Interpreter, p.1
Interpreter, page 1
Interpreter
BY BRIAN ALDISS
Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
About the Author
Also by Brian Aldiss
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
Never mind the plot. Just imagine the scenario, as set out in Chapter Two!
‘It was already too late to do anything effective. Perhaps it had always been too late. Partussy had over two million years of history behind it, and four million planets under its sway. Its diplomatic corps was made up of astute men who did not budge an inch under the growing chorus of terrestrial protest. They behaved with that cruelly unwavering patience displayed by the keepers of mentally deficient children. If they were unfair it was legally so.’
This strange novel was first published in 1960. Although I was far from being new to the reading of science fiction, I did believe that enormous size was an attraction.
After all my previous years in the Far East (in those days it was never just ‘the East’ – there was no plane that could carry one from, say, Sumatra to London Heathrow), I understood that to be an interpreter was a special thing, needing special understandings. A note at the beginning of the book remarks on the uneasy relationship existing between imperialists and subject races. I had not forgotten those heavy stones flung at me in a Bombay square.
So, although the novel explodes into a fair amount of action, it opens with a few considerations regarding the nature of ‘Thought’. ‘Thought, as inseparable from a higher being as gravity from a planet.’ Gary Towler’s growing mistrust of a leader named Rivars is well done. But they end smiling, Towler and Elizabeth: ‘It was easier to smile than it had been during the last thousand years’. They hope that Earth will become like a guiding light.
And perhaps such might be what I hoped, though I began to explore different ways of expressing such hopes. In this little hopeful novel, I believe I saw that I could live as a writer, though by no means a writer of nothing but science fiction.
My father was old and ill. Poor man, by no means a supportive pater; but I loved him. When I saw him pottering in his garden, he was glad to see me.
‘Father, I’m going to be a writer,’ I told him.
And how did he respond?
‘Why don’t you become a postman? You’ll get plenty of fresh air, and there’s a pension at the end of it …’
Brian Aldiss
Oxford, 2014
Prologue
Thought. Thought: that field of force still to be analysed. Thought: as inseparable from a higher being as gravity from a planet. It wraps around me, as my senses go about their endless job of turning all the external world into symbols. I can know no external thing without its being touched – perhaps in some unguessable way transmuted – by my thought.
The baseness I saw my own people, the nuls, perpetrating on that world Earth; was it real, or a misinterpretation in my mind?
Never the less, here and now, moneyless and far from home, I must prefer practical questions. My eyes must be on the main chance. Someone must be fleeced, so that I can get back. Thoughts are a gamble. Some days interesting ones turn up, some days dull ones. Maybe that’s why I’m a gambler: I’m hoping to discover something more than chance behind chance.
Certainly my thoughts should be interesting now. Here I lie flat on the wide wall by the old harbour, gazing up at the universe. Because it is night, I can see the stars which belong to that empire in which I am a member of the master race.
My name is Wattol Forlie; I am a nul; I rest penniless but resourceful on a low wall on what is temporarily the night side of a planet that its misbegotten lopsided sons call Stomin. Is that not an interesting thought?
Not particularly. My feelings, my precious feelings, they are more important. Consider: I have no cause for optimism, yet I am optimistic. I am umpteen light years from Partussy, yet I am not homesick. I must appear to be in a drunken coma, yet my wits are as sharp as the beastly vinn I swigged at Farribidouchi’s.
And there is another level of my thought, a danger level, coming into action. I have one eye cocked to the galaxy and one to my inner self. Yet at the same time I am aware of this thug sliding towards me from a side street. He skirts the worn wooden capstan, and the pile of offal and shells where the sea food stall stands during the day. He approaches like a villain.
He’s a nul, I notice. Therefore arrogant, no doubt, as I am arrogant. He carries a knife with which to threaten me, the cheap quaint. How should he realise it is Wattol Forlie who sprawls here?
How could he imagine the thoughts in my head as brightly peppered as the stars up yonder, which will scatter when even- tually he gets up enough pluck to stutter his ‘Put your hands up,’ or whatever melodramatic drivel he will utter?
Wattol Forlie let his thoughts pour out through his head, enjoying his own calm in the face of danger. For a nul, he had indeed some complexity of character. Yet even he, lying tipsy on a harbour wall on Stomin, had no inkling of that chain of events upon which the destiny of one world, and perhaps even of the galaxy, depended.
And had he known, in his present mood he might have done no more than wave an arm in dismissal.
Not that he was a fatalist. He believed in the importance of every action. He also believed that in a galaxy of four million civilised planets those actions would eventually cancel each other out.
As he was reflecting with delight on the involutions of his own character, a voice from three feet away said coldly, ‘Raise your hands and sit up, and keep quiet about it.’
Wattol disliked such treatment, especially on an alien planet. He knew that the misshapen inhabitants of Stomin would happily melt him or any other nul down for the sake of his blubber content without thinking twice about it. Still making no attempt to move, he swivelled an eyestalk to observe his opponent.
Through the dark, he saw a tripedal figure much like his own.
‘Does your being a nul entitle you to act like this?’ he enquired lazily.
‘Sit up, brother. I’ll ask the questions.’
Wattol spat.
‘You’re no ordinary thug, or you’d have had the sense to shut me up without all the dramatics. Come and tell me what you want like a civilised being.’
The figure came nearer, angry now.
‘I said sit up –’
As Wattol finally did so, he launched himself at the other, catching him just below the midriff. They fell heavily, and a long curved knife went spinning. Distant lamplight slanted on to their faces as they grappled together.
‘Wait!’ the attacker exclaimed. ‘You’re the gambler, aren’t you? Weren’t you at Farribidouchi’s joint earlier, playing on the central tables?’
‘Is this a time for conversation, you cheap quaint?’
‘You’re the gambler, aren’t you? A thousand apologies, sir! I mistook you for an ordinary loafer.’
They scrambled up, the attacker full of contrite and flattering phrases. His name, he declared, was Jicksa, and he humbly offered Wattol a drink to compensate for his deplorable conduct. The dark, he swore, had driven him to a foolish act.
‘I like all this no better than your earlier behaviour,’ Wattol said. ‘The truth is, I want nothing to do with you. Be off and leave me alone in meditation, you squirt.’
‘I’ve an offer to make you. A good offer. Look, we nuls must stick together. That’s the truth, isn’t it? Stomin is a fearful place to be on. Because it happens to be a main conjunction of several important space routes, it swarms with all sorts of riffraff –’
‘Like yourself!’
‘Sir, I’m only temporarily down on my luck, just as you obviously are. Together we will re-establish our fortunes. I, you see, happen to be a gambler too.’
‘You might have said that in the first place, and saved yourself a lot of energy,’ Wattol said, beating dust and old fish scales from his clothing. ‘Let’s go and get that drink. You can pay for it and tell me what your offer is.’
They found a place called the Parakeet. It stank but was comfortable. None of the other life forms present were too revolting in appearance. Settling into a corner with their glasses, the two nuls were soon immersed in a discussion of various games of chance.
‘I was fleeced when I was playing at Farribidouchi’s. How comes it you have such an admiration for my playing?’ Wattol asked.
Jicksa smiled.
‘The game was rigged, of course, I was watching but I didn’t say anything, or they would have cut my throat. It was a wonder you stayed in as long as you did. I figured we’d make a good pair when I saw the way you handled your cards.’
‘I certainly need the money. I’ve got a long way to get home; half the galaxy, no less.’
‘Where are you making for?’
‘Partussy itself. I am a Partussian citizen, if that’s any honour nowadays. They’ve treated me as shabbily as if I was a member of a junior race.’
‘I certainly don’t owe the authorities any love either,’ Jicksa admitted. ‘What happened to you, if it’s not a long story?’
‘Until a few months ago, I was Third Secretary of a Commission on a planet full of bipeds. A nice comfo
‘Well, I’d saved enough cash to buy a passage on a ship to Hoppaz II, and from there to Castacorze, which is a sector HQ planet. Castacorze is a foul dump, I tell you! Like most HQ planets, it’s rotten with graft, but the ordinary citizen can’t swing a thing. I was stuck there for a year until I had earned enough money for a passage here. I even did manual labour to earn it.’
Jicksa tut-tutted in sympathy.
‘Yes, but at least I did two useful things on Castacorze. I resolved that after the way I’d been treated the world owed me a living; from now on I’m going to rely on my luck and my wits to get me home to Partussy.’
‘At the rate you’re going, friend, it’ll take you twenty years. Stay here with me and fleece the tourists.’
Wattol decided he did not much like Jicksa. The fellow seemed incapable of distinguishing between an ordinary crook and a man with extraordinary ambitions. Still, he would serve his purpose in the long game of leap frog that carried Wattol from planet to planet towards home.
Draining his glass, Jicksa signalled for another measure.
‘What was this other useful thing you said you did on Castacorze?’ he inquired.
Wattol grinned a sour grin.
‘You’ve probably never heard of Synvoret? He’s a big noise on the Supreme Council on Partussy. He always had a reputation in the Foreign Department for being one of the few incorruptible nuls left! So I got together a bundle of evidence against this Commissioner Par-Chavorlem and sent it off to Synvoret from Castacorze.’
‘What good will that do you?’ Jicksa asked.
‘Some satisfactions can’t be bought for money, brother Jicksa. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing this louse Par-Chavorlem kicked out, and this planet he lords over getting a square deal. And Synvoret’s the nul to do it.’
Jicksa sniffed. He had met sacked civil servants with crazy grievances before.
‘What did you say the name of this planet was where you worked under Par-whosit?’ he asked, bored.
‘Oh, a backward little dump called Earth. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it?’
Sipping his new drink, Jicksa agreed he had never heard of it.
1
The chair was very much in contrast to the coat that had been flung over it. Like the room in which it stood, the chair was large, over-ornate, and fearfully new.
The coat was simple in cut, worn, and old-fashioned. Made by a good Partussian tailor, it had the usual three bat-winged sleeves with apertures below the arms, and a high collar reaching almost to the eye-stalks such as was now worn only by members of the old school of diplomats. The edge of the collar was as frayed as the three wide cuffs.
This was the coat of Signatory Arch-Hiscount Armajo Synvoret. Ten seconds after he had dropped it over his ornate chair, the cupboard extended a hook and drew the worn garment into its embrace. Tidiness is a virtue for underlings and machines.
Ignoring this, Synvoret continued to pace round his new room. His life had been austere, dedicated to the furtherance of Partussian justice on other worlds. This chamber, at once frivolous and ostentatious, seemed to him to embody principles he had often fought against. He resented being moved from his old quarters into it, for all its boasted advantages.
Synvoret opened the first document on his desk. Inside its foil cover was another cover, a dozen gaudy stamps on it indicating its hopscotch passage from one port to another across the galaxy to its present destination. Its earliest stamp, marked CASTACORZE, SECTOR VERMILION bore a date almost two years old. With increased interest, Synvoret slit it open.
The envelope contained a number of flimsy documents and a covering letter which Synvoret read first:
‘To Supreme Council Signatory Arch-Hiscount Armajo Synvoret, G.L.L., I.L.U.S., L.C.U.S.S., P.F., R.O.R. (Omi), Fr.G.R.T(P), Colony Worlds Council, Partussy.
‘Sequestered and Honoured Signatory Sir: Since my name will hardly have penetrated through the hierarchies and light years which divide us, permit me to introduce myself. I am Wattol Forlie, one-time Third Secretary to High Hiscount Chaverlem Par-Chavorlem, Galactic Commissioner to the planet Earth. To save your Signatoryship the annoyance of referring to files, let me add that Earth is a Class 5c World in System 5417 of Galactic Administration Sector Vermilion.
‘Good. I, Honoured Sir, have just been given the boot.
‘I have not liked one single thing I have seen of the administration of this wretched planet Earth by our people. When I had the temerity to draft a minute to this effect to Commissioner Par-Chavorlem, I was brought before him and most unjustly given the push.
‘You as a veteran of ministerial life will probably know the terms of the standard galactic-colonial contract for Grade Four rankers in the Colonial Service like me; by “infringing” it, I have to find my own way home. With ten thousand light years to Partussy, I doubt if I shall see home again before I’m an old nul. An effective way of keeping anyone quiet, eh!
‘However, Honoured Sir, my main gripe is not for myself but for the subject race of Earth, termed “terrestials”. When and if you get to know them, these terrestials are pretty good creatures, sharing many of a nul’s better characteristics. The fact that they are biped has told against them historically – as it seems to have done against biped races everywhere.
‘My case is that these bipeds are being systematically exploited and ruined by our Earth Commissioner. Par-Chavorlem is greatly overstepping his lawful powers, as I hope the enclosed documents will prove to you. If his rule continues, all Earth culture will be obliterated in another generation.
‘Par-Chavorlem should be stopped. A just nul should be put in his place, if just nuls can still be found. Our mighty, glorious empire stinks to heaven! It is rotten, decadent, through and through. If this dossier ever reaches you, I dare say you will do nothing about it.
‘Why do I write to you in particular, Honoured Sir? Obviously I had to write to one of the signatories of the Colony Council; they are the boys with the power to do things. I chose you because I learned that in your youth you held, among other posts, the position of Deputy Commissioner to Starjj, another planet in this sector, Vermilion, where your rule was a pattern for enlightened justice. You still have the reputation, I believe, for being honest and perceptive.
‘If this is so, I beg you to do something for the terrestials, and post Par-Chavorlem somewhere where he can do no further harm. Or most probably you are too busy to trouble with this whole matter. This is the age of the Busy Nul!
‘Your ex-servant in despair, I am, Honoured Signatory Sir, Wattol “Big Head” Forlie.’
The comb on Signatory Synvoret’s leathery old head rippled in anger, an anger by no means directed entirely against Wattol Forlie. The Colonial Office, under a succession of inept Ministers, had in his view grown increasingly incompetent to manage its own affairs. As the years descended on his shoulders Synvoret grew increasingly sure that things were nowhere what they had been in his younger days. Forlie’s letter seemed to confirm this.
He went over to the ornate chair, sat on it, and spread Forlie’s dossier on the desk. Its contents were the sort of documents he had expected to find:
Copies of directions signed by Par-Chavorlem for internal circulation in the Commission, imposing racial restrictions.
Copies of an order to the military authorising them to shoot on sight any terrestial found within half a mile of any main road.
Copies of instructions to terrestial authorities, inviting them to hand over art treasures to the Partussian authorities for ‘permanent safe keeping’ against worthless guarantees.
Reports from Sub-Commission stations on Earth, giving details of forced terrestial labour gangs employed there.
And copies of several arrangements with civilian contractors, mining firms, managers of spacelines, and military governors – ‘one of the latter a Star General on Castacorze’ – all showing items and expenditures well above anything prescribed for a 5c Commission.
