The Monster Trilogy - Brian Aldiss

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switched off the torch. He remained for a moment where he was.

      Another moment and he forced himself to rise. He placed a hand over his heart as if to still its beating. Then he went to see his friend.

      Clift had dragged himself into a sitting position. Blood oozed from under his shirt.

      ‘You know what it was?’ he gasped.

      ‘I know it was most ancient and most foul. Are you okay, Bernard? It seemed to dissolve into a – well, into a woman. An illusion. The perspective and everything. Terrifying.’

      ‘It was a lamia, a female monster. There’s a literature about it.’

      ‘Fuck the literature. We’ve got to get out of this corridor. Brace yourself, buddy.’

      As he dragged Clift to his feet, the latter gasped with pain. But he stood, clutching his shoulder and managing a grin.

      ‘God knows where we’ve got ourselves, Joe. Maybe I shouldn’t take the name of the Lord in vain …’

      ‘We’ve got ourselves into more than we bargained for,’ Bodenland said. Half-supporting his friend, he started down the corridor, which had now regained normal dimensions.

      Moving steadily, they made it to the cab in the front of the train.

      Bodenland propped Clift in the corridor, and made a sudden rush in, where a man in overalls worked in the greyness.

      He sat on a swing stool, handling controls. He was shadowy, his age impossible to tell. And when Bodenland jumped in on him, he swivelled round to exclaim in astonishment, ‘No, no – you’re the man with the bomb!’

      This stopped Bodenland in his tracks.

      But the driver raised his hands, saying, ‘I’m still afraid – don’t attack me.’ He made no attempt to escape.

      ‘You know who I am?’ Bodenland asked. But even as he spoke, he heard the sound of someone approaching down the corridor. Dreading another monstrous apparition, he snatched the driver’s gun, which the man made no attempt to draw.

      As he did so, Clift looked into the cab.

      ‘Joe, dozens of them. Second line of defence. The gun, quick!’

      He grabbed the gun from Bodenland and at once began firing down the corridor. Bullets from the enemy spanged by. There were cries in the corridor, then silence.

      Bodenland went out to see. Whoever the assailants were, they had disappeared. Two dead lay a few yards away. Clift lifted himself on one elbow.

      Kneeling down by him, Bodenland asked him gently how it was.

      ‘The grave —’ Clift said, then could speak no more. Bodenland caught him as his head fell, and hauled him up into a more comfortable position. Blood welled from the palaeontologist’s chest. He looked up into Bodenland’s face, smiled, and then his face contorted into a rictus of pain. He struggled furiously as if about to get up, and then dropped back, lifeless. Bodenland looked down at him, speechless. Tears burst from his eyes and splattered Clift’s cheeks.

      He dragged his dead friend into the driver’s cabin.

      ‘I’ll get you bastards if it’s the last thing I do,’ he said.

       6

      The little Brazilian-made plane, a vintage Bandierante, winged high above the eroded Utah landscape, and released its passenger from a rear door, like some hypothetical bird of prey launching an embryo into the wind.

      Mina floated away from the plane, arms outstretched, knees bent, riding the invisible steed of air, controlling it with her pubic bone, steering it with the muscles of her thighs. This was her element, here was her power, to soar above the mist-stricken earth.

      No sell-by dates existed up here. It was neutral territory. Even her snug green cover-all she chose to regard as her skin, making her an alien visitor to the planet.

      And if there were aliens on other planets in the galaxy, let them stride their own skies. Let them not discover Earth; let them not, she thought, disclose themselves to the peoples of Earth. It was difficult enough to find meaning to life in a non-religious age; how much more difficult if you knew that there were a myriad other planets choked with living creatures like humans, facing the same day-to-day struggles to survive – to what end?

      The image came back to her, as it often did when she steered her way through the atmosphere by her pubis, of herself as a small straggly girl, oldest daughter of a poor family in Montana, when she had gone out at her mother’s behest to hang freshly washed sheets on a clothes line. The wind blew, the sheets tugged, she struggled. At a sudden freak gust, a still wet sheet curled itself round her thin body and carried her, half-sailing, down the hill. Was that when she had first yearned for an accidental freedom?

      For her, the zing of high altitude could wash away even memories, including more recent ones. The hollowness she felt encroaching on her life could not reach her here. Nor could thoughts of how things were with Joe.

      Now the sheets of the wind were snug about her again. She knew no harm. But Utah was coming closer, tan, intricate, neat. There was no putting off for long the demands of gravity, the human condition.

      As he laid Clift’s body down in the cab, Bodenland felt utterly detached from his own body. The conscious part of him floated, as a goldfish might watch from its bowl the activities in the room to which it was confined, while his body went about setting his dead friend out straight, pretending that comfort was a matter of reverent attention to a corpse. The death, the apparition which had attacked him, not to mention the horrific novelty of the vehicle in which he was trapped, had brought about the detachment. The shock of fear had temporarily disembodied him.

      He straightened in slow motion and turned towards the driver. The driver stood tense against a wall, hands by his side. His riven face, grey and dusty, trained itself watchfully on Bodenland. He made no attempt to attack or escape. Only his eyes were other than passive. Molten zinc, thought Bodenland, a part of his mind reverting to laboratory experiments.

      ‘You know me? You recognize me?’

      ‘No, no.’ The man spoke without moving his head. His jaw hung open after uttering the two syllables, revealing long canines in his upper jaw and a white-coated tongue.

      ‘You said I was the man with the bomb. What did you mean by that?’

      ‘No, nothing. Please …’

      Bodenland saw his right hand come up and grab the man by his throat. When the hand began to shake him, the driver almost rattled. He put his hands up feebly to protect himself. His skin appeared made of some frowsty old material, as if he were a cunningly stitched rag doll.

      ‘Tell me what this train is we’re on. Where are we? Who are you?’

      When he let go of the creature, the driver sank to his knees. Bodenland had done him more damage than he intended.

      ‘The Undead – the Undead, sir. I won’t harm you …’

      ‘You sure won’t.’ He bent over the driver, catching a whiff of his carrion breath as the man panted. ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘I was an airline pilot in life,’ said the driver faintly. ‘You will become like us. You are travelling on the train of the Undead and our Lord will get you sure enough.’

      ‘We’ll see about that. Get up and stop this train.’ He wrenched the man to his feet, thrusting him towards the controls. The driver merely stood wretchedly, head bowed.

      ‘Stop the train. Move, you rat. Where are we? When are we?’

      The driver moved. He pulled open his tunic, ripped his shirt in two with sudden strength and turned to face Bodenland.

      He

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