop, but in my excitement I had only glanced at the labels and that had been sufficient. Clearly, I had been had!

      I stated my irritation in very certain terms, and spent five minutes stamping round my room. Only when I had calmed a little did Harry say, in an interested voice: ‘Do you mind if I try this on the table, Curly?’

      Harry and I work for Cambridge’s biggest radio firm, on the experimental side. Discs, tapes, short wave, TV – plain and coloured – we are paid to tackle them all, well paid. Next time you hear of a crease-innoculator on the new TV cameras, think of Harry and Curly, the proud parents. All of which I mention merely to explain why one wall of my lounge is covered with amplifiers and what-have-you and the bureau is full of electric tackle. All my equipment is home assembled, an improvement on the commercial variety. Even so, we did not get anything out of the mystery record. The turntable seemed unable to hold it; it slipped beneath the light pick-up. For one thing, the hole in the middle of the disc was not round but shaped like a star with sixteen points; for another, the groove seemed to be separated by a smooth groove of fair width on which the needle had no grip. We left it, and played ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ instead.

      But when Harry had gone, I picked the thick disc up again and re-examined it. On the blank side was a small panel. It yielded to my exploratory fingernail and slid up. Underneath was a label which read:

      POLICE VIDEOFILE B/l191214/AAA

      – –

      INTERPLANETARY

      – –

      Cat: Ganymede-Eros-Earth-Venus

      Cr: Sabotage. Timesliding. Murder.

      Type: Humanoid Venusian experiment: smoof.

      Name: Above type use only generic name, smoof.

      Filed –/viii/14/305

      Rev. 2/xii/12/309

      When I had read it, I re-read it. Then I re-read it. Catching sight of myself in a mirror, I saw my features were suffused with an expression of blank imbecility. ‘What’s a smoof?’ I asked the dolt.

      ‘A humanoid Venusian experiment,’ it replied.

      Was the disc a joke of some sort? And what was a videofile? And what was a videofile doing in my room? I put it on the turntable again and started it up. But again came the trouble of dodging the smooth groove; that one being the wider, into that one the sapphire generally went. Finally I succeeded in hitting the other groove.

      There was a high and rapid babble of sound, together with a rasping noise. I switched off smartly. There was no reason why it should have worked. Then it occurred to me that at 78 revs I might have played it too fast. I switched on at 33 1/3. Now the babble resolved itself into a high, fast voice; but still that horrible rasp. Again I switched off. Possibly the sapphire was overrunning the grooves; somewhere I had a finer one on a lighter pickup. After searching excitedly through three littered drawers, I found it and attached it. Breathless, setting the speed still slower, I tried again.

      This time I had it! I had, to be accurate, a number of things. I soon gathered this disc was only the sound-track for a sort of film. And I knew the police report was no joke; it threw sidelights, tantalising and confusing, on a complex future world. It threw a searching light on to a smoof that made my hair stand on end …

      Next day I smuggled the disc down to the works, carefully avoided Harry Crossway, and took a few plates of it under the X-ray apparatus they use for checking valves, etc.

      The X-rays revealed an interior that looked at first about as complicated to me as a watch would have done to a primitive who had only just stumbled on to the use of a wheel. But the harder I looked, the more convinced I became that the disc was some sort of television receiver. There were, for instance, the normal horizontal and vertical deflecting systems employed in today’s circuits, although infinitely better packed and planned.

      The thin spiral that we had called our ‘smooth groove’ proved to be a vast number of separate but linked rectangular plates. They were made of a glass that seemed infinitely strong and thin. And then I had an idea, and locked myself away from mortal men for a day. Oh, one thing I ought to mention. Foolishly – curiosity plays deadly tricks on a man! – I inserted an ad. in the local paper. It read: ‘Smoofs welcome here. No spoofs.’ And my address. Facetious to the last, that’s me.

      When I had inserted that ad. I did not fully believe. But at the end of that day and night of figuring, swearing and tinkering, I emerged believing all too fully. I felt grey; I felt bald; I felt scared. With a shaking hand, I phoned Harry. He was still at the workshop, but at the sound of my voice he said he would be over at once. While I waited, I took a drink and composed myself.

      Very shortly I heard Harry letting himself in. He climbed the stairs, entered, and said, handing me a note: ‘This was tucked in your letter flap.’ Then he exclaimed: ‘What have you got here?’ and went over to my gadgets on the side-table.

      ‘Is this what you called me over for?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘Huh! You sounded so excited, I brought my revolver over just in case.’

      ‘We may need it yet,’ I answered dazedly, my eyes scanning the note he had brought up. It was a reply to my advert. It merely said: ‘I shall be at your house at nine o’clock. Set no traps. Smoof.’

      ‘Oh Lord!’ I whispered. It was ten past eight. Outside, the street lamps were on. It was very still.

      ‘What’s all the mystery?’ Harry asked impatiently. In some ways he is a queer fellow. Slow and methodical in his work, yet otherwise reckless – a round peg with a square hole somewhere inside him.

      It seemed best to tell him everything if he was to be involved in the affair. I crossed to the apparatus. I had a large cathode ray tube resting in front of the radiogram and connected to a specially doctored image orthicon that was clamped to an extremely clumsy bit of mechanism. This last gadget was merely a long-running clockwork motor that moved my image orthicon slowly in towards the centre of the record, keeping its neck constantly in – touching, in fact – the smooth groove.

      ‘I’m going to play that disc to you now, Harry – on this.’

      ‘You got it to work?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes. It’s a telefile from the police records in some future time.’ I paused for comment, but he made none.

      ‘How far in the future I don’t know. Perhaps two hundred years … not less. You’ll be able to judge. You’ll see vast technical ability going hand in hand with the death of conscience – the sort of thing a pessimist might predict today. Not that there’s much room on this record for more than guesses, which seems to make it more hauntingly dreadful; and although I’ve got it to work, it doesn’t work well.’

      ‘Surprised you got it to work at all!’ he said.

      ‘I don’t know. Supposing Edison got hold of one of our present-day recordings. He’d soon fathom it.’

      ‘You’re some Edison!’

      I dimpled modestly and said: ‘Thank you. Actually it’s quite simple. At least, my part of it is. Up to a point, in fact, the whole thing is easily understandable, if not duplicatable, by modern knowledge.’

      ‘Up to which point?’ Scepticism in his voice.

      ‘Harry, we’ve got hold of a television record from the future. It’s certainly more compendious for short documents than a roll of film. The unusual feature in it is a frozen signal. It seems the signal is shot from transmitter into a storage valve circuit; or perhaps