The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

It was thus, bent double like cripples at Bitola fair, that they reached the monastery of Sveti Pantelimon. Roses grew by it, otherwise it was a grim place, a tiny church built into the rock on a widening ledge of the rock, with a dwelling hut attached. The modest brick cupola of the church was almost scraped by fingers of rock stabbing from the cliff-face.

The intruders were seen. Only four brothers lived here; three of them hurried out to meet their royal guest, whom they recognised. But it was the fourth the king required to see, and after taking slatko, the traditional dish of Serbian hospitality, he asked to see this priest.

Jovann rose. ‘My lord king, I fear for your safety even here, since we know not that even now the foul-stomached muslim may be riding along this very canyon. I am a soldier. I will guard outside, and give you warning if they come – in a place like this, we might hold off an army.’

‘Guard well, my general,’ said the king, and was prompted to give Jovann his hand.

The holy man he wished to see sat in the bare adjoining room. He seemed, with his wrinkled visage, to represent antiquity rather than old age; but his most notable feature was his left eye which, unlike its brown neighbour, was entirely and featurelessly white. To the king, it appeared that this priest, by name Milos, often saw best with his white eye.

When their courtesies were concluded, the king said, ‘I am here to ask you only one question, and I need from you only one answer.’

‘Often, my lord king Vukasan, there is more than one answer to a question. Question and answer are not simple and complete opposites, as are black and white.’

‘Do not tease me, for I am weary, and the freedom of my kingdom is at stake.’

‘You know I will do what I can.’

‘I believe you are among the wisest men in my lands, and that is why I come to you now. Here is the question. Only a few years ago, in the reign of my father and grandfather, whom we all recall and bless, this our kingdom was expanding, and with it the life of our peoples. Life and knowledge and art and worship were gaining strength every day. Now we see all that we hoped for threatened with ruin, as the red-tipped muslim bites into our lands. So I ask you what will the future be, and how can we influence it for good?’

‘That sounds, my lord king, like two questions, both large; but I will reply to you straightly.’ Milos opened the palm of his hand and stared at it with his white eye. ‘There are as many futures as there are paths in your kingdom, my lord; but just as some paths, if followed to their end, will take you to the west and others if followed to their end will take you to the east, so there are futures which represent the two extremes of what may be – the best and the worst, we might say. I can, if you will, show you the best and the worst.’

‘Tell me what you can.’

The priest Milos rose and stared out of his small window, which afforded a view onto the gloomy rock beyond. With his back to the king, he said, ‘First, I will tell you what I see of the good future.

‘I see you only a year from now. You lead a great army to a beleaguered city set under an isolated mountain, as it might be Prilep. There you smite the sacrilegious Turk, and scatter the entrails of his soldiery far over the blossoming plain, so that he does not come again to our Serbian lands. For this great victory, many petty princes turn to your side and swear allegiance to you. The Byzants, being corrupt, offer you their crown. You accept, and rule their domain even as your father hoped you might.’

He turned to look at the king, but the king sat there at the bare table with his head bowed, as if indifferent to the burning tidings the priest bore. The latter, nodding, turned back to contemplate the rock and continued in an even tone as previously.

‘You rule wisely, if without fire, and make a sensible dynastic marriage, securing the succession of the house of Nemanija. The arts and religion flourish as never before in the new kingdom. Many homes of piety and learning and law are established. Now the Slavs come into their inheritance, and go forth to spread their culture to other nations. Long after you are dead, my king, people speak your name with love, even as we speak of your grandfather, Orusan. But the greatness of the nation you founded is beyond your imagining. It spreads right across Europe and the lands of the Russian. Our gentleness and our culture go with it. There are lands across the sea as yet undiscovered; but the day will come when our emissaries will sail there. And the great inventions of the world yet to come will spring from the seed of our Serbian knowledge, and the mind of all mankind be tempered by our civility. It will be a contemplative world, as we are contemplative, and the love in it will be nourished by that contemplation, until it becomes stronger than wickedness.’

He ceased, and the king spoke, though his eyes were fixed on the bare floor. ‘It is a grand vision you have, priest. And … the other, the ill future?’

Milos stared but with his white eye at the rock and said, ‘In the ill future, I see you leading no grand army. I see a series of small battles, with the shrieking Turk winning almost all of them by superior numbers and science. I see you, my lord king, fall face forward down into the Serbian dust, never to rise again. And I see eventually Serbia herself falling, and the other nations that are our neighbours and rivals, all falling to the braying enemy, until he stands hammering at the gates even of Vienna in the European north. So, my lord, I see nigh on six centuries in which our culture is trampled underfoot by the conqueror.’

Silence came into the chilly room, until the king said heavily, ‘And the other lands you spoke of, and overseas, how are they in this ill future?

‘Perhaps you can imagine, my lord. For those six centuries, lost is the name of Serbia, and the places we know and love are regarded simply as the domain of the ginger-whiskered Turk. Europe grows into a fierce and strifeful nest of warring nations – art they have, but little comtemplation, power but little gentleness. They never know what they lack, naturally. And when Serbia finally manages to free itself from its hated bondage, the centuries have changed it until your name is lost, and the very title King no longer reverenced. And though she may grow to be a modest power in the world, the time when she might have touched the hearts of all men with her essence is long faded, even as are last year’s poppies.’

After he had heard Milos out, the king rose to his feet, though his body trembled. ‘You give me two futures, priest, and even as you said, they differ as does a speckled trout from a bird. Now answer my question and say which of them is to be the real future, and how I can realise the good vision of which you spoke first.’

The priest turned to face him. ‘It is not in my power to tell you which future will happen. No man can do that. All I can do is give you an omen, hoping that you will then take power into your own hands. Seers see, rulers rule.’

‘Give me then an omen!’

‘Think for yourself where the futures divide in the prospects I laid before you.’

He groaned and said, ‘Ah, I know full well where they divide. We do not bring enough men against the devilish muslim at one time. We are as you say a contemplative people, and the floods must lap our doorstep before we take in the rug at the portal.’

‘Suppose it were not a question of being warlike but of being … well, too contemplative.’

‘Then Jovann and I must rouse the whole nation to fight. This I will do, priest, this is what I was hastening to Sveti Andrej to do.’

‘But you called here. Was not that a delay?’

‘Priest, I came bleeding from the battle at the River Babuna with all haste.’

‘Ah?’

He put a weary hand to his forehead and stared at the bare wall. He recalled the long hours of delay at the monastery, the sleep under the trees, the feast of fish and cherries and rakija; and then the diversion here, and he blamed himself deeply for this 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 of the distant world, and plan to send a small ship to see what is going on currently on Iksnivarts; but they feel a certain anxiety about their warlike robots, which now own the planet, and send a human-manned ship carrying two pilots in deep freeze. Unfortunately, this ship goes off course through a technical error, as does a second. But a third gets through, and the two pilots aboard, Graham and Josca, come out of cold storage in time to guide their ship in a long reconnaissance glide through Iksnivarts’ unbreathable atmosphere.

When their photographs are delivered back to Earth – after they have endured another eighty years in deep freeze – they show a world covered with enormous robot cities, and tremendous technological activity going on apace. This looks alarming.

But Earth is reassured. It seems that the war robots they made have turned to peaceful ways. More than one shot through the telescope lenses shows solitary robots up in the hills and mountains of their planet, picking flowers. One close-up in particular is reproduced in every communication medium and finds its way all round rejoicing Earth. It shows a heavily armed robot, twelve feet high, with its arms laden with flowers. And that was to be the title of my story: ‘Robot with Flowers’.

Marion had finished washing up by this time. We were standing in my little sheltered back garden, idly watching the birds swoop along the roof of the old church that stands behind the garden. Nikola came out and joined us.

‘Is that the end?’ Marion asked.

‘Not quite. There’s an irony to come. This shot of the robot with flowers is misinterpreted – an automated example of the pathetic fallacy, I suppose. The robots have to destroy all flowers, because flowers exhale oxygen, and oxygen is liable to give the robots rust troubles. They’ve not picked up the human trick of appreciating beauty, they’re indulging in the old robot vice of being utilitarian, and in a few years they’ll be coming back to lick the Earthmen on Earth.’

Inside the kitchen, I could hear the fridge charging again. I fought an urge to tell Marion about it; I didn’t want to disturb the sunlight on her face.

She said, ‘That sounds quite a good twist. It sounds as if it ought to make a decent run-of-the-mill story. Not quite you, perhaps.’

‘Somehow, I don’t think I can bring myself to finish it.’

‘It’s a bit like that Poul Anderson robot story you admired – “Epilogue”, wasn’t it?’

‘Maybe. Every SF story is getting like every other one. It’s also a bit like one of Harry’s in his War With the Robots collection.’

‘“Anything that Harry wrote can’t be all bad”’, she said, quoting a private joke.

‘“Wish I’d written that,”’ I said, adding the punchline. ‘But that isn’t really why I don’t want to finish “Robot With Flowers”. Maybe Fred Pohl or Mike Moorcock would like it enough to publish it, but I feel disappointed with it. Not just because it’s a crib.’

‘You said once that you could always spot a crib because it lacked emotional tone.’

The goldfish were flitting about under the water-lily leaves in my little ornamental pond. Both Nikola and Marion had got interested in them; I said that they were alike. I looked down at them in love and a little exasperation. Her last remark told me she was carrying on the conversation just for my sake – it lacked emotional tone.

‘You were meant to ask why I was disappointed with the idea.’

‘Darling, if we are going to go and collect the Carrs, we ought to be moving. It’s two-forty already.’

‘I’m raring to go.’

‘I won’t be a moment.’ She kissed me as she went by.

Of course she was right, I thought. I had to work it out for myself, otherwise I would never be satisfied. I went and sat by the cat and watched the goldfish. The birds were busy round the church, feeding their young; they could enjoy so few summers.

In a way, what I wanted to say was not the sort of thing I wanted to say to Marion, and for a special reason that was very much part of me. I’d seen many loving summers with several loving girls, and now here was Marion, the sweetest of them all, the one with whom I could be most myself and most freely speak my thoughts; for that very reason, I did not wish to abuse the privilege and needed to keep some reserves in me.

So I was chary about telling her more than I had done. I was chary about telling her that in my present mood of happiness I felt only contempt for my robot story, and would do so however skilfully I wrote it. There was no war in my heart; how could I begin to believe in an interplanetary war with all its imponderables and impossibilities? When I was lapped about by such a soft and gentle person as Marion, why this wish to traffic in emotionless metal mockeries of human beings?

Further, was not science fiction a product of man’s divided and warring nature? I thought it was, for my own science fiction novels dealt mainly with dark things, a reflection of the personal unhappiness that had haunted my own life until Marion entered it. But this too was not a declaration lightly to be made.

The idea of robots gathering flowers, I suddenly thought, was a message from my psyche telling me to reverse the trend of my armed apprehensions, to turn about that line of Shakespeare’s:

‘And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;

Now thrive the armourers. …’

It was a time for me to bankrupt my fictional armourers and get out the dalliance. My psyche wanted to do away with armoured men – but my fearful ego had to complete the story by making the robots merely prepare for a harsher time to come. All fiction was a similar rationalisation of internal battles.

But suppose my time of trouble was over … even suppose it was only over temporarily … Ought I not to disarm while I could? Ought I not to offer some thanks to the gods and my patient regular readers by writing a cheerful story while I could, to reach out beyond my fortifications and show them for once a future it might be worth living in?

No, that was too involved to explain. And it made good enough sense for me not to need to explain it.

So I got up and left the cat sprawled by the pond, fishing with an occasional hope under the leaves. I walked through the kitchen into the study and started putting essentials into my pockets and taking inessentials out, my mind on the picnic. It was a lovely day, warm and almost cloudless. Charles Carr and I would need some cold beer. They were providing the picnic hamper, but I had a sound impulse to make sure of the beer.

As I took four cans out of the fridge, the motor started charging again. Poor old thing, it was getting old. Under ten years old, but you couldn’t expect a machine to last for ever. Only in fiction. You could send an animated machine out on a paper spaceship voyage over paper light years and it would never let you down. The psyche saw to that. Perhaps if you started writing up-beat stories, the psyche would be encouraged by them and start thinking in an upbeat way, as it had ten years and more ago.

‘Just getting some beer!’ I said, as Marion came back into the room from upstairs. She had changed her dress and put on fresh lipstick. She looked just the sort of girl without which no worthwhile picnic was complete. And I knew she would be good with the Carr kids too.

‘There’s a can opener in the car, I seem to remember,’ she said. ‘And what exactly struck you as so wrong with your story?’

I laughed. ‘Oh, never mind that! It’s just that it seemed so far divorced from real life.’ I picked up the cans and made towards the door, scooping one beer-laden arm about her and reciting, ‘“How can I live without thee, how forgo Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined?” Adam to Eve, me to you.’

‘You’ve been at the beer, my old Adam. Let me get my handbag. How do you mean, divorced from real life? We may not have robots yet, but we have a fridge with a mind of its own.’

‘Exactly. Then why can’t I get the fridge into an SF story, and this wonderful sunlight, and you, instead of just a bunch of artless robots? See that little furry cat outside, trying to scoop up goldfish? She has no idea that today isn’t going to run on forever, that the rest of life isn’t going to be one golden afternoon. We know it won’t be, but wouldn’t it be a change if I could make a story about just this transitory golden afternoon instead of centuries of misery and total lack of oxygen, cats, and sexy females?’