THE PERFECT CREATURE

from THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM

John Wyndham

SPHERE BOOKS

Published 1973
ISBN 0 7221 9369 6
Copyright(c) The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973

INTRODUCTION

AT a very tender age my latent passion for all forms of fantasy stories, having been sparked by the Brothers Grimm and the more unusual offerings in the children’s comics and later the boy’s adventure papers, was encouraged in the early 1930s by the occasional exciting find on the shelves of the public library with Burroughs and Thorne Smith varying the staple diet of Wells and Verne.

But the decisive factor in establishing that exhilarating ‘sense of wonder’ in my youthful imagination was the discovery about that time of back numbers of American science fiction magazines to be bought quite cheaply in stores like Woolworths. The happy chain of economic circumstances by which American newstand returns, sometimes sadly with the magic cover removed or mutilated, ballasted cargo ships returning to English ports and the colonies, must have been the mainspring of many an enthusiastic hobby devoted to reading, discussing, perhaps collecting and even writing, science fiction - or ‘scientifiction’ as Hugo Gernsback coined the tag in his early Amazing Stories magazine.

Gernsback was a great believer in reader participation; in 1936 I became a teenage member of the Science Fiction League sponsored by his Wonder Stories. Earlier he had run a competition in its forerunner Air Wonder Stories to find a suitable banner slogan, offering the prize of ‘One Hundred Dollars in Gold’ with true yankee braggadacio. Discovering the result some years later in, I think, the September 1930 issue of Wonder Stories seized upon from the bargain-bin of a chain store, was akin to finding a message in a bottle cast adrift by some distant Robinson Crusoe, and I well remember the surge of jingoistic pride (an educational trait well-nurtured in pre-war Britain) in noting that the winner was an Englishman, John Beynon Harris.

I had not the slightest anticipation then that I would later meet, and acknowledge as a good friend and mentor, this contest winner who, as John Wyndham, was to become one of the greatest English story-tellers in the idiom. The fact that he never actually got paid in gold was a disappointment, he once told me, that must have accounted for the element of philosophical dubiety in some of his work. Certainly his winning slogan ‘Future Flying Fiction‘, although too late to save the magazine from foundering on the rock of economic depression (it had already been amalgamated with its stablemate Science Wonder Stories to become just plain, if that is the right word, Wonder Stories), presaged the firm stamp of credibility combined with imaginative flair that characterized JBH’s writings.

John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (the abundance of forenames conveniently supplied his various aliases) emerged in the 1950s as an important contemporary influence on speculative fiction, particularly in the exploration of the theme of realistic global catastrophe, with books such as The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes, and enjoyed a popularity, which continued after his sad death in 1969, comparable to that of his illustrious predecessor as master of the scientific romance, H. G. Wells.

However, he was to serve his writing apprenticeship in those same pulp magazines of the thirties, competing successfully with their native American contributors, and it is the purpose of this present collection to highlight the chronological development of his short stories from those early beginnings to the later urbane and polished style of John Wyndham.

‘The Lost Machine’ was his second published story, appearing in Amazing Stories, and was possibly the prototype of the sentient robot later developed by such writers as Isaac Asimov. He used a variety of plots during this early American period particularly favouring time travel, and the best of these was undoubtedly ‘The Man From Beyond’ in which the poignancy of a man’s realization, caged in a zoo on Venus, that far from being abandoned by his fellow-explorers, he is the victim of a far stranger fate, is remarkably outlined for its time. Some themes had dealt with war, such as ‘The Trojan Beam’, and he had strong views to express on its futility. Soon his own induction into the Army in 1940 produced a period of creative inactivity corresponding to World War II. He had, however, previously established himself in England as a prominent science fiction writer with serials in major periodicals, subsequently reprinted in hard covers, and he even had a detective novel published. He had been well represented too - ‘Perfect Creature’ is an amusing example - in the various magazines stemming from fan activity, despite the vicissitudes of their pre- and immediate post-war publishing insecurity.

But after the war and into the fifties the level of science fiction writing in general had increased considerably, and John rose to the challenge by selling successfully to the American market again. In England his polished style proved popular and a predilection for the paradoxes of time travel as a source of private amusement was perfectly exemplified in ‘Pawley’s Peepholes’, in which the gawping tourists from the future are routed by vulgar tactics. This story was later successfully adapted for radio and broadcast by the B.B.C.

About this time his first post-war novel burst upon an unsuspecting world, and by utilizing a couple of unoriginal ideas with his Gernsback-trained attention to logically based explanatory detail and realistic background, together with his now strongly developed narrative style, ‘The Day of the Triffids’ became one of the classics of modern speculative fiction, surviving even a mediocre movie treatment. It was the forerunner of a series of equally impressive and enjoyable novels including ‘The Chrysalids’ and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ which was successfully filmed as ‘Village of the Damned’. (A sequel ‘Children of the Damned’ was markedly inferior, and John was careful to disclaim any responsibility for the writing.)

I was soon to begin an enjoyable association with John Wyndham that had its origins in the early days of the New Worlds magazine-publishing venture, and was later to result in much kindly and essential assistance enabling me to become a specialist dealer in the genre. This was at the Fantasy Book Centre in Bloomsbury, an area of suitably associated literary activities where John lived for many years, and which provided many pleasurable meetings at a renowned local coffee establishment, Cawardine’s, where we were often joined by such personalities as John Carnell, John Christopher and Arthur C. Clarke.

In between the novels two collections of his now widely published short stories were issued as ‘The Seeds of Time’ and ‘Consider Her Ways’; others are reprinted here for the first time. He was never too grand to refuse material for our own New Worlds and in 1958 wrote a series of four novelettes about the Troon family’s contribution to space exploration - a kind of Forsyte saga of the solar system later collected under the title ‘The Outward Urge’. His fictitious collaborator ‘Lucas Parkes’ was a subtle ploy in the book version to explain Wyndham’s apparent deviation into solid science-based fiction. The last story in this collection ‘The Emptiness of Space’ was written as a kind of postscript to that series, especially for the 100th anniversary issue of New Worlds.

John Wyndham’s last novel was Chocky, published in 1968. It was an expansion of a short story following a theme similar to The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos. It was a theme peculiarly appropriate for him in his advancing maturity. When, with characteristic reticence and modesty, he announced to a few of his friends that he was marrying his beloved Grace and moving to the countryside, we all felt that this was a well-deserved retirement for them both.

But ironically time - always a fascinating subject for speculation by him - was running out for this typical English gentleman. Amiable, erudite, astringently humorous on occasion, he was, in the same way that the gentle Boris Karloff portrayed his film monsters, able to depict the nightmares of humanity with frightening realism, made the more deadly by his masterly precision of detail. To his great gift for story-telling he brought a lively intellect and a fertile imagination.

I am glad to be numbered among the many, many thousands of his readers whose ‘sense of wonder’ has been satisfactorily indulged by a writer whose gift to posterity is the compulsive readability of his stories of which this present volume is an essential part.

— LESLIE FLOOD

THE PERFECT CREATURE (1937)

THE first thing I knew of the Dixon affair was when a deputation came from the village of Membury to ask us if we would investigate the alleged curious goings-on there.

But before that, perhaps, I had better explain the word ‘us’.

I happen to hold a post as Inspector for the S.S.M.A. — in full, the Society for the Suppression of the Maltreatment of Animals — in the district that includes Membury. Now, please don’t assume that I am wobble-minded on the subject of animals. I needed a job. A friend of mine who has influence with the Society got it for me; and I do it, I think, conscientiously. As for the animals themselves, well, as with humans, I like some of them. In that, I differ from my co-Inspector, Alfred Weston; he likes — liked? — them all; on principle, and indiscriminately.

It could be that, at the salaries they pay, the S.S.M.A. has doubts of its personnel — though there is the point that where legal action is to be taken two witnesses are desirable; but, whatever the reason, there is a practice of appointing their inspectors as pairs to each district; one result of which was my daily and close association with Alfred.

Now, one might describe Alfred as the animal-lover par excellence. Between him and all animals there was complete affinity — at least, on Alfred’s side. It wasn’t his fault if the animals didn’t quite understand it; he tried hard enough. The very thought of four feet or feathers seemed to do something to him. He cherished them one and all, and was apt to talk of them, and to them, as if they were his dear, dear friends temporarily embarrassed by a diminished I.Q.

Alfred himself was a well-built man, though not tall, who peered through heavily-rimmed glasses with an earnestness that seldom lightened. The difference between us was that while I was doing a job, he was following a vocation — pursuing it wholeheartedly, and with a powerful imagination to energize him.

It didn’t make him a restful companion. Under the powerful magnifier of Alfred’s imagination the commonplace became lurid. At a run-of-the-mill allegation of horse-thrashing, phrases about fiends, barbarians and brutes in human form would leap into his mind with such vividness that he would be bitterly disappointed when we discovered, as we invariably did, (a) that the thing had been much exaggerated, anyway, and (b) that the perpetrator had either had a drink too many, or briefly lost his temper.

It so happened that we were in the office together on the morning that the Membury deputation arrived. They were a more numerous body than we usually received, and as they filed in I could see Alfred’s eyes begin to widen in anticipation of something really good — or horrific, depending on which way you were looking at it. Even I felt that this ought to produce something a cut above cans tied to cats’ tails, and that kind of thing.

Our premonitions turned out rightly. There was a certain confusion in the telling, but when we had it sorted out, it seemed to amount to this:

Early the previous morning, one Tim Darrell, while engaged in his usual task of taking the milk to the station, had encountered a phenomenon in the village street. The sight had so surprised him that while stamping on his brakes he had let out a yell which brought the whole place to its windows or doors. The men had gaped, and most of the women had set up screaming when they, too, saw the pair of creatures that were standing in the middle of their street.

The best picture of these creatures that we could get out of our visitors suggested that they must have looked more like turtles than anything else — though a very improbable kind of turtle that walked upright upon its hind legs.

The overall height of the apparitions would seem to have been about five foot six. Their bodies were covered with oval carapaces, not only at the back, but in front, too. The heads were about the size of normal human heads, but without hair, and having a horny-looking surface. Their large, bright black eyes were set above a hard, shiny projection, debatably a beak or a nose.

But this description, while unlikely enough, did not cover the most troublesome characteristic — and the one upon which all were agreed despite other variations. This was that from the ridges at the sides, where the back and front carapaces joined, there protruded, some two-thirds of the way up, a pair of human arms and hands!

Well, about that point I suggested what anyone else would: that it was a hoax, a couple of fellows dressed up for a scare.

The deputation was indignant. For one thing, it convincingly said, no one was going to keep up that kind of hoax in the face of gunfire — which was what old Halliday who kept the saddler’s had give them. He had let them have half a dozen rounds out of twelve-bore; it hadn’t worried them a bit, and the pellets had just bounced off.

But when people had got around to emerging cautiously from their doors to take a closer look, they had seemed upset. They had squawked harshly at one another, and then set off down the street at a kind of waddling run. Half the village, feeling braver now, had followed them. The creatures had not seemed to have an idea of where they were going, and had run out over Baker’s Marsh. There they had soon struck one of the soft spots, and finally they had sunk out of sight into it, with a great deal of floundering and squawking.

The village, after talking it over, had decided to come to us rather than to the police. It was well meant, no doubt, but, as I said:

“I really don’t see what you can expect us to do if the creatures have vanished without trace.”

“Moreover,” put in Alfred, never strong on tact, “it sounds to ine that we should have to report that the villagers of Membury simply hounded these unfortunate creatures — whatever they were — to their deaths, and made no attempt to save them.”

They looked somewhat offended at that, but it turned out that they had not finished. The tracks of the creatures had been followed back as far as possible, and the consensus was that they could not have had their source anywhere but in Membury Grange.

“Who lives there?” I asked.

It was a Doctor Dixon, they told me. He had been there these last three or four years.

And that led us on to Bill Parsons’ contribution. He was a little hesitant about making it at first.

“This’ll be confidential like?” he asked.

Everyone for miles around knows that Bill’s chief concern is other people’s rabbits. I reassured him.

“Well, it was this way,” he said. ” ‘Bout three months ago it’d be—”

Pruned of its circumstantial detail, Bill’s story amounted to this: finding himself, so to speak, in the grounds of the Grange one night, he had taken a fancy to investigate the nature of the new wing that Doctor Dixon had caused to be built on soon after he came. There had been considerable local speculation about it, and, seeing a chink of light between the curtains there, Bill had taken his opportunity.

“I’m telling you, there’s things that’s not right there,” he said. “The very first thing I seen, back against the far wall was a line of cages, with great thick bars to ‘em — the way the light hung I couldn’t see what was inside: but why’d anybody be wanting them in his house?”

“And then when I shoved myself up higher to get a better view, there in the middle of the room I saw a horrible sight — a horrible sight it was!” He paused for a dramatic shudder.

“Well, what was it?” I asked, patiently.

“It was — well, it’s kind of hard to tell. Lying on a table, it was, though. Lookin’ more like a white bolster than anything — ‘cept that it was moving a bit. Kind of inching, with a sort of ripple in it — if you understand me.”

I didn’t much. I said:

“Is that all?”

“That it’s not,” Bill told me, approaching his climax with relish. “Most of it didn’t ‘ave no real shape, but there was a part of it as did — a pair of hands, human hands, a-stickin’ out from the sides of it…”

In the end I got rid of the deputation with the assurance we would look into the matter. When I turned back from closing the door behind the last of them I perceived that all was not well with Alfred. His eyes were gleaming widely behind his glasses, and he was trembling.

“Sit down,” I advised him. “You don’t want to go shaking parts of yourself off.”

I could see that there was a dissertation coming: probably something to beat what we had just heard. But, for once, he wanted my opinion first, while manfully contriving to hold his own down for a time. I obliged:

“It has to turn out simpler than it sounds,” I told him. “Either somebody was playing a joke on the village — or there are some very unusual animals which they’ve distorted by talking it over too much.”

“They were unanimous about the carapaces and arms — two structures as thoroughly incompatible as can be,” Alfred said, tire-somely.

I had to grant that. And arms — or, at least, hands — had been the only describable feature of the bolster-like object that Bill had seen at the Grange…

Alfred gave me several other reasons why I was wrong, and then paused meaningly.

“I, too, have heard rumours about Membury Grange,” he told me.

“Such as?” I asked.

“Nothing very definite,” he admitted. “But when one puts them all together … After all, there’s no smoke without—”

“All right, let’s have it,” I invited him.

“I think,” he said, with impressive earnestness, “I think we are on the track of something big here. Very likely something that will at last stir people’s consciences to the iniquities which are practised under the cloak of scientific research. Do you know what I think is happening on our very doorstep?”

“I’ll buy it,” I told him, patiently.

“I think we have to deal with a super-vivisectionist!” he said, wagging a dramatic finger at me.

I frowned. “I don’t get that,” I told him. “A thing is either vivi- or it isn’t. Super-vivi- just doesn’t —”

“Tcha!” said Alfred. At least, it was that kind of noise. “What I mean is that we are up against a man who is outraging nature, abusing God’s creatures, wantonly distorting the forms of animals until they are no longer recognizable, or only in parts, as what they were before he started distorting them,” he announced, involvedly.

At this point I began to get a line on the truly Alfredian theory that was being propounded this time. His imagination had got its teeth well in, and, though later events were to show that it was not biting quite deeply enough, I laughed:

“I see it,” I said, “I’ve read The Island of Doctor Moreau, too. You expect to go up to the Grange and be greeted by a horse walking on its hind legs and discussing the weather; or perhaps you hope a super-dog will open the door to you, and inquire your name?

“A thrilling idea, Alfred. But this is real life, you know. Since there has been a complaint, we must try to investigate it, but I’m afraid you’re going to be dreadfully disappointed, old man, if you’re looking forward to going into a house filled with the sickly fumes of ether and hideous with the cries of tortured animals. Just come off it a bit, Alfred. Come down to earth.”

But Alfred was not to be deflated so easily. His fantasies were an important part of his life, and, while he was a little irritated by my discerning the source of his inspiration, he was not quenched. Instead, he went on turning the thing over in his mind, and adding a few extra touches to it here and there.

“Why turtles?” I heard him mutter. “It only seems to make it more complicated, to choose reptiles.”

He contemplated that for some moments, then he added:

“Arms. Arms and hands! Now where on earth would he get a pair of arms from?”

His eyes grew still larger and more excited as he thought about that.

“Now, now! Keep a hold on it!” I advised him.

All the same, it was an awkward, uneasy land of question …

The following afternoon Alfred and I presented ourselves at the lodge of Membury Grange, and gave our names to the suspicious-looking man who lived there to guard the entrance. He shook his head to indicate that we hadn’t a hope of approaching more closely, but he did pick up the telephone.

I had a somewhat unworthy hope that his discouraging attitude might be confirmed. The thing ought, of course, to be followed up, if only to pacify the villagers, but I could have wished that Alfred had had longer to go off the boil. At present, his agitation and expectation were, if anything, increased. The fancies of Poe and Zola are mild compared with the products of Alfred’s imagination powered by suitable fuel. All night long, it seemed, the most horrid nightmares had galloped through his sleep, and he was now in a vein where such phrases as the ‘wanton torturing of our dumb friends’ by ‘the fiendish wielders of the knife’, and ‘the shuddering cries of a million quivering victims ascending to high heaven’ came tripping off his tongue automatically. It was awkward. If I had not agreed to accompany him, he would certainly have gone alone, in which case he would be likely to come to some kind of harm on account of the generalized accusations of mayhem, mutilation and sadism with which he would undoubtedly open the conversation.

In the end I had persuaded him that his course would be to keep his eyes cunningly open for more evidence while I conducted the interview. Later, if he was not satisfied, he would be able to say his piece. I just had to hope that he would be able to withstand the internal pressure.

The guardian turned back to us from the telephone, wearing a surprised expression.

“He says as he’ll see you!” he told us, as though not quite certain he had heard aright. “You’ll find him in the new wing — that red-brick part, there.”

The new wing, into which the poaching Bill had spied, turned out to be much bigger than I had expected. It covered a ground-area quite as large as that of the original house, but was only one storey high. A door in the end of it opened as we drove up, and a tall, loosely-clad figure with an untidy beard stood waiting for us there.

“Good Lord!” I said, as we approached. “So that was why we got in so easily! I’d no idea you were that Dixon. Who’d have thought it?”

“Come to that,” he retorted, “you seem to be in a surprising occupation for a man of intelligence, yourself.”

I remembered my companion.

“Alfred,” I said, “I’d like to introduce you to Doctor Dixon — once a poor usher who tried to teach me something about biology at school, but later, by popular repute, the inheritor of millions, or thereabouts.”

Alfred looked suspicious. This was obviously wrong: a move towards fraternization with the enemy at the very outset! He nodded ungraciously, and did not offer to shake hands.

“Come in!” Dixon invited.

He showed us into a comfortable study-cum-office which tended to confirm the rumours of his inheritance. I sat down in a magnificent easy-chair.

“You’ll very likely have gathered from your watchman that we’re here in an official way,” I said. “So perhaps it would be better to get. the business over before we celebrate the reunion. It’d be a kindness to relieve the strain on my friend Alfred.”

Doctor Dixon nodded, and cast a speculative glance at Alfred who had no intention of compromising himself by sitting down.

“I’ll give you the report just as we had it,” I told him, and proceeded to do so. When I reached a description of the turtle-like creatures he looked somewhat relieved.

“Oh, so that’s what happened to them,” he said.

“Ah!” cried Alfred, his voice going up into a squeak with excitement. “So you admit it! You admit that you are responsible for those two unhappy creatures!”

Dixon looked at him, wonderingly.

“I was responsible for them — but I didn’t know they were unhappy: how did you?”

Alfred disregarded the question.

“That’s what we want,” he squeaked. “He admits that he—”

“Alfred,” I told him coldly. “Do be quiet, and stop dancing about. Let me get on with it.”

I got on with it for a few more sentences, but Alfred was building up too much pressure to hold. He cut right in:

“Where — where did you get the arms? Just tell me where they came from?” he demanded, with deadly meaning.

“Your friend seems a little over — er, a little dramatic,” remarked Doctor Dixon.

“Look, Alfred,” I said severely, “just let me get finished, will you? You can introduce your note of ghoulery later on.”

When I ended, it was with an excuse that seemed necessary. I said to Dixon: “I’m sorry to intrude on you with all this, but you see how we stand. When supported allegations are laid before us, we have no choice but to investigate. Obviously this is something quite out of the usual run, but I’m sure you’ll be able to clear it up satisfactorily for us. And now, Alfred,” I added, turning to him, “I believe you have a question or two to ask, but do try to remember that our host’s name is Dixon, and not Moreau.”

Alfred leapt, as from a slipped leash.

“What I want to know is the meaning, the reason and the method of these outrages against nature. I demand to be told by what right this man considers himself justified in turning normal creatures into unnatural mockeries of natural forms.”

Doctor Dixon nodded gently.

“A comprehensive inquiry — though not too comprehensibly expressed,” he said. “I deplore the loose, recurrent use of the word ‘nature’ — and would point out that the word ‘unnatural’ is a vulgarism which does not even make sense. Obviously, if a thing has been done at all it was in someone’s nature to do it, and in the nature of the material to accept whatever was done. One can act only within the limits of one’s nature: that is an axiom.”

“A lot of hairsplitting isn’t going to —” began Alfred, but Dixon continued smoothly:

“Nevertheless, I think I understand you to mean that my nature has prompted me to use certain material in a manner which your prejudices do not approve. Would that be right?”

“There may be lots of ways of putting it, but I call it vivisection — vivisection!” said Alfred, relishing the word like a good curse. “You may have a licence. But there have been things going on here that will require a very convincing explanation indeed to stop us taking the matter to the police.’

Doctor Dixon nodded.

“I rather thought you might have some such idea: and I’d prefer you did not. Before long, the whole thing will be announced by me, and become public knowledge. Meanwhile, I want at least two, possibly three, months to get my findings ready for publication. When I have explained, I think you will understand my position better.”

He paused, thoughtfully eyeing Alfred who did not look like a man intending to understand anything. He went on:

“The crux of this is that I have not, as you are suspecting, either grafted, or readjusted, nor in any way distorted living forms. I have built them.”

For a moment, neither of us grasped the significance of that — though Alfred thought he had it.

“Ha! You can quibble,” he said, “but there had to be a basis. You must have had some kind of living animal to start with — and one which you wickedly mutilated to produce these horrors.”

But Dixon shook his head.

“No, I mean what I said. I have built — and then I have induced a kind of life into what I have built.”

We gaped. I said, uncertainly: “Are you really claiming that you can create a living creature?”

“Pooh!” he said. “Of course I can, so can you. Even Alfred here can do that, with the help of a female of the species. What I am telling you is that I can animate the inert because I have found how to induce the — or, at any rate, a — life-force.”

The lengthy pause that followed that was broken at last by Alfred.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, loudly. “It isn’t possible that you, here in this one-eyed village, should have solved the mystery of life. You’re just trying to hoax us because you’re afraid of what we shall do.”

Dixon smiled calmly.

“I said that I had found a life-force. There may be dozens of other kinds for all I know. I can understand that it’s difficult for you to believe; but, after all, why not? Someone was bound to find one of them somewhere sooner or later. What’s more surprising to me is that this one wasn’t discovered before.”

But Alfred was not to be soothed.

“I don’t believe it,” he repeated. “Nor will anybody else unless you produce proofs — if you can.”

“Of course,” agreed Dixon. “Who would take it on trust? Though I’m afraid that when you examine my present specimens you may find the construction a little crude at first. Your friend, Nature, puts in such a lot of unnecessary work that can be simplified out.”

“Of course, in the matter of arms, that seems to worry you so much, if I could have obtained real arms immediately after the death of the owner I might have been able to use them — I’m not sure whether it wouldn’t have been more trouble though. However, such things are not usually handy, and the building of simplified parts is not really difficult — a mixture of engineering, chemistry and common sense. Indeed, it has been quite possible for some time, but without the means of animating them it was scarcely worth doing. One day they may be made finely enough to replace a lost limb, but a very complicated technique will have to be evolved before that can be done.”

“As for your suspicion that my specimens suffer, Mr. Weston, I assure you that they are coddled — they have cost me a great deal of money and work. And, in any case, it would be difficult for you to prosecute me for cruelty to an animal hitherto unheard of, with habits unknown.”

“I am not convinced,” said Alfred, stoutly.

The poor fellow was, I think, too upset by the threat to his theory for the true magnitude of Dixon’s claim to reach him.

“Then, perhaps a demonstration…?” Dixon suggested. “If you will follow me…”

Bill’s peeping exploit had prepared us for the sight of the steel-barred cages in the laboratory, but not for many of the other things we found there — one of them was the smell.

Doctor Dixon apologized as we choked and gasped:

“I forgot to warn you about the preservatives.”

“It’s reassuring to know that that’s all they are,” I said, between coughs.

The room must have been getting on for a hundred feet in length, and about thirty high. Bill had certainly seen precious little through his chink in the curtain, and I stared in amazement at the quantities of apparatus gathered there. There was a rough division into sections: chemistry in one corner, bench and lathes in another, electrical apparatus grouped at one end and so on. In one of several bays stood an operating table, with cases of instruments to hand;

Alfred’s eyes widened at the sight of it, and an expression of triumph began to enliven his face. In another bay there was more the suggestion of a sculptor’s studio, with moulds and casts lying about on tables. Farther on were large presses, and sizeable electric furnaces, but most of the gear other than the simplest conveyed little to me.

“No cyclotron, no electron-microscope; otherwise, a bit of everything,” — I remarked.

“You’re wrong there. There’s the electron — Hullo! Your friend’s off.”

Alfred had kind of homed at the operating-table. He was peering intently all around and under it, presumably in the hope of bloodstains. We walked after him.

“Here’s one of the chief primers of that ghastly imagination of yours,” Dixon said. He opened a drawer, took out an arm and laid it on the operating table. “Take a look at that.”

The thing was a waxy yellow, and without other colouring. In shape, it did have a close resemblance to a human arm, but when I looked closely at the hand, I saw that it was smooth, unmarked by whorls or lines: nor did it have finger-nails.

“Not worth bothering about at this stage,” said Dixon, watching me.

Nor was it a whole arm: it was cut off short between the elbow and the shoulder.

“What’s that?” Alfred inquired, pointing to a protruding metal rod.

“Stainless steel,” Dixon told him. “Much quicker and less expensive than making matrices for pressing bone forms. When I get standardized I’ll probably go to plastic bones: one ought to be able to save weight there.”

Alfred was looking worriedly disappointed again; that arm was convincingly non-vivesectional.

“But why an arm? Why any of this?” he demanded, with a wave that largely included the whole room.

“In the order of askings: an arm — or, rather, a hand —because it is the most useful tool ever evolved, and I certainly could not think of a better. And ‘any of this’ because once I had hit upon the basic secret I took a fancy to build as my proof the perfect creature — or as near that as one’s finite mind can reach.”

“The turtle-like creatures were an early step. They had enough brain to live, and produce reflexes, but not enough for constructive thought. It wasn’t necessary.”

“You mean that your ‘perfect creature’ does have constructive thought?” I asked.

“She has a brain as good as ours, and slightly larger,” he said. “Though, of course, she needs experience — education. Still, as the brain is already fully developed, it learns much more quickly than a child’s would.”

“May we see it — her?” I asked.

He sighed regretfully.

“Everyone always wants to jump straight to the finished product. All right then. But first we will have a little demonstration — I’m afraid your friend is still unconvinced.”

He led across towards the surgical instrument cases and opened a preserving cupboard there. From it he took a shapeless white mass which he laid on the operating table. Then he wheeled it towards the electrical apparatus farther up the room. Beneath the pallid, sagging object I saw a hand protruding.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “Bill’s ‘bolster with hands’!”

“Yes — he wasn’t entirely wrong, though from your account he laid it on a bit. This little fellow is really my chief assistant. He’s got all the essential parts; alimentary, vascular, nervous, respiratory. He can, in fact, live. But it isn’t a very exciting existence for him — he’s a kind of testing motor for trying out newly-made appendages.”

While he busied himself with some electrical connections he added:

“If you, Mr. Weston, would care to examine the specimen in any way, short of harming it, to convince yourself that it is not alive at present, please do.”

Alfred approached the white mass. He peered through his glasses at it closely, and with distaste. He prodded it with a tentative forefinger.

“So the basis is electrical?” I said to Dixon.

He picked up a bottle of some grey concoction and measured a little into a beaker.

“It may be. On the other hand, it may be chemical. You don’t think I am going to let you into all my secrets, do you?”

When he had finished his preparations he said:

“Satisfied, Mr. Weston? I’d rather not be accused later on of having shown you a conjuring trick.”

“It doesn’t seem to be alive,” Alfred admitted, cautiously.

We watched Dixon attach several electrodes to it. Then he carefully chose three spots on its surface and injected at each from a syringe containing a pale-blue liquid. Next, he sprayed the whole form twice from different atomizers. Finally, he closed four or five switches in rapid succession.

“Now,” he said, with a slight smile, “we wait for five minutes — which you may spend, if you like, in deciding which, or how many, of my actions were critical.”

After three minutes the flaccid mass began to pulsate feebly. Gradually the movement increased until gentle, rhythmic undulations were running through it. Presently it half-sagged or rolled to one side, exposing the hand that had been hidden beneath it. I saw the fingers of the hand tense, and try to clutch at the smooth table-top.

I think I cried out. Until it actually happened, I had been unable to believe that it would. Now some part of the meaning of the thing came flooding in on me. I grabbed Dixon’s arm.

“Man!” I said. “If you were to do that to a dead body…!”

But he shook his head.

“No. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried. One is justified in calling this life — I think— But in some way it’s a different kind of life. I don’t at all understand why…”

Different kind or not, I knew that I must be looking at the seed of a revolution, with potentialities beyond imagination …

And all the time that fool Alfred kept on poking around the thing as if it were a sideshow at a circus, and he was out to make sure that no one was putting anything across him with mirrors, or working it with bits of string.

It served him right when he got a couple of hundred volts through his fingers…

“And now,” said Alfred, when he had satisfied himself that at least the grosser forms of deception were ruled out, “now we’d like to see this ‘perfect creature’ you spoke about.”

He still seemed as far as ever from realizing the marvel he had witnessed. He was convinced that an offence of some kind was being committed, and he intended to find the evidence that would assign it to its proper category.

“Very well,” agreed Dixon. “By the way, I call her Una. No name I could think of seemed quite adequate, but she is certainly the first of her kind, so Una she is.”

He led us along the room to the last and largest of the row of cages. Standing a little back from the bars, he called the occupant forward.

I don’t know what I expected to see — nor quite what Alfred was hoping for. But neither of us had breath for comment when we did see what lumbered towards us.

Dixon’s ‘Perfect Creature’ was a more horrible grotes-querie than I had ever imagined in life or dreams.

Picture, if you can, a dark conical carapace of some slightly glossy material. The rounded-off peak of the cone stood well over six feet from the ground: the base was four foot six or more in diameter; and the whole thing supported on three short, cylindrical legs. There were four arms, parodies of human arms, projecting from joints about halfway up. Eyes, set some six inches below the apex, were regarding us steadily from beneath horny lids. For a moment I felt close to hysterics.

Dixon looked at the thing with pride.

“Visitors to see you, Una,” he told it.

The eyes turned to me, and then back to Alfred. One of them blinked, with a click from its lid as it closed. A deep, reverberant voice emerged from no obvious source.

“At last! I’ve been asking you long enough,” it said.

“Good God!” said Alfred. “That appalling thing can talk?”

The steady gaze dwelt upon him.

“That one will do. I like his glass eyes,” rumbled the voice.

“Be quiet, Una. This isn’t what you think,” Dixon interposed. “I must ask you,” he added to us, but looking at Alfred, “to be careful in your comments. Una naturally lacks the ordinary background of experience, but she is aware of her distinction — and of her several physical superiorities. She has a somewhat short temper, and nothing is going to be gained by offending her. It is natural that you should find her appearance a little surprising at first, but I will explain.”

A lecturing note crept into his voice.

“After I had discovered my method of animation, my first inclination was to construct an approximately anthropoid form as a convincing demonstration. On second thoughts, however, I decided against mere imitation. I resolved to proceed functionally and logically, remedying certain features which seemed to me poorly or weakly designed in man and other existing creatures. It also proved necessary later to make a few modifications for technical and constructional reasons. However, in general, Una is the result of my resolve.” He paused, looking fondly at the monstrosity.

“I — er — you did say ‘logically‘!” I inquired.

Alfred paused for some time before making his comment. He went on staring at the creature which still kept its eyes fixed on him. One could almost see him causing what he likes to think of as his better nature to override mere prejudice. He now rose nobly above his earlier, unsympathetic remark.

“I do not consider it proper to confine so large an animal in such restricted quarters,” he announced.

One of the horny eyelids clicked again as it blinked.

“I like him. He means well. He will do,” the great voice rumbled.

Alfred wilted a little. After a long experience of patronizing dumb friends, he found it disconcerting to be confronted by a creature that not only spoke, but patronized him as it did so. He returned its steady stare uneasily.

Dixon, disregarding the interruption, resumed:

“Probably the first thing that will strike you is that Una has no distinct head. That was one of my earliest rearrangements; the normal head is too exposed and vulnerable. The eyes should be carried high, of course, but there is no need whatever for a demi-detached head.

“But in eliminating the head, there was sight to be considered. I therefore gave her three eyes, two of which you can see now, and one which is round the back — though, properly speaking, she has no back. Thus she is easily able to look and focus in any direction without the complicated device of a semi-rotatory head.”

“Her general shape almost ensures that any falling or projected object would glance off the reinforced plastic carapace, but it seemed wise to me to insulate the brain from shock as much as possible by putting it where you might expect the stomach, I was thus able to put the stomach higher and allow for a more convenient disposition of the intestines.”

“How does it eat?” I put in.

“Her mouth is round the other side,” he said shortly. “Now, I have to admit that at first glance the provision of four arms might give an impression of frivolity. However, as I said before, the hand is the perfect tool — it is the right size. So you will see that Una’s upper pair are delicate and finely moulded, while the lower are heavily muscular.”

“Her respiration may interest you, too. I have used a flow principle. She inhales here, exhales there. An improvement, you must admit, on our own rather disgusting system.”

“As regards the general design, she unfortunately turned out to be considerably heavier than I had expected — slightly over one ton, in fact — and to support that I had to modify my original plan somewhat. I redesigned the legs and feet rather after the pattern of the elephant’s so as to spread the weight, but I’m afraid it is not altogether satisfactory; something will have to be done in the later models to reduce the overall weight.”

“The three-legged principle was adopted because it is obvious that the biped must waste quite a lot of muscular energy in merely keeping its balance, and a tripod is not only efficient, but more easily adaptable to uneven surfaces than a four-legged support.”

“As regards the reproductory system—”

“Excuse me interrupting,” I said, “but with a plastic carapace, and stainless steel bones I don’t — er — quite see —”

“A matter of glandular balance: regulation of the personality. Something had to be done there, though I admit that I’m not quite satisfied that I have done it the best way. I suspect that an approach on parthenogenetic lines would have been… However, there it is. And I have promised her a mate. I must say I find it a fascinating speculation…”

“He will do,” interrupted the rumbling voice, while the creature continued to gaze fixedly at Alfred.

“Of course,” Dixon went on to us, a little hurriedly, “Una has never seen herself to know what she looks like. She probably thinks she —”

“I know what I want,” said the deep voice, firmly and loudly, “I want—”

“Yes, yes,” Dixon interposed, also loudly. “I’ll explain to you about that later.”

“But I want—” the voice repeated.

“Will you be quiet!” Dixon shouted fiercely.

The creature gave a slight rumbling protest, but desisted.

Alfred drew himself up with the air of one who after communing seriously with his principles is forced into speech.

“I cannot approve of this,” he announced. “I will concede that this creature may be your own creation — nevertheless, once created it becomes, in my opinion, entitled to the same safeguards as any other dumb — er, as any other creature.”

“I say nothing whatever about your application of your discovery — except to say that it seems to me that you have behaved like an irresponsible child let loose with modelling clay, and that you have produced an unholy — and I use that word advisedly — unholy mess; a monstrosity, a perversion. However, I say nothing about that.”

“What I do say is that in law this creature can be regarded simply as an unfamiliar species of animal. I intend to report that in my professional opinion it is being confined in too small a cage, and clearly without proper opportunities for exercise. I am not able to judge whether it is being adequately nourished, but it is easy to perceive that it has needs that are not being met. Twice already when it has attempted to express them to us you have intimidated it.”

“Alfred,” I put in, “don’t you think that perhaps —” but I was cut short by the creature thrumming like a double bass.

“I think he’s wonderful! The way his glass eyes flash! I want him!” It sighed in a kind of deep vibrato that ran along the floor. The sound certainly was extremely mournful, and Alfred’s one-track mind pounced on it as additional evidence.

“If that is not the plaint of an unhappy creature,” he said, stepping closer to the cage, “then I have never—”

“Look out!” shouted Dixon, jumping forward.

One of the creature’s hands made a darting snatch through the bars. Simultaneously Dixon caught him by the shoulders, and pulled him back. There was a rending of cloth, and three buttons pattered on to the linoleum.

“Phew!” said Dixon.

For the first time, Alfred looked a little alarmed.

“What—?” he began.

A deep, threatening sound from the cage obliterated the rest of it.

“Give him to me! I want him!” rumbled the voice, angrily.

All four arms caught hold of the bars. Two of them rattled the gate violently. The two visible eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Alfred. He began to show signs of reorientating his outlook. His own eyes opened a little more widely behind his glasses.

“Er — it — it doesn’t mean—?” he started, incredulously.

“Gimme!” bellowed Una, stamping from one foot to another, and shaking the building as she did so.

Dixon was regarding his achievement with some concern.

“I wonder — I wonder, could I have overdone the hormones a bit?” he speculated, thoughtfully.

Alfred had begun to get to grips with the idea now. He backed a little farther away from the cage. The move did not have a good effect on Una.

“Gimme!” she cried, like a kind of sepulchral public-address system. “Gimme! Gimme!”

It was an intimidating sound.

“Mightn’t it be better if we—?” I suggested.

“Perhaps, in the circumstances—” Dixon agreed.

“Yes!” said Alfred, quite decisively.

The pitch on which Una operated made it difficult to be certain of the finer shades of feelings; the window-rattling sound that occurred behind us as we moved off might have expressed anger, or anguish, or both. We increased our pace a little.

“Alfred!” called a voice like a disconsolate foghorn. “I want Alfred!”

Alfred cast a backward glance, and stepped out a trifle more smartly.

There was a thump which rattled the bars and shook the building.

I looked round to see Una in the act of retiring to the back of her cage with the obvious intention of making another onslaught. We beat it for the door. Alfred was first through.

A thunderous crash sounded at the other end of the room. As Dixon was closing the door behind us I had a glimpse of Una carrying bars and furnishings before her like a runaway bus.

“I think we shall need some help with her,” Dixon said.

Small sparkles of perspiration were standing on Alfred’s brow.

“You — you don’t think it might be better if we were to—?” he began.

“No,” said Dixon. “She’d see you through the windows.”

“Oh,” said Alfred, unhappily.

Dixon led the way into a large sitting-room, and made for the telephone. He gave urgent messages to the fire-brigade and the police.

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do till they get here,” he said, as he put the receiver down. “The lab wing will probably hold her all right if she isn’t tantalized any more.”

“Tantalized! I like that—!” Alfred started to protest, but Dixon went on:

“Luckily, being where she is, she couldn’t see the door; so the odds are that she can have no idea of the purpose or nature of doors. What’s worrying me most is the damage she’s doing in there. Just listen!”

We did listen for some moments to the muffled sounds of smashing, splintering and rending. Among it there was occasionally a mournful di-syllabic boom which might, or might not, have been the word “Alfred”.

Dixon’s expression became more anguished as the noise continued unabated.

“All my records! All the work of years is in there,” he said, bitterly. “Your Society’s going to have to pay plenty for this, I warn you — but that won’t give me back my records. She was always perfectly docile until your friend excited her — never a moment’s trouble with her.”

Alfred began to protest again, but was interrupted by the sound of something massive being overturned with a thunderous crash, followed by a noise like a waterfall of broken glass.

“Gimme Alfred! I want Alfred!” demanded the stentorian voice.

Alfred half rose, and then sat down agitatedly on the edge of his chair. His eyes flicked nervously hither and thither. He displayed a tendency to bite his finger-nails.

“Ah!” said Dixon, with a suddenness which started both of us. “Ah, that must have been it! I must have calculated the hormone requirement on the overall weight — including the carapace. Of course! What a ridiculous slip to make! Tch-tch! I should’ve done much better to keep to the original parthenogen — Good heavens!”

The crash which caused his exclamation brought us all to our feet, and across to the door.

Una had discovered the way out of the wing, all right, and come through it like a bulldozer. Door, frame and part of the brickwork had come with her. At the moment she was stumbling about amid the resulting mess. Dixon didn’t hesitate.

“Quick! Upstairs — that’ll beat her,” he said.

At the same instant Una spotted us, and let out a boom.. We sprinted across the hall for the staircase. Initial mobility was our advantage; a freight like Una’s takes appreciable time to get under way. I fled up the flight with Dixon just ahead of me and, I imagined, Alfred just behind. However, I was not quite right there. I don’t know whether Alfred had been momentarily transfixed, or had fumbled his take-off, but when I was at the top I looked back to see him still only a few steps up, with Una thundering in pursuit like a rocket-assisted car of Juggernaut.

Alfred kept on coming, though. But so did Una. She may not have been familiar with stairs, nor designed to use them. But she tackled them, for all that. She even got about five or six steps up before they collapsed under her. Alfred, by then more than halfway up, felt them fall away beneath his feet. He gave a shout as he lost his balance. Then, clawing wildly at the air, he fell backwards.

Una put in as neat a four-armed catch as you could hope to see.

“What co-ordination!” Dixon, behind me, murmured admiringly.

“Help!” bleated Alfred. “Help! Help!”

“Aah!” boomed Una, in a kind of deep diapason of satisfaction.

She backed off a little, with a crunching of timbers.

“Keep calm!” Dixon advised Alfred. “Don’t do anything that might startle her.”

Alfred, embraced by three arms, and patted affectionately by the fourth, made no immediate reply.

There was a pause for assessment of the situation.

“Well,” I said, “we ought to do something. Can’t we entice her somehow?”

“It’s difficult to know what will distract the triumphant female in her moment of success,” observed Dixon.

Una set up a sort of — of — well, if you can imagine an elephant contentedly crooning…

“Help!” Alfred bleated again. “She’s — ow!”

“Calm, calm!” repeated Dixon. “There’s probably no real danger. After all, she’s a mammal — mostly, that is. Now if she were a quite different kind like, say, a female spider—”

“I don’t think I’d let her overhear about female spiders just now,” I suggested. “Isn’t there a favourite food, or something, we could tempt her with?”

Una was swaying Alfred back and forth in three arms, and prodding him inquisitively with the forefinger of the fourth. Alfred struggled.

“Damn it. Can’t you do something?” he demanded.

“Oh, Alfred! Alfred!” she reproved him, in a kind of besotted rumble.

“Well,” Dixon said, doubtfully, “perhaps if we had some ice cream…”

There was a sound of brakes, and vehicles pulling-up outside. Dixon ran swiftly along the landing, and I heard him trying to explain the situation through the window to the men outside. Presently he came back, accompanied by a fireman and his officer. When they looked down into the hall their eyes bulged.

“What we have to do is surround her without scaring her,” Dixon was explaining.

“Surround that!” said the officer dubiously. “What in hell is it, anyway?”

“Never mind about that now,” Dixon told him, impatiently. “If we can just get a few ropes on to her from different directions—”

“Help!” shouted Alfred again. He flailed about violently. Una clasped him more closely to her carapace, and chuckled dotingly. A peculiarly ghastly sound, I thought: it shook the firemen, too.

“For crysake—!” one of them began.

“Hurry up,” Dixon told him. “We can drop the first rope over her from here.”

They both went back. The officer started shouting instructions to those below: he seemed to be having some difficulty in making himself clear. However, they both returned shortly with a coil of rope. And that fireman was good. He spun his noose gently, and dropped it as neatly as you like. When he pulled in, it was round the carapace, below the arms so that it could not slip up. He belayed to the newel-post at the top of the flight.

Una was still taken up with Alfred to the exclusion of everything else around her. If a hippopotamus could purr, with kind of maudlin slant to it, I guess that’s just about the sort of noise she’d make.

The front door opened quietly, and the faces of a number of assorted firemen and police appeared, all with their eyes popping and their jaws dropping. A moment later there was another bunch gaping into the hall from the sitting-room door, too. One fireman stepped forward nervously, and began to spin his rope. Unfortunately his cast touched a hanging light, and it fell short.

In that moment Una suddenly became aware of what went on.

“No!” she thundered. “He’s mine! I want him!”

The terrified ropeman hurled himself back through the door on top of his companions, and it shut behind him. Without turning, Una started off in the same direction. Our rope tightened, and we jumped aside. The newel-post was snapped away like a stick, and the rest of the rope went trailing after it. There was a forlorn cry from Alfred, still firmly clasped, but, luckily for him, on the side away from the line of progress. Una took the front door like a cruiser-tank. There was an almighty crash, a shower of wood and plaster and then a screen of dust through which came sounds of consternation, topped by a voice rumbling:

“He’s mine! You shan’t have him! He’s mine!”

By the time we were able to reach the front windows Una was already clear of obstructions. We had an excellent view of her galloping down the drive at some ten miles an hour, towing, without apparent inconvenience, half a dozen or more firemen and police who clung grimly to the trailing rope.

Down at the lodge, the guardian had had the presence of mind to close the gates. He dived for personal cover into the bushes while she was still some yards away. Gates, however, meant nothing to Una; she kept on going. True, she staggered slightly at the impact, but they crumbled and went down before her. Alfred was waving his arms, and kicking out wildly; a faint wail for help floated back to us. The collection of police and firemen was towed into the jumbled ironwork, and tangled there. When Una passed out of sight round the comer there were only two dark figures left clinging heroically to the rope behind her.

There was a sound of engines starting-up below. Dixon called to them to wait. We pelted down the back-stairs, and were able to fling ourselves upon the fire-engine just as it moved off.

There was a pause to shift the obstructing ironwork in the gateway, then we were away down the lane in pursuit.

After a quarter-mile the trail led off down a steep, still narrower lane to one side. We had to abandon the fire-engine, and follow on foot.

At the bottom, there is — was — an old pack-horse bridge across the river. It sufficed, I believe, for several centuries of pack-horses, but nothing like Una at full gallop had entered into its builders’ calculations. By the time we reached it, the central span was missing, and a fireman was helping a dripping policeman carry the limp form of Alfred up the bank.

“Where is she?” Dixon inquired, anxiously.

The fireman looked at him, and then pointed silently to the middle of the river.

“A crane. Send for a crane, at once!” Dixon demanded. But everyone was more interested in emptying the water out of Alfred, and getting to work on him.

The experience has, I’m afraid, permanently altered that air of bonhomie which used to exist between Alfred and all dumb friends. In the forthcoming welter of claims, counterclaims, cross-claims and civil and criminal charges in great variety, I shall be figuring only as a witness. But Alfred, who will, of course, appear in several capacities, says that when his charges of assault, abduction attempted — well, there are several more On the list; when they have been met, he intends to change his profession as he now finds it difficult to look a cow, or indeed, any female animal, in the eye without a bias that tends to impair his judgement.

BOOK INFORMATION

THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM

SPHERE BOOKS LIMITED
30/32 Gray’s Inn Road, London WCIX 8JL
First published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Ltd 1973
Copyright (c) The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973
Anthology copyright (c) Sphere Books Ltd 1973
Introduction copyright (c) Leslie Flood 1973
Bibliography copyright (c) Gerald Bishop 1973

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Lost Machine: Amazing Stories, 1932
The Man from Beyond: Wonder Stories, 1934
Perfect Creature: Tales of Wonder, 1937
The Trojan Beam: Fantasy, 1939
Vengeance by Proxy: Strange Stories, 1940
Adaptation: Astounding Science Fiction, 1949
Pawley’s Peepholes: Science Fantasy, 1951
The Red Stuff: Marvel Science Stories, 1951
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Startling Stories, 1951
Dumb Martian: Galaxy Science Fiction, 1952
Close Behind Him: Fantastic, 1953
The Emptiness of Space: New Worlds, 1960

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Set in Linotype Times
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk.

ISBN 0 7221 9369 6