The Saliva Tree Read online

  The Saliva Tree

  Brian W. Aldiss

  Brian W. Aldiss

  The Saliva Tree

  Here is the story which fought Zelazny's “He Who Shapes” to a standstill for the novella award. It is set not in the far future or even in the familiar present, but in that curiously bright and timeless late-Victorian world, glimpsed as if through the wrong end of a telescope, in which the wonderful events of H. 0. Wells' stories take place.

  The author of this brilliant pastiche was born in the mid– twenties into the East Anglia depicted as background to “The Saliva Tree,” where many farms still had their own little electricity generators. He has been Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail for eight years. He made a happy second marriage in 1965, now lives in a beautiful old sixteenth-century thatched house in Oxfordshire, “seeing slightly crazy visions.” Nebula Award, Best Novella 1965 (tied with “He Who Shapes,” by Roger Zelazny)

  There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them. Psalm xix.

  “You know, I'm really much exercised about the Fourth Dimension,” said the fair-haired young man, with a suitable earnestness in his voice.

  “Um,” said his companion, staring up at the night sky.

  “It seems very much in evidence these days. Do you not think you catch a glimpse of it in the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley?” “Um,” said his companion.

  They stood together on a low rise to the east of the sleepy East Anglian town of Cottersall, watching the stars, shivering a little in the chill February air. They are both young men in their early twenties. The one who is occupied with the Fourth Dimension is called Bruce Fox; be is tall and fair, and works as junior clerk in the Norwich firm of lawyers, Prendergast and Tout. The other, who has so far vouchsafed us only an urn or two, although he is to figure largely as the hero of our account, is by name Gregory Rolles. He is tall and dark, with gray eyes set in his handsome and intelligent face. He and Fox have sworn to Think Large, thus distinguishing themselves, at least in their own minds, from all the rest of the occupants of Cottersall in these last years of the nineteenth century.

  “There's another!” exclaimed Gregory, breaking at last from the realm of monosyllables. He pointed a gloved finger up at the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer. A meteor streaked across the sky like a runaway flake of the Milky Way, and died in mid-air.

  “Beautiful!” they said together.

  “It's funny,” Fox said, prefacing his words with an oft-used phrase, “the stars and men's minds are so linked together and always have been, even in the centuries of ignorance before Charles Darwin. They always seem to play an ill-defined role in man's affairs. They help me think large too, don't they you, Greg?”

  “You know what I think1 think that some of those stars may be occupied. By people, I mean.” He breathed heavily, overcome by what he was saying. “People whoperhaps they are better than us, live in a just society, wonderful people . . .”

  “I know, socialists to a man!” Fox exclaimed. This was one point on which he did not share his friend's advanced thinking. He had listened to Mr. Tout talking in the office, and thought he knew better than his rich friend how these socialists, of which one heard so much these days, were undermining society. “Stars full of socialists!”

  “Better than stars full of Christians! Why, if the stars were full of Christians, no doubt they would already have sent missionaries down here to preach their Gospel.”

  “I wonder if there ever will be planetary journeys as predicted by Nunsowe Greene and Monsieur Jules Verne” Fox said, when the appearance of a fresh meteor stopped him in mid-sentence. Like the last, this meteor seemed to come from the general direction of Auriga. It traveled slowly, and it glowed red, and it sailed grandly towards them. They both exclaimed at once, arid gripped each other by the arm. The magnificent spark burned in the sky, larger now, so that its red aura appeared to encase a brighter orange glow. It passed overhead (afterwards, they argued whether it had not made a slight noise as it passed), and disappeared below a clump of willow. They knew it had been near. For an instant, the land had shone with its light.

  Gregory was the first to speak.

  “Bruce, Bruce, did you see that? That was no ordinary fireball!”

  “It was so big! What was it?”

  “Perhaps our heavenly visitor has come at last!”

  “Hey, Greg, it must have landed by your friend's farmthe Grendon placemustn't it?”

  “You're right! I must pay old Mr. Grendon a visit tomorrow and see if he or his family saw anything of this.”

  They talked excitedly, stamping their feet as they exercised their lungs. Their conversation was the conversation of optimistic young men, and included much speculative matter that began “Wouldn't it be wonderful if” or “Just supposing” Then they stopped and laughed at their own absurd beliefs.

  Fox said slyly, “So you'll be seeing all the Grendon family tomorrow?”

  “It seems probable, unless that red-hot planetary ship has already borne them off to a better world.”

  “Tell us true, Gregyou really go to see that pretty Nancy Grendon, don't you?”

  Gregory struck his friend playfully on the shoulder.

  “No need for your jealousy, Bruce! I go to see the father, not the daughter. Though the one is female, the other is progressive, and that must interest me more just yet. Nancy has beauty, true, but her fatherah, her father has electricity!”

  Laughing, they cheerfully shook hands and parted for the night.

  On Grendon's farm, things were a deal less tranquil, as Gregory was to discover.

  Gregory Rolles rose before seven next morning as was his custom. It was while he was lighting his gas mantle, and wishing Mr. Fenn (the baker in whose house Gregory lodged) would install electricity, that a swift train of thought led him to reflect again on the phenomenal thing in the previous night's sky. He let his mind wander luxuriously over all the possibilities that the “meteor” illuminated. He decided that he would ride out to see Mr. Grendon within the hour.

  He was lucky in being able, at this stage in his life, to please himself largely as to how his days were spent, for his father was a person of some substance. Edward Rolles had had the fortune, at the time of the Crimean War, to meet Escoffier, and with some help from the great chef had brought onto the market a baking powder, “Eugenol,” that, being slightly more palatable and less deleterious to the human system than its rivals, had achieved great commercial success. As a result, Gregory had attended one of the Cambridge colleges.

  Now, having gained a degree, he was poised on the verge of a career. But which career? He had acquiredmore as a result of his intercourse with other students than with those officially deputed to instruct himsome understanding of the sciences; his essays had been praised and some of his poetry published, so that he inclined toward literature; and an uneasy sense that life for everyone outside the privileged classes contained too large a proportion of misery led him to think seriously of a political career. In Divinity, too, he was well-grounded; but at least the idea of Holy Orders did not tempt him.

  While he wrestled with his future, he undertook to live away from home, since his relations with his father were never smooth. By rusticating himself in the heart of East Anglia, he hoped to gather material for a volume tentatively entitled “Wanderings with a Socialist Naturalist,” which would assuage all sides of his ambitions. Nancy Grendon, who had a pretty hand with a pencil, might even execute a little emblem for the title page . . . Perhaps he might be permitted to dedicate it to his author friend, Mr. Herbert George Wells. . .

  He dressed himself warmly, for the morning was cold as well as dull, and went down to the baker's stables. When he had saddled his mare, Daisy, he swung himself
up and set out along a road that the horse knew well.

  The land rose slightly towards the farm, the area about the house forming something of a little island amid marshy ground and irregular stretches of water that gave back to the sky its own dun tone. The gate over the little bridge was, as always, open wide; Daisy picked her way through the mud to the stables, where Gregory left her to champ oats contentedly. Cuff and her pup, Lardie, barked loudly about Gregory's heels as usual, and he patted their heads on his way over to the house.

  Nancy came hurrying out to meet him before he got to the front door.

  “We had some excitement last night, Gregory,” she said. He noted with pleasure she had at last brought herself to use .his first name.

  “Something bright and glaring!” she said. “I was retiring, when this noise come and then this light, and I rush to look out through the curtains, and there's this here great thing like an egg sinking into our pond.” In her speech, and particularly when she was excited, she carried the lilting accent of Norfolk.

  “The meteor!” Gregory exclaimed. “Bruce Fox and I were out last night, as we were the night before, watching for the lovely Aurigids that arrive every February, when we saw an extra big one. I said then it was coming over very near here.”

  “Why, it almost landed on our house,” Nancy said. She looked very pleasing this morning, with her lips red, her cheeks shining, and her chestnut curls all astray. As she spoke, her mother appeared in apron and cap, with a wrap hurriedly thrown over her shoulders.

  “Nancy, you come in, standing freezing like that! You ent daft, girl are you? Hello, Gregory, how be going on? I didn't reckon as we'd see you today. Come in and warm yourself.”

  “Good-day to you, Mrs. Grendon. I'm hearing about your wonderful meteor of last night.”

  “It was a falling star, according to Bert Neckland. I ent sure what it was, but it certainly stirred up the animals, that I do know.”

  “Can you see anything of it in the pond?” Gregory asked.

  “Let me show you,” Nancy said.

  Mrs. Grendon returned indoors. She went slowly and grandly, her back straight and an unaccustomed load before her. Nancy was her only daughter; there was a younger son, Archie, a stubborn lad who had fallen at odds .with his father and now was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Norwich; and no other children living. Three infants had not survived the mixture of fogs alternating with bitter east winds that comprised the typical Cottersall winter. But now the farmer's wife was unexpectedly gravid again, and would bear her husband another baby when the spring came in.

  As Nancy led Gregory over to the pond, he saw Grendon with his two laborers working in the West Field, but they did not wave. “Was your father not excited by the arrival last night?”

  “That he waswhen it happened! He went out with his shotgun, and Bert Neckland with him. But there was nothing to see but bubbles in the pond and steam over it, and this morning he wouldn't discuss it, and said that work must go on whatever happen.”

  They stood beside the pond, a dark and extensive slab of water with rushes on the farther bank and open country beyond. As they looked at its ruffled surface, they stood with the windmill black and bulky on their left hand. It was to this that Nancy now pointed.

  Mud had been splashed across the boards high up the sides of the mill; some was to be seen even on the top of the nearest white sail. Gregory surveyed it all with interest. Nancy, however, was still pursuing her own line of thought.

  “Don't you reckon Father works too hard, Gregory? When he's not outside doing jobs, he's in reading his pamphlets and his electricity manuals. He never rests but when he sleeps.”

  “Um. Whatever went into the pond went in with a great smack! There's no sign of anything there now, is there? Not that you can see an inch below the surface.”

  “You being a friend of his. Mum thought perhaps as you'd say something to him. He don't go to bed till ever so latesometimes it's near midnight, and then he's up again at three and a half o'clock. Would you speak to him? You know Mother dassent.”

  “Nancy, we ought to see whatever it was that went in the pond. It can't have dissolved. How deep is the water? Is it very deep?”

  “Oh, you aren't listening, Gregory Rolles! Bother the old meteor!”

  “This is a matter of science, Nancy. Don't you see”

  “Oh, rotten old science, is it? Then I don't want to hear. I'm cold, standing out here. You can have a good look if you like but I'm going in before I gets froze. It was only an old stone out of the sky, because I heard Father and Bert Neckland agree to it.”

  “Fat lot Bert Neckland knows about such things!” he called to her departing back.

  He looked down at the dark water. Whatever it was that had arrived last night, it was here, only a few feet from him. He longed to discover what remained of it. Vivid pictures entered his mind: his name in headlines in “The Morning Post,” the Royal Society making him an honorary member, his father embracing him and pressing him to return home.

  Thoughtfully, he walked over to the barn. Hens ran clucking out of his way as he entered and stood looking up, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. There, as he remembered it, was a little rowing boat. Perhaps in his courting days old Mr. Grendoii had taken his prospective wife out for excursions on the Oast in it. Surely it had not been used in years. He dragged the boat from the barn and launched it in the shallows of the pond. It floated. The boards had dried, and water leaked through a couple of seams, but not nearly enough to deter him, Climbing delicately in among the straw and filth, he pushed off.

  When he was over the approximate center of the pond, he shipped his oars and peered over the side. There was an agitation in the water, and nothing could be seen, although he imagined much.

  As he stared over the one side, the boat unexpectedly tipped to the other. Gregory swung round. The boat listed heavily to the left, so that the oars rolled over that way. He could see nothing. Yethe heard something. It was a sound much like a hound slowly panting. And whatever made it was about to capsize the boat.

  “What is it?” he said, as all the skin prickled up his back and skull.

  The boat lurched, for all the world as if someone invisible were trying to get into it. Frightened, he grasped the oar, and, without thinking, swept it over that side of the rowing boat.

  It struck something solid where there was only air.

  Dropping the oar in surprise, he put out his hand. It touched something yielding. At the same time, his arm was violently struck.

  His actions were then entirely governed by instinct. Thought did not enter the matter. He picked up the oar again and smote the thin air with it. It hit something. There was a splash, and the boat righted itself so suddenly he was almost pitched into the water. Even while it still rocked, he was rowing frantically for the shallows, dragging the boat from the water, and running for the safety of the farmhouse.

  Only at the door did he pause. His reason returned, his heart began gradually to stop stammering its fright. He stood looking at the seamed wood of the porch, trying to evaluate what he had seen and what had actually happened. But what had happened? Forcing himself to go back to the pond, he stood by the boat and looked across the sullen face of the water. It lay undisturbed, except by surface ripples. He looked at the boat A quantity of water lay in the bottom of it. He thought, all that happened was that I nearly capsized, and I let my idiot fears run away with me. Shaking his head, he pulled the boat back to the barn.

  Gregory, as he often did, stayed to eat lunch at the farm, but he saw nothing of the farmer till milking time.

  Joseph Grendon was in his late forties, and a few years older than his wife. He bad a gaunt solemn face and a heavy beard that made him look older than he was. For all his seriousness, he greeted Gregory civilly enough. They stood together in the gathering dusk as the cows swung behind them into their regular stalls. Together they walked into the machine house next door, and Grendon lit the oil burners that started the steam e
ngine into motion that would turn the generator that would supply the vital spark.

  “I smell the future in here,” Gregory said, smiling. By now, he had forgotten the shock of the morning.

  “The future will have to get on without me. I shall be dead by then.” The farmer spoke as he walked, putting each word reliably before the next.

  “That is what you always say. You're wrongthe future is rushing upon us.”

  “You ent far wrong there. Master Gregory, but I won't have no part of it, I reckon. I'm an old man now. Here she come!”

  The last exclamation was directed at a flicker of light in the pilot bulb overhead. They stood there contemplating with satisfaction the wonderful machinery. As steam pressure rose, the great leather belt turned faster and faster, and the flicker in the pilot bulb grew stronger. Although Gregory was used to a home lit by both gas and electricity, he never felt the excitement of it as he did here, out in the wilds, where the nearest incandescent bulb was probably in Norwich, a great part of a day's journey away.

  Now a pale flickering radiance illuminated the room. By contrast, everything outside looked black. Grendon nodded in satisfaction, made some adjustments to the burners, and they went outside.

  Free from the bustle of the steam engine, they could hear the noise the cows were making. At milking time, the animals were usually quiet; something had upset them. The farmer ran quickly into the milking shed, with Gregory on his heels;

  The new light, radiating from a bulb hanging above the stalls, showed the beasts of restless demeanor and rolling eye. Bert Neckland stood as far away from the door as possible, grasping his stick and letting his mouth hang open.

  “What in blazes are you staring at, bor?” Grendon asked.

  Neckland slowly shut his mouth.

  “We had a scare,” he said. “Something come in here.”

  “Did you see what it was?” Gregory asked.

  “No, there weren't nothing to see. It was a ghost, that's what it was. It came right in here and touched the cows. It touched me too. It was a ghost.”