EXCERPT:

Supertoys Last All Summer Long

by Brian Aldiss

In Mrs Swinton’s garden, it was always summer. The lovely almond trees stood about it in perpetual leaf. Monica Swinton plucked a saffron-coloured rose and showed it to David.

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she said.

David looked up at her and grinned without replying. Seizing the flower, he ran with it across the lawn and disappeared behind the kennel where the mowervator crouched, ready to cut or sweep or roll when the moment dictated. She stood alone on her impeccable plastic gravel path.

She had tried to love him.

When she made up her mind to follow the boy, she found him in the courtyard floating the rose in his paddling pool. He stood in the pool engrossed, still wearing his sandals.

‘David, darling, do you have to be so awful? Come in at once and change your shoes and socks.’

He went with her without protest, his dark head bobbing at the level of her waist. At the age of five, he showed no fear of the ultra-sonic dryer in the kitchen. But before his mother could reach for a pair of slippers, he wriggled away and was gone into the silence of the house.

He would probably be looking for Teddy.

Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living-room arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the manic sloth it reserves for children, the insane and wives whose husbands are away improving the world. Almost by reflex, she reached out and changed the wavelength of her windows. The garden faded; in its place, the citycentre rose by her left hand, full of crowding people, blow-boats, and buildings – but she kept the sound down. She remained alone.

An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely. The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly slender, despite the rich food and drink they were putting away. Their wives were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink they too were putting away. An earlier and less sophisticated generation would have regarded them as beautiful people, apart from their eyes. Their eyes were hard and calculating.

Read the review of Supertoys Last all Summer Long here.

Read the author interview here.

BOOKSQUAWK EXCLUSIVE SHORT STORY

The Hospitale Old Crater

by Brian Aldiss

“So we’ve arrived at last,” said Morry Lumley.

Daisy, his sister, laughed as if Morry had made a joke. They ran to splash at the edge of the lake. Their parents looked about with pleasure, checking in at Hotel Samosir, warmly praised by friends in their offices in Hong Kong, where Roger and Dail worked.

Their two rooms upstairs were, as Roger said, ‘bog standard,’ but they went cheerfully to sit on the verandah and gaze at the prospect while sipping large glasses of orange juice. Dail had vodka in her glass; Roger thought she drank too much.

The children could be seen, larking about on the fringes of the lake, Lake Toba.

“So, the true tropics at last,” said Dail, stretching out her elegant legs.

“And not as hot as we might have expected,” her husband responded. He was excited to be with her.

They had flown from Hong Kong to Bangkok, and from Bangkok down to Medan, where a bus brought them to Toba. They stood on the cliffs which fell away sheer, grass-covered to lake and pleasure gardens far below. Roger took photos on his i-pad.

Now having emptied his tall glass, he rose and looked down smiling at his wife.

“Just going to have a walk round. Want to come?”

“Good god, no!”she said. “I’m not going to move till the supper gong sounds. You go, Rog! I’llpretend to watch the kids.” This last sentence she delivered in Danish, her native tongue, her custom when saying something not entirely likely.

Roger strolled on his own. A good few people were about, although he saw no Europeans. He stooped to feel the temperature of the lake water: warm, but cooler than he had expected. Trees were grown in groups, their shadows lengthening with early evening. The place, he thought, was fairly neatly kept. He came to a wooden bridge; lake water flowed quietly beneath it. Crossing it, he could not decide if he now stood on a smaller island. He reflected that there was no sign of destruction, only old familiar nature, serene, all-embracing.

In a clearing stood a three-story house, crumbling weeds growing against its walls as if lending support.

On a balcony attached to the upper floor, two men were lying flat on blankets. From where Roger stood, they appeared to be naked. As he was staring, one of the figures heaved itself on an elbow.

“You from Oz, mate?” he called down.

“I’m a Brit. Are you on holiday?”

The pair laughed. “You could say. We’re drop-outs.”

Roger stood there. “Do you know that all this place – Toba – is the remains of a vast volcanic explosion?”

He listened to their chuckles. “Gut must be a bloody scientist...”

He moved on. But what people didn’t know...amazing! He lingered by a cluster of ferns. The wealth of knowledge... The pleasures even of sorrow...

...To comprehend what had happened here... That 70,000 or so years ago – nothing on a cosmic scale – the volcano in this slice of Sumatra had blown its top! Blown it in what seismologists claimed to be the biggest eruption in the last 25 million years.

And that eruption brought with it a vast lowering of global temperatures. A great majority of life forms – including humanity – had perished under palls of ash. And people didn’t know about that? Or care?

Passing the old house again, he called out, “You sods are living in the bones of a gigantic dead volcano.”

“We call it capitalism,” they yelled in response.

Roger stalked back to his wife and children.

“Suppertime,”she said and rose to kiss him. They summoned their children and went in to dine. Over his poached salmon he began, “But most of humanity-”

“Have another drink, dear,” Dail said. “I’ll have one with you.”

###

 

Read the review of Brian Aldiss’ final science fiction novel ‘Finches of Mars’ here.

Read the author interview here.