The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

ineradicable tardiness in his nature, so characteristic of his people also. But there were some more warlike than he, and on them, he saw, the new burden of militarism must rest.

      ‘Jovann,’ he said. ‘My bold General Jovann stands outside even now, defending us. He will lend metal to the Serbian arm even if I by my nature cannot.’

      Milos looked at him with the white eye and said, ‘Then there is your omen. Come now to the window, my lord king.’

      By leaning a little way out of the window, it was possible to see the path by the stream below. Jovann lay with his back to a rock, a pink rose between his teeth. All thought of the Turk had plainly left him, for he sat drawing a heart in the dust, and his sword lay some distance from him beneath a bush.

      ‘As we are contemplative, I fear it will not be a contemplative future,’ Milos said, taking the arm of the king to prevent him swooning.

      When the dizziness wore off, King Vukasan shook off the hand that held his. He saw, looking wearily up, that it was Jovann who squatted by his bed. He lay breathing heavily, conscious of the terrible weight on his chest, trying to measure where his spirit had been. He saw the wooden screen at the bottom of his couch, he regarded the still lake outside his window and he forced a few words through his swollen lips.

      ‘We should have been in Sveti Andrej today.’

      ‘My lord, do not fret yourself, there is plenty of time in the world.’

      And that, my dear unhastening Jovann, is only the truth, thought he, unable to turn the thought into words; but the fate of the coming centuries has to be decided now, and you should have left me here to die and dream of death, and hurry on with the news that my kinsmen must unite and arm … But he could only look up into the trusting and gentle face of his general and speak no word of all he feared.

      Then his focus slipped, and rested momentarily on the carved screen. He saw that among the wilderness of flowers and leaves a bird strained at a lizard, and a bullock-cart traced a path along a vine, and there were little cupolas appearing amid the buds, and shepherd boys and fat sheep, and even a wooden river. Then his head rolled to one side, and he saw instead the vast vacancy of the lake, with the rushes stirring, and the sky reflected in the lake, until it seemed to his labouring mind that all heaven stood just outside the window. He closed his eyes and went to it.

      And Jovann moved on tiptoe out to the waiting priests and said, ‘A mass must be sung, and the villagers must come at once with flowers and mourn their king as he would have it. And all arrangements must be made properly for the burial of this, our great and loved king. I will stay and arrange it for a day or so before taking the news on to Sveti Andrej. There is plenty of time, and the king would not wish us to spoil things by haste.’

      And one of the priests walked along with him along the narrow way, to summon mourners from the nearest village in the beleaguered hills.

       The Girl and the Robot With Flowers

      I dropped it to her casually as we were clearing away the lunch things. ‘I’ve started another story.’

      Marion put the coffee cups down on the draining board, hugged me, and said, ‘You clever old thing! When did you do that? When I was out shopping this morning?’

      I nodded, smiling at her, feeling good, enjoying hearing her chirp with pleasure and excitement. Marion’s marvellous, she can always be relied on. Does she really feel as delighted as that – after all, she doesn’t care so greatly for science fiction? But I don’t mind; she is full of love, and it may lend her enough empathy to make her feel as sincerely delighted as I do when another story is on the way.

      ‘I suppose you don’t want to tell me what it’s going to be about?’ she asked.

      ‘It’s about robots, but more than that I won’t tell you.’

      ‘Okay. You go and write a bit more while I wash these few things. We don’t have to leave for another ten minutes, do we?’

      We were planning to go and see our friends the Carrs, who live the other side of Oxford. Despite their name, the Carrs haven’t a car, and we had arranged to take them and their two children out for a ride and a picnic in the country, to celebrate the heatwave.

      As I went out of the kitchen, the fridge started charging again.

      ‘There it goes!’ I told Marion grimly. I kicked it, but it continued to growl at me.

      ‘I never hear it till you remind me,’ she said. I tell you, nothing rattles her! It’s wonderful; it means that she is a great nerve tonic, exciting though I find her.

      ‘I must get an electrician in to look at it,’ I said. ‘Unless you actually enjoy the noise, that is. It just sits there gobbling electricity like a –’

      ‘A robot?’ Marion suggested.

      ‘Yep.’ I ambled into the living room-cum-study. Nikola was lying on the rug under the window in an absurd position, her tummy up to the sunlight. Absently, I went over and tickled her to make her purr. She knew I enjoyed it as much as she did; she was very like Marion in some ways. And at that moment, discontent struck me.

      I lit a Van Dyke cigar and walked back into the kitchen. The back door was open; I leant against the post and said, ‘Perhaps for once I will tell you the plot. I don’t know if it’s good enough to bear completing.’

      She looked at me. ‘Will my hearing it improve it?’

      ‘You might have some suggestions to offer.’

      Perhaps she was thinking how ill-advised she would be ever to call me in for help when the cooking goes wrong, even if I am a dab hand with the pappadoms. All she said was, ‘It never hurts to talk an idea over.’

      ‘There was a chap who wrote a tremendous article on the generation of ideas in conversation. A German last century, but I can’t remember who – Von Kleist, I think. Probably I told you. I’d like to read that again some time. He pointed out how odd it is that we can surprise even ourselves in conversation, as we can when writing.’

      ‘Don’t your robots surprise you?’

      ‘They’ve been done too often. Perhaps I ought to leave them alone. Maybe Jim Ballard’s right and they are old hat, worked to death.’

      ‘What’s your idea?’

      So I stopped dodging the issue and told her.

      This earth-like planet, Iksnivarts, declares war on Earth. Its people are extremely long-lived, so that the long voyage to Earth means nothing to them – eighty years are nothing, a brief interval. To the Earthmen, it’s a lifetime. So the only way they can carry the war back to Iksnivarts is to use robots – beautiful, deadly creatures without many of humanity’s grandeurs and failings. They work off solar batteries, they last almost forever, and they carry miniature computers in their heads that can out-think any protoplasmic being.

      An armada of ships loaded with these robots is sent off to attack Iksnivarts. With the fleet goes a factory which is staffed by robots capable of repairing their fellows. And with this fully automated strike force goes a most terrible weapon, capable of locking all the oxygen in Iksnivarts’ air into the rocks, so that the planetary atmosphere is rendered unbreathable in the course of a few hours.

      The inhuman fleet sails. Some twenty years later, an alien fleet arrives in the solar system and gives Earth, Venus, and Mars a good peppering of radioactive dusts, so that just about seventy per cent of humanity is wiped out. But nothing stops the robot fleet, and after eighty years they reach target. The anti-oxygen weapon is appallingly effective. Every alien dies of almost immediate suffocation, and the planet falls to its metallic conquerors. The robots land, radio news of their success back to Earth, and spend the next ten years tidily burying corpses.

      By the time their message gets back to the solar system, Earth is pulling itself together again after its pasting. Men are tremendously interested in their conquest