Neanderthal Planet by Brian Aldiss

Author:Brian Aldiss [Aldiss, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When he roused, it was to find himself in Menderstone's living room, sprawled on a bunk. Alice sat by him, turning toward him as he stirred. Menderstone was not in the room.

"My God ..." Anderson groaned. His brain felt curiously lucid, as if a fever had just left him.

"It's time you woke up. I'll get you some soup if you can manage it," Alice said.

"Wait, Alice ... Alice...." His lips trembled as he formed the words. "I'm myself again. What came over me? Yesterday—I don't have a sister called Kay. I don't have a sister at all! I was an only child!"

She was not surprised. He sat up, glaring at her.

"I guessed as much, said so to Stanley. When you brought your supply kit in from the vehicle there was nothing female in it."

"My mind. I was so sure—I could have pictured her, described her—She was actual! And yet if anyone ... if you'd challenged me direct, I believe I’d have known it was an... an illusion."

His sense of loss was forced aside as another realization crowded in on him.

He sank down confusedly, closing his eyes, muttering. "Aigh murg eg neggy oggy Kay bat doo.... That's what they told me on the hillside: ‘You have no sister called Kay.' That's what it meant.... Alice, it's so strange...."

His hand sought hers and found it. It was ice cold.

"Your initial is K, Keith," she said, pale at the lips. "You were out there seeking yourself."

Her face looking down at him was seared and ugly; yet a sort of gentle patience in it dissolved the ugliness.

"I’m…I’m in some way mad," he whispered.

“Of course you're mad!" Menderstone said as he burst open the door. "Let go of his hand, Alice—this is our beloved home, not the cheap seats in the feelies on Earth. Anderson, if you aren't insane, why were you rolling about on the floor, foaming at the mouth and firing your damned gun, at six o'clock this morning?”

Anderson sat up.

“You saw me entangled in that jinxed railroad when you found me, Menderstone! Another minute and it would have squeezed the life out of me."

Menderstone looked genuinely puzzled. It was the first time Anderson had seen him without the armor of his self-assurance.

“The model railroad?" he said. "It was undisturbed. You hadn’t touched it."

“It touched me," Anderson said chokingly. "It... it attacked me, wrapped itself round me like an octopus. You must have peeled it off me before getting me through here."

“I see,” Menderstone said, his face grim.

He nodded slowly, sitting down absentmindedly, and then nodding again to Alice.

“You see what this means, woman? Anderson's N-factor is rising to domination. This young man is not on our side, as I suspected from the first. He's no Crow. Anderson, your time's up here—sorry! From no on, you’re one of Arlblaster's men. You'll never get back to Earth.”

“On the contrary, I'm on my way back now."

Menderstone shook his head.

“You don't know your own mind. I mean the words literally. You're doomed to stay here, playing out the miserable life of an Ape! Earth has lost another of her estimable nonentities.

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