Saliva Tree. Part one
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) THE SALIVA TREE
Brian W. Aldiss
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.