the Dark Light Years by Brian W. Aldiss Page A

whirled towards the non-stop lane that would take them home. But once on the monobus, their silence continued to cling. Neither felt comfortable in the other's lack of speech, fearing unknown thought. Enid spoke first.
    "Well, I'm glad success has come to you at last, Bruce. We must have a party. I'm very proud of you.
    you know!”
    He patted her hand and smiled at her forgivingly, as one might to a child.
    "There won't be time for parties, I'm afraid. This is when the real work begins. I shall have to be round at the zoo every day, advising the research teams. They can't very well do without me, you know.”
    She stared ahead of her. She was not really disappointed; she should have expected the answer she got. And even then, instead of showing anger, she found herself trying 'to be friendly with him, asking one of her silly little searched-for questions.
    "I suppose you are hoping very much that we can learn to talk to these creatures?”
    "The government seems less excited than I had hoped. Of course I know there is this wretched war on.... Eventually there may be points emerging that prove of more importance than the language factor.”
    She recognized a vagueness in his phraseology he used when there was something he was unsure of.
    "What sort of points?”
    He stared into the rushing night.
    "The wounded ETA showed a great resistance to dying. When they dissected it on the Mariestopes, they cut it almost into chunks before it died. These things have a phenomenal resistance to pain. They don't feel pain. They don't ... feel pain! Think of it. It's all in the reports, buried in tables and written up technically - I've no patience with it any longer. But one day someone's going to see the importance of those facts.”
    Again she felt his silence fall like a stone from his lips as he looked past her through the window.
    "You saw this creature being cut up?”
    "Of course I did.”
    She thought about all the things that men did and bore with apparent ease.
    "Can you imagine it?" Ainson said. "Never to feel any pain, physical or mental....”
    They were sinking down to the local traffic level. His melancholy gaze rested on the darkness that concealed their home.
    "What a boon to mankind!" he exclaimed.
    After the Ainsons had gone. Sir Mihaly Pasztor stood where he was, in a vacuity that occasionally merged into thought. He began to pace up and down, watched by the eyes of the two alien beings beyond the glass. Their glance finally slowed him; he came to rest on the balls of his feet, balancing, swaying gently, regarding them with folded arms, and finally addressing them.
    "My dear charges, I understand the problem, and with-out having met you before, I do to a certain limited extent also understand you. Above all I understand that up until now you have only been faced with a limited type of human mind. I know spacemen, my bag-bellied friends, for I was a spaceman myself, and I know how the long dark years attract and mould an inflexible mind. You have been faced with men without the human touch, men without finer perceptions, men without the gift of empathy, men who do not readily excuse and understand because they have no knowledge of the diversity of human habits, men who because they have no insight into themselves are denied insight into others.
    "In short, my dear and dung-stained charges, if you are civilized, then you need to be confronted by a properly civilized man. If you are more than animal, then it should not be too long before we understand each other. After that will be time for words to grow between us.”
    One of the ETA's deretracted his limbs, rose, and came over to the glass. Sir Mihaly Pasztor took it as an omen.
    Going round to the back of the enclosure, he entered a small anteroom to the actual cage. Pressing a button, he activated the part of the floor on which he stood; it moved forward into the cage, carrying before it a low barrier, so that the Director looked rather like a prisoner entering court in