The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

flesh seemed to have atrophied, his bones showed, the skin stretched tight over his temples. His stomach felt like a walnut. He was in the last stages of starvation.

      Bert realised his plight immediately.

      ‘This is my fault,’ it exclaimed. ‘I had neglected a basic factor of human metabolism. You feed every five waking hours to maintain energy. That energy is easily consumed, and of course the sub-molecular transposition has entirely drained your energy supplies. I told you you were supplying the power. You must go in search of food at once.’

      ‘I worked that one out for myself,’ Wyvern said bitterly.

      He staggered towards the doorway, wondering where he was, what aid he was likely to get. His hopes sank directly he looked outside: the corridor stretching either way was painted a drab grey and brown, the standard army colours. The opposite wall of the corridor was all glass, Wyvern looked out; he was on the top floor of a tall building. Overhead he could see the domes with their polar shields up.

      ‘Not hopeful,’ he messaged to the machine.

      Without bothering to take any precautions, he walked down the corridor, past two closed doors, to a self-service lift. A notice on it read: UP – HELICOPTERS ONLY. OUT OF BOUNDS TO OTHER RANKS. Wyvern pushed his way in.

      ‘Going up,’ he said, and went up.

      He emerged on top of the building in what at first was blinding light. When he got his bearings, he saw there were several army personnel about, officers in uniform, men in dungarees. Several helicopters were parked in a line, with one just landing.

      Wyvern was beyond making any sort of pretence at concealment, nor was it easy to see what exactly he could have done to hide. He merely walked up to the nearest helicopter and flung open the cabin door. Someone called out to him at once.

      ‘The one this end if you don’t mind, sir.’

      Nodding curtly in reply to the mechanic who had shouted, Wyvern walked as steadily as he could down the line of air vehicles. As he reached the one designated, the mechanic pulled open the door and said humbly, ‘May I just see your pass, sir, please.’

      ‘Do I look as if I was on pleasure?’ Wyvern asked, swinging himself up into the little cabin.

      Indeed he looked a formidable sight. His gaunt form was clad still in the guard’s white overall, and his basket-work halo still loomed over his skull.

      ‘I must see your pass, sir; you know that,’ the mechanic persisted.

      ‘Oh, very well, man,’ Wyvern said. In one of the overall pockets there was a blank report card. He flicked it through the cabin door. As the mechanic swung to retrieve it, Wyvern switched on the engine and revved the rotors.

      The mechanic was quick on the uptake. He wasted no time examining the card, but flung a spanner wildly at Wyvern; it missed, clanging harmlessly against the metal fuselage. At the same time he was yelling at a group of three officers who had been standing nearby, watching Wyvern curiously. They dashed at the machine.

      It was beginning to lift when the first officer grabbed at the swinging door. Grimly, Wyvern applied full power. His altitude reached ten feet – and stayed there, the motors labouring angrily. The first officer was dragging himself up. The other officers were also hanging on. The mechanic ran just below the wheels, yelling blue murder and jumping to seize the axle.

      ‘For heaven’s sake, do something,’ Wyvern gasped to the brain.

      ‘I can’t. I’d kill you!’ Bert replied. ‘If I drained off any more of your resources, you’d go out like a light.’

      Under the combined weight of the officers, the helicopter listed badly. If anything, it was losing height. They slid over to the edge of the building, a wounded bird swarming with rats. Carried away with excitement, the mechanic made one last jump for the axle, missed, and went plummetting into the depths below.

      Wyvern’s leg was seized. He looked frantically round for a weapon with which to break the officer’s grasp, but there was nothing loose. Through the window he could see the faces of the two others, clinging and bellowing. He kicked furiously, but his strength was nothing; he began to slide diagonally across the floor of the helicopter.

      ‘Let go, you crazy fool!’ he shouted. ‘Let go or you’ll kill us all!’

      The other tugged the harder. Veins stood out on his forehead; one of his fellows had him by the trousers. It was only this that made him release Wyvern, and take a firmer grip on the passenger seat. Wyvern hauled himself back to the controls.

      Their rate of fall was accelerating. The face of a building slid by, desperately close. These in-dome helicopters were light-weight jobs, designed only to carry a maximum of two people. The extra load would be almost buckling the vanes!

      Ahead was another block. They slanted past it, and were making for a lower part of the city, drifting towards Mandalay Gate. As Wyvern calculated it, they would be down before they struck the side of the dome. At that, they would probably hit a building first. He flung open the other door, preparing to jump and run at the first opportunity, if his flagging strength would allow him to. Beneath him swung a pattern of upturned faces and pointing hands. Another ’copter soared up nearby; a telecamera projected from its cabin window.

      So H and his secretary would probably already know where Wyvern was!

      He edged closer to the opening.

      ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ the lean voice said inside his mind. ‘Your human limbs are fragile and you do not yet know how to grow more. Don’t jump! Let them catch you. They will think it in their own interest to keep you alive and restore you to health, for they do not realise I have already extracted from you all I wish. Sit tight.’

      It was good advice. But Wyvern neither took it or disregarded it, for that moment they struck a street pylon. The ’copter wrapped itself lovingly round the pylon and slithered to the ground with a mighty rending of metal. Existence became an affair of stars.

      Everything was going to be well.

      With that conviction Wyvern woke. He’d been back in his dreams to Stratton, walking among the beech copses, riding Nicky over the sweet bracken, swimming in the infant Yare.

      And somehow in the dream everything had sorted itself out so easily. He had been refuelled, and the big computer had scooped him back to earth and the régime had crumbled and then Eileen South had appeared and then … And then he woke up.

      He was in a hospital bed again.

      Plus ça change, he thought wearily. But at least he had been fed intravenously. His limbs had plumped out, the hollows had gone from his cheeks. And they had removed the terminals from his body. Wyvern felt his head; stubble ran crisply over it, and the wire cage had gone. He looked human again. He sat up, feeling wonderful.

      So Bert had been right! They wanted him alive; they would think the computer still had everything to learn from him. If H’s secretary suspected the truth, it hardly seemed likely he would dare tell H that Wyvern had just disappeared before his eyes; for the new Leader, a materialist if ever Wyvern saw one, would dismiss the notion as fantastic. Which it was.

      They would couple him back on to the machine – and he would vanish again. But this time for good.

      ‘Hey!’ he called. The sooner they fetched him the better. He could face them; he could face anything with Bert on his side.

      It occurred to him then: if they intended to couple him up again, why had they removed the terminals from his body?

      ‘Bert!’ he cried inside his head. ‘Bert!’

      The machine did not answer, only the silence of the skull where its answer should have been.

      Two guards entered the room, the usual wall-faced-looking entities who clicked for these bully jobs.

      ‘Get up,’ one said in a wall-faced