Grinny Read online

  In the end, the same amazing thing happened as before.

  She seemed to go into a funny state where she was only half with us. She started speaking in ‘Grinnish’ – the very fast twittering sound, much faster than a real person, could talk, all mixed up with ordinary English. Her eyes were not focusing, they were flittering about very slightly. I am going to try and write down what she says in this condition:

  I do not know why they you impolite so very rude inconsiderate mean no harm (Grinnish, for some seconds) perfectly calm such charming children not at all could not possibly guess (Grinnish) look here here (very fast) look at me me me the girl knows nothing everything (Grinnish) it was a mistake oh dear me quite a serious mistake a mistake but none of us is perfect not a vital mistake but a mistake (Grinnish) too late to remedy now knowledge is power look at me LOOK AT ME (Grinnish) …

  These are not her exact words, they could not be. She was gabbling, sometimes very fast. She accelerated until she lapsed into the twittering of Grinnish, then came out of it back into our language.

  The things I have got right, however, are important. The feeling is right, I am sure. She seemed to be practising clichés, set phrases – ‘none of us is perfect’ is obviously a phrase she had picked up and saved for future use in ordinary conversation.

  It is important that she said, ‘Look at me, look at me.’ She must have had at least a suspicion of what we were doing to her with our Eyes Right trick – but she did not know the countermove; she didn’t know how ordinary people would behave (Father, for instance, would just have said, ‘All right, joke over!’).

  There is another possibility, though. Perhaps she never knew that we were playing a trick at all. Perhaps she thought that something was wrong with her own body – that it had slipped in space.

  This could be the answer. I can easily imagine myself, wearing the skin and bones of an alien being, finding things just a little difficult now and then. You have been briefed on every possible thing – your bosses instruct you that you show you are pleased by bending up your mouth so … the word for that is ‘smile’ … that when you sit down, your legs must not straddle apart if you are a lady … that you do not touch people or let them touch you very much – though sometimes a human may come up to you, take hold of this hand, the right hand, and shake it up and down. Or even press his or her food-hole against your face! – a kiss.

  Right. Fine. You learn all these millions of crazy rules – you have a fantastic memory – but you still make mistakes. For instance, you reveal your fantastic memory, which is itself an error. You appear to believe impossibilities. And when the Eyes Right game is played on you, you know something is wrong, but you don’t know what! You think, ‘It could be me, I’ve slipped sideways in my alien skeleton and skin!’ Or you think, ‘This must be one of the things these foreigners sometimes do … I dare not make any comment.’ You could react in any of a dozen ways, all of them wrong.

  I will write down what I think happens to Grinny when we give her the Eyes Right treatment. It is this:

  She feels the same uneasiness, even fear, that humans feel – that a dog can feel. The fear turns to a sort of panic. Then the panic, in Grinny’s case, turns to a hypnotic condition of some sort. She is not only feeling – literally – out of place: she feels out of character, out of mind. Again literally, she does not know where she is.

  And that is why she lapses into Grinnish – which I assume to be her own language.

  And serve the old hag right. It’s only justice. She says,

  ‘You remember me,’ to adult humans, and puts them into some sort of coma. We do an Eyes Right on her, and accidentally discover that we can do much the same thing to her – put her in a coma.

  Serve her right.

  April 18

  Got Grinny in the garden, on her own. We manoeuvred her nearer and nearer the swimming-pool motor to soften her up (fear of electricity) then started the Eyes Right, all three of us. It was faster this time, she tranced v. quickly without much resistance. Strange feeling in open air watching ‘old lady’ gibbering and squeaking then talking polite old-lady English.

  (Am writing this fast because something is going to happen, soon, and I want to leave a record – but everything is in a mess because of Mac’s hand and the big row so must scribble.)

  Beth looking very mean and purse-mouthed, obviously determined to have a go but not knowing how. Grinny babbling. Mac accidentally started Grinny off by trying to get through the trance to her. He said, ‘Tell us about spaceships, or something but no reply so he said, ‘You can tell me, Grinny, it’s Mac, you remember me.’ (!!!)

  This is Grinny’s own trigger phrase and it made a bang all right – she suddenly came right out of her trance, snap! and looked about her for a split second then fastened on Mac and said, ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Then she reached out her hand and took Mac’s hand. He jerked. She seized it. He went white straight away, she must have hurt him. She looked at him with her mouth working but not saying anything then at last she said, ‘It is not polite … It is not polite to … Not polite …’ While she was saying this, I saw Mac’s hand go dead white. The pressure from her horrible little steel claws. He jerked. She let it go for an instant, but then grabbed again and caught his thumb and he let out a yelp. She was still trying to find something to say, she said, ‘Most upset, cannot understand …’ and Mac had tears coming out of his eyes from the pain. I don’t think she knew she was putting on so much pressure. He made a sort of snatch trying to get thumb away but she snatched too and there was a dull click and Mac screamed and went down on his knees.

  Then she did let go, she looked puzzled and uncertain. Beth went tearing in hitting G. with fists and screaming and screaming. Mac still on ground doubled up white as a sheet clutching his hand and saying, ‘Bloody hell, bloody hell.’

  Beth’s yelling heard by Mum, who opened window and shouted for Father. They came out running and everyone was explaining things at the same time. Father made everyone shut up, turned to Grinny for explanation. She said something about the children teasing but Beth tore in again. Father lost temper and hauled her away calling her a brat, etc., etc., if ever any of us behaved like this again he’d chuck us out of house. (Mac ignored – nobody knew his thumb was bust yet.)

  Beth turned on Father and screeched, ‘Why don’t you chuck her out? Why is she still here?’ She turned to Mum and asked the same thing – beseeching is the word, Beth was begging them to get rid of Grinny but of course they had the old block, the hypnosis or whatever it is, they cannot answer such questions, Grinny has got their minds tied up.

  All quiet now, ha ha that’s a laugh, all quietly murderous. Mac has been driven to doctor, then home, thumb bust. Beth with me. Like a caged tigress. Wants to kill Grinny, then parents, then anyone handy. Grinny not giving a damn either way because Father and Mum cannot be reached by us about anything concerning Grinny. No doubt she’s doing crossword and looking sweet.

  After all that twittering I wonder if –

  April 19

  Yesterday’s entry ended ‘I wonder if –’ Then I had to go downstairs to be bawled at by Father, who is pathetically determined to be master in his own house, etc., etc. If only he knew! But it’s not his fault, of course, so I just stood there and let it roll.

  What was I wondering if? I was wondering if, after all the Grinnish twittering of yesterday, there would be some response from Out There, the Wild Blue Yonder. So I rang up poor Mac, who is in agony (I got my thumb yanked right back once and know how it hurts) and asked him – if he couldn’t sleep during the night – to look out of the window now and then. He took the point at once, but said nothing would happen. I said it might, because things were so obviously coming to a climax and Grinny might need advice.

  I set my alarm for two in the morning. I woke up when it rang, set it for three and went to sleep again. I slept through it, though, but luckily woke up at ten to four and set the clock for four-thirty. If I had woken up at t
hree as planned and then set the clock for four I would have missed the whole thing. As it was, I could not have timed it better.

  It was there all right. The sky was cloudy and sometimes you could only see a glow behind cloud. But then the clouds scudded by and I saw it plainly, just the same as before. The same shape, the same lights, the same way of taking up a new position in a sudden, instant-acceleration rush. The same spacecraft as before.

  I got out of bed quietly and quickly. I did not need anyone else, of course. Except that I was very frightened. I crept down the corridor and got to Grinny’s room. When I looked through the keyhole I could see the glow. I started opening the door, turning the handle a millimetre at a time.

  Just when I’d got the handle turned (but I was still outside the door) she woke up. Her lighting system dimmed and I heard the bed creak as she sat up. I could just imagine her doing it – straight up from the hips, as if she was hinged in the middle, like the last time.

  The difference between the last time and this time was that this time I recognized the sound coming from her mouth even though I was nowhere near her. It wasn’t my pulses zizzing and pumping, as I had thought the other time. It was her, Grinny, giving out with some Grinnish. She was twittering to the spacecraft and no doubt it was twittering back to her.

  Then I heard something I had not expected at all – her voice speaking in plain English. An old lady’s voice, a nice, well-bred old lady’s voice, saying something very old ladyish.

  ‘Quite suitable,’ she said. ‘I see little difficulty. The sooner the better.’

  There was a brief pause. I heard some twittering, not Grinny’s. It must have been the reply from the spacecraft, it was not at the same pitch as hers.

  Then Grinny said, in a low calm voice, ‘You may come in now, Timothy.’

  April 19 (continued)

  I am doing this on my typewriter as there is so much to write and typing is faster. I am taking several carbons and will think later on about where to send them, although I don’t suppose it will do the least good.

  Which is just what Grinny thinks. ‘You may come in now, Timothy,’ she said – so I went in. Or tottered in. I could not stop myself shaking. It was not like being frightened, it was more like going to some large and respectable person who you knew was about to tell you in a very correct voice that you were going to die in five weeks precisely, or be expelled from school for some disgusting crime which would be written up in the local papers.

  She switched on the little light, settled back on her pillows and said, ‘You can sit on the edge of my bed if you wish. Are you cold?’

  I said, ‘No.’

  She said, ‘Neither am I. I do not suffer from heat or cold or toothache or any such things, as I think you know. Even if you break my wrist, I feel no pain. And it mends itself almost instantly, which is most convenient.’

  I said, ‘Mac feels pain. You broke his thumb.’

  She said, ‘You sound upset. If you like, you may break a finger of mine. For Mac.’

  She held out her old hand with the fingers spread. ‘Any finger,’ she said.

  I made some sound or other and flinched back from her.

  She said, ‘You are afraid, and quite rightly. It is quite correct that you should be afraid, quite in order. You must not mind, Timothy. You must get used to it, indeed you must. The strangeness of it all … You must accustom yourself to it.’

  She still had her hand stretched out. Then she took hold of one of her fingers with her other hand and gave a sudden twist. The finger she broke just split open. The skin parted and it split open. The finger was twisted and it was all out of line with the other fingers. There were little metal bones inside the split skin and some of them stuck out, glinting.

  I thought I was going to be sick and was floundering about rather. She soon put a stop to that, however. She said, ‘There! You must accustom yourself to it, it is a fact of life, Timothy. I am a new fact of all human life.’

  I was still trying to edge away but she grabbed my wrist with her hand – the one with the broken finger – and pulled me towards her. Her hand was like a steel vice with plastic jaws. Its power was awful and unbelievable. She twisted her hand and my wrist so that the broken finger was right in front of my face and I was staring at it.

  ‘Tell me when you are used to it,’ she said.

  I said, ‘All right, all right, I’m used to it,’ and she let me go. I wish my voice had sounded different.

  ‘Better soon,’ she said, almost coyly, looking at her finger. I could not look.

  ‘Poor Mac,’ she said. ‘That was an accident. You children were very naughty and I found your game most confusing. Looking at me like that … Or rather, not looking at me. But there we are, boys will be boys. That is one of your sayings, is it not? It is, isn’t it? You must speak when you are spoken to.’

  I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Consider my position,’ she went on. ‘Think of the difficulties! Imprisoned in this ridiculous artificial body of mine. Even more ridiculous if it were real … One must not think of oneself, your difficulties too are considerable. I would not like to be a human, Timothy, really I would not.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be you,’ I said. I wanted to sound defiant but it came out wrong. Sullen.

  ‘A new fact of all human life,’ she said. ‘This is what you have to face. Things are going to change, Timothy. Change soon, change a great deal. You must accustom yourself. You are young and therefore adaptable.’

  ‘What about my parents?’

  ‘They will find a part to play when things have changed. But they will not be aware of the change, Timothy, that is the important difference. You will know. They will not. But I think you have guessed that.’

  ‘You got at – hypnotized – them. Why not us?’

  ‘See if you can guess,’ she said. Again, her voice had that horrible flirty ring to it, the tone of voice you heard when respectable old ladies try to wheedle shop assistants. Perhaps she did not mean her voice to sound that way, but it did and it made everything worse.

  Anyhow, she asked me to guess the reason and I replied, ‘I suppose you thought that children were too stupid to do you any harm. To put up a fight.’

  She said, ‘Yes, that was among the reasons, Timothy. Among them. After all, it is very difficult for the young. One hardly expects grown people to listen to the arguments of children, let alone allow children to influence grown-up policies and actions …’

  She left a long questioning pause and I felt I was supposed to say something. I said, ‘Well, what are the other reasons?’

  She replied, ‘I think you have guessed them, for you are quite intelligent – no, very intelligent, far more intelligent than I would have supposed. Very intelligent.’

  I said, ‘Thank you kindly, Ma’am,’ trying to be sarcastic. But of course this was above her head and she took no notice.

  ‘The most important reason,’ she went on, ‘is this. When one tries an experiment, one must have what you people might call a “control” – that is, a thing unaffected by the conditions created by the experiment itself. For instance, Timothy, if I were to enter your classroom at school and say to the teacher, “Carry on as usual, take no notice of me, I am merely a visiting inspector!” the mere fact of my presence would be enough to ensure that the teacher and the pupils could not carry on as usual.’

  ‘So if you hypnotized everyone, adults and children alike, you’d never know how humans really do behave?’ I said. But I was thinking about something else.

  ‘Quite so. We left the children alone. First, because we thought they could do nothing to obstruct us; and second because we had to have free, natural, unaltered actions and responses to observe.’

  ‘Responses to what?’ I said. I was still not really listening. I was thinking hard.

  ‘Oh, to anything, anything at all. Everything. After all, a human being is a human being, whether it is aged six or sixty.’

  ‘So we are all the same, are we?’
I said.

  ‘Oh, certainly not!’ she said. ‘That is one of the many things I have discovered that surprised me. You are very different from each other. Far more different than we are, in the place where I come from.’

  ‘So all your prying and peeking in the swimming pool wasn’t wasted, then.’

  ‘Oh, how very sensitive you are about that!’ she laughed. ‘It interested me greatly, your response to my prying and peeking. I looked up some words in a dictionary and tried to make a rhyme about human sex. “Prudery, nudity, rudery, crudity …”’

  ‘I am glad you find it all so funny,’ I said, trying to sound dignified.

  ‘The facts are not very interesting or amusing,’ she said. ‘But human reactions to facts are always interesting. And sometimes very funny indeed. The thing that most puzzles me about you humans,’ she went on, ‘is the extraordinary contradictions you display. You are the most humorous race we have yet encountered – but the very things about which you make jokes are those that puzzle and distress you. To make your excellent jokes, you must have great insight and knowledge: yet having made the jokes, you remain as ignorant and insightless as ever.’

  ‘There is no such word as “insightless”,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Impercipient?’ she said. ‘That could be the word. It was in the crossword puzzle of February the twelfth. How very difficult those puzzles are for a stranger!’

  ‘But we’re still a simple little lot?’ I continued. ‘No trouble at all to super brains like yours?’ I was still thinking, in the back of my mind, about how to murder her.

  ‘All the trouble in the world!’ she said. ‘I never realized, until I came here, how complex emotions could be! Reason against emotion … any civilization must fight that battle. Your civilization is quite advanced, quite well developed. Yet despite your achievements, your emotions seem to dominate you! You have only two sexes and you make more fuss about them than we do about five. You invent excellent weapons with which to slaughter each other then weep when a puppy dies. Really, Timothy … if only you could look at yourself – at the whole of your race – without emotion, I think you would agree with me that you are quite – quite – oh dear, what is the word –?’