THE RATHER IMPROBABLE HISTORY OF HILLARY KIFFER 

by JOHN CHRISTOPHER 

(writing as William Vine)

Published in the 1953 Avon Science Fiction & Fantasy Reader issue #2

This Is A FANTASTIC story, and not in the best of taste.

Thousands of tourist walked through the caves of Aupergne, oohing and aahing at the crude drawings on the prehistoric stone walls. There were pictures of the buffalo, the mammoth, the early rhinoceros, and a bird-headed, rat-tailed man! The style of the work was artistic, and it amazed everyone that the imaginative, creative spark could have glimmered in so gross a thing as the animalistic caveman.

But Hillary Kifier wasn't surprised. . . 

Before the discovery of the caves at Aupergne, Hillary Kiffer was an artist-chiefly in oils, though he put his hand on occasion to water colors, tempera, wood-cuts, scraper board, crayon, and white chalk-whose reputation did not extend beyond a radius of two miles from Belsize Park tube station. He painted enthusiastically and unprofitably about one and a half transitions behind Picasso. He had reached the distinction of public notice only once; when he was charged, convicted and fined ten shillings for throwing a tomato at a ceremony presided over by Sir Alfred Munnings. In point of fact, he missed Sir Alfred, from a range of five yards.

When a Provencal courting couple, amorously nesting in the ivied roots of an old oak, found themselves precipitated some distance below the earth into what later became known as the Venus Grotto, it was Hillary's great good fortune to be at the time on a walking tour in the district. He was actually staying at the solitary inn in the village to which the couple returned on the evening of their adventure and heard their story at first hand. The next day he joined the party consisting of the more adventurous local lads which went, equipped with ropes and lanterns, to make a fuller exploration. And it was a lantern held in his own hand that illuminated, for the first time in what was subsequently estimated to be between forty and eighty-five thousand years, the Painted Wall, in the Kiffer Gallery.

Opportunity is notorious for the suddenness and transience of its appearances; there are few who take the best advantage of those breathless moments when fate pitches them up to the crest of the wave and lets them choose their course. But Hillary was one of those few. He seized his chance. Within twenty-four hours he had tricked the farmer, under whose land the cavern lay, into parting with his property against a promissory note; within a week his (signed) reports on the fabulous quality of the new cave paintings were being buzzingly discussed in the highest literary and artistic quarters of progressive world society (not to mention a full column by Chapman Pincher in the Daily Express); within a month he was entertaining photographers from Life, Look, See, Shuftee and Picture Post. The Kiffer reputation was thoroughly launched.

And once launched, Hillary kept it well afloat. The main grottos and caverns-five difficult but traversable miles of stalactite and stalagmite and excitingly noisy underground water-were a very neat business proposition, especially since they were just the right distance off the beaten tourists' path. Hilary built a restaurant, and later a hotel, being careful to retain the original oak tree, appropriately labeled, on the edge of one of the tennis courts. Financially he was safe. Artistically, the Kiffer Gallery was a mine whose treasures he tossed to the world warily and at discreet intervals. Five years after the finding he published his monumental work: "The Aupergne Paintings-a Study," 442 pp. 210 plates, imp. 4to, 85/-; soon affectionately known as Kiffer's Aupergne. The seal had been set.

The undeniably fantastic element in this story occurred on the morning Hillary had received, from his clipping agency, a full page neatly scissored out of the Times Literary Supplement. It was the off season and, in point of fact, the caverns were closed pending work on an extension. Hillary, on his own, walked down the new, gently sloping entrance that had been constructed, through the Venus Grotto, and into the Kiffer Gallery. Switching on the discreet fluorescent lighting, he went across and examined, for possibly the hundred thousandth time, the Painted Wall.

He knew it now by heart, but, surrounded by the eerie rumble and swirl of the underground streams, he examined it all again. The buffalo charging, the buffalo sitting, the mammoth and the buffalo, the seeming rhinoceros which had so excited the naturalists and geologists, and the exquisite cameo scene in which the bird-headed, rat-tailed man was apparently leap-frogging over two buffaloes and a mountain. And right at the bottom the strangely distinctive mark that looked like nothing so much as a set of rugby goal-posts. Hillary got down to his knees, to look at it.

Outside the thunder storm had rolled up with incredible swiftness. Almost before the first heavy rain drops fell the great bolt of lightning had arced down towards Aupergne. It leaped for a tree, split it to its roots and, without pause, hurtled yet farther down to its final earthing. Hillary rolled over, pole-axed. He recovered consciousness to a meaningless babble of voices. He was lying on rock, and there was dim light about him. He peered up. A group of what could only charitably be described as men surrounded him; they had brutish faces and were dressed in various and, from the smell, not very carefully-cured skins. Beyond them the scene was frighteningly familiar; possibly the stalagmite on the left was half an inch or an inch shorter, and there was certainly, from the light and the freshness of the air, an opening to the outside not far round the gallery's bend, but it was the Kiffer Gallery all right. Hillary, as has been indicated, had a shrewd-enough brain. The truth was incredible and shocking, but it was the truth. He, Hillary Kiffer, had been precipitated, by some phenomenon, thousands of years backwards through time. He glanced behind him. The Painted Wall was blank.

It is in the famous Chapter Seven of Kiffer's Aupergne that the role and status of the tribal artist is so illuminatingly and exhaustively discussed. As the author conclusively demonstrates, the painter was the magician, and the magician was the king. There could be no doubt at all that the man capable of such potent enchantments must be venerated, indeed worshiped by his savage but enthusiastic fellows.

It was the awareness of this that kept Hillary going, in the face of the dreadful thought that all his comforts and all his reputation were now irrevocably set many tens of thousands of years in the future. It cheered him as he gagged over the highly suspicious and barely half cooked stew into which he had to plunge his fingers with the rest. Without delay he began the search for materials. Fortunately paint was very much in evidence; every male member of the tribe was abundantly decorated with those blue and red pigments whose subtlety had earned them a chapter to themselves in Kiffer's Aupergne. The question of the brush, or brushes, had been worth fifteen pages, too. Hillary smiled wryly as he solved it finally. The brush was an antique shaving brush, which he was in tie habit of carrying around with him for brushing dandruff off his collar. At any rate, he was equipped. As, under the interested gaze of the tribe, he marched back into the cave, his eye caught a nubile cave wench with a face considerably less ape-like than the rest. Given a wash . . . But first to earn the title.

This presented no difficulty at all. After more than five years of study there was not a contour of the famous paintings that Hillary did not know intimately. He dashed them off without hesitation. At frequent intervals he was aware of members of the tribe respectfully watching him from behind. When he went out to join the communal meals the others all stood back until he had had his fill of the most tender morsels in the pot. At night he was given the warmest skins, and soon slept soundly in them, forgetting their odor. Day by day he continued with his task of painting on the wall the paintings he had studied thousands of years later, in the twentieth century. After little more than a week he had finished. One last touch, and the cryptic vignette of bird-headed, rat-tailed man, two buffaloes and mountain was completed. Now would come the accolade. Complete authority-a divinity, if only a minor one. Clearly this life was not going to be so bad as his first fears had depicted it. Lacking some of the luxuries of the twentieth century, perhaps, but the twentieth century had never offered such opportunities for power, either. Why confine things to one small tribe? As king-god, with the superior intelligence of civilized man, he could lead his people to unimaginable conquests. Yes, the future was very bright. And-the impish thought striking him-why not a message to the world he had left? Why not sign what was undoubtedly his greatest masterpiece. He began to scrawl his name-Hillary Kiffer. He had written the initial letter-like a set of rugby goal-posts, when he became aware again of figures behind him. He turned. Deferentially-but insistently the chief, always identifiable by the great flint knife slung on his left side, was beckoning him outwards. The moment, Hillary realized, was at hand. Now would come the ceremony, and the enthronement. The rest of the signature could wait. He walked out nonchalantly. At the cave mouth the particularly attractive girl dropped a garland of flowers over his head. The rest of the tribe were spread out in a crescent. The chief led him to the center of it. The crowd gave a low murmur. The chief bent his knees, preparatory to kneeling before the god Kiffer. Hillary, with debonair detachment, gazed out over their heads towards the distant hills. The chief bent his great, hairy knees still further before him. And then, lunging upwards with his great flint knife, he carefully and swiftly disemboweled the tribal artist.

END