by Brian Aldiss
Get up, you weak fool.
He got himself up. If there was no reason for returning to Quarters, there was equally no reason for sitting here. Possibly what most delayed his return was the foreknowledge of all the practised indifference there: the guarded look away, the smirk at Gwenny’s probable fate, the punishment for her loss. He headed slowly back through the tangle.
Complain whistled before coming into view of the clearing in front of the barricade, was identified, and entered Quarters. During the short period of his absence a startling change had taken place; even in his dull state, he did not fail to notice it.
That clothing was a problem in the Greene tribe the great variety of dress clearly demonstrated. No two people dressed alike, from necessity rather than choice, individuality not being a trait fostered among them. The function of dress in the tribe was less to warm the body than to serve, Janus-faced, as guard of modesty and agent of display; and to be a rough and ready guide to social standing. Only the élite, the Guards, the hunters and people like the valuer, could usually manage something like a uniform. The rest muddled by with a variety of fabrics and skins.
But now the drab and the old in costume were as bright as the newest. The lowliest blockhead of a labourer sported flaring green rags!
‘What the devil’s happening here, Butch?’ Complain asked a passing man.
‘Expansion to your ego, friend. The guards found a cache of dye earlier. Get yourself a soak! There’s going to be a honey of a celebration.’
Further on, a crowd was gathered, chattering excitedly. A series of stoves were ranged along the deck; over them, like so many witches’ cauldrons, boiled the largest utensils available. Yellow, scarlet, pink, mauve, black, navy blue, skyblue, green and copper, the separate liquids boiled, bubbled and steamed, and round them churned the people, dipping one garment here, another there. Through the thick steam their unusual animation sounded shrilly.
This was not the only use to which the dye was being put. Once it had been decreed that the dye was no use to the council, the Guards had thrown the bags out for anyone to have. Many bags had been slit open and their contents thrown against walls or floor. Now the whole village was decorated with round bursts or slashes or fans of bright colour.
Dancing had started. In still wet clothes, trailing rainbows which merged into brown puddles, women and men joined hands and began to whirl about the open spaces. A hunter jumped on to a box, beginning to sing. A woman in a yellow robe leapt up with him, clapping her hands. Another rattled a tambourine. More and more joined in the throng, singing, stamping round the cauldrons, up the deck, turning about, breathlessly but gladly. They were drunk on colour: most of them had hardly known it before.
Now the artificers and some of the Guards, aloof at first, joined in too, unable to resist the excitement in the humid air. The men were pouring in from the fieldrooms, sneaking back from the various barricades, eager for their share of pleasure.
Complain eyed it all dourly, turned on his heel and went to report to the Lieutenancy.
An officer heard his story in silence and curtly ordered him before Lieutenant Greene himself.
Losing a woman could be a serious matter. The Greene tribe comprised some nine hundred souls, of which nearly half were under age and only about one hundred and thirty were women. Mating duels were the commonest form of trouble in Quarters.
He was marched in front of the Lieutenant. Guard-flanked, the old man sat at an ancient desk, eyes carefully guarded under grizzled eyebrows. Without a movement or sign he conveyed displeasure.
‘Expansion to your ego, sir,’ Complain offered humbly.
‘At your expense,’ came the stock response. And then, growled, ‘How did you manage to lose your woman, Hunter Roy Complain?’
Haltingly, he explained how she had been seized at the top of Sternstairs. ‘It may have been the work of Forwards,’ he suggested.
‘Don’t raise that bogey here,’ Zilliac, one of Greene’s attendants, barked. ‘We’ve heard those tales of super-races before, and don’t believe them. The Greene tribe is master of everything this side of Deadways.’
As Complain gave his story, the Lieutenant grew gradually more angry. His limbs began to shake; his eyes filled with tears; his mouth distorted till his chin was glistening with saliva; his nostrils filled with mucus. The desk commenced to rock in unison with his fury. As he rocked, he growled, and under the shaggy white hair his skin turned a pale maroon. Through his fear Complain had to admit it was a brilliant, daunting performance.
Its climax came when the Lieutenant, vibrating like a top with the wrath pouring from him, fell suddenly to the ground and lay still. At once Zilliac and his fellow, Patcht, stood over the body, dazers at the ready, faces twitching with reciprocal anger.
Slowly, very slowly and tremblingly, the Lieutenant climbed back on to his chair, exhausted by the necessary ritual. ‘He’ll kill himself one day, doing that,’ Complain told himself. The thought warmed him a little.
‘Now to decide your punishments under the law,’ the old man said, in a husk of a voice. He glanced round the room in a helpless fashion.
‘Gwenny was not a good woman for the tribe, despite her brilliant father,’ Complain said, moistening his lips. ‘She couldn’t produce any children, sir. We did have one, a girl, who died before weaning. She could not have any more, sir – Marapper the priest said so.’
‘Marapper’s a fool!’ Zilliac exclaimed.
‘Your Gwenny was a well-figured girl,’ Patcht said. ‘Nicely set up. Quite a beddable girl.’
‘You know what the laws say, young man,’ the Lieutenant said. ‘My grandfather formed them when he formed the tribe. They are next to the Teaching in importance in our . . . in our lives. What is all that row outside? Yes, he was a great man, my grandfather. I remember on the day he died he sent for me . . .’
Fear glands were still working copiously in Complain, but in a sudden moment of detachment he saw the four of them, each pursuing an elusive thread in his own being, conscious of the others only as interpretations or manifestations of his own fears. They were isolated, and every man’s hand was against his neighbour.
‘What shall the sentence be?’ Zilliac growled, cutting into the Lieutenant’s reminiscences.
‘Oh, ah, let me see. You are already punished by losing your woman, Complain. There is no other available woman for you at present. What is all that noise outside?’
‘He must be punished or it may be thought you are losing your grip,’ Patcht suggested craftily.
‘Oh, quite, quite; I was going to punish him. Your suggestion was unnecessary, Patcht. Hunter – er, huh, Complain, for the next six sleep-wakes you will suffer six strokes, to be administered by the Guard captain before each sleep, starting now. Good. You can go. And, Zilliac, for hem sake go and see what all that row is outside.’
So Complain found himself outside again. A wall of noise and colour met him. Everyone seemed to be here, dancing senselessly in an orgy of enjoyment. Normally he would have flung himself in too, being as eager as anyone to throw off the oppressive routines of life; but in his present mood he merely slunk round the outside of the crowd, avoiding their eyes.
Nevertheless, he delayed the return to his compartment. (He would be turned out of there now: single men did not have their own rooms.) He loitered sheepishly on the fringes of the merriment, his stomach heavy with expectation of the coming punishment, while the bright dance whirled by. Several groups, divided from the main one in biparous fashion, jigged rapturously to the sound of stringed instruments. The noise was incessant, and in the frenetic movements of the dancers – heads jerking, fingers twitching – an onlooker might have found cause for alarm. But there were few non-participants. The tall, saturnine doctor, Lindsey, was one; Fermour was another, too slow for this whirl; Wantage was another, pressing his maimed face away from the throng; the Public Stroker was another. The latter had his appointments to keep, and at the proper time appeared before Complain with a
guard escort. Roughly, the clothes were stripped from his back and the first instalment of his punishment was administered.
A crowd of eyes usually watched these events. For once there was something better happening: Complain suffered almost privately. Tomorrow he might expect more attention.
Pulling his shirt down over his wounds, he went sickly back to his compartment. He entered, and found Marapper the priest awaiting him.
III
Henry Marapper the priest was a bulky man. He squatted patiently on his haunches, his big belly dangling. The posture was not an unconventional one for him, but his time of calling was. Stiffly, Complain stood before the crouching figure, awaiting greeting or explanation; neither came and he was forced to say something first. Pride stifled everything but a grunt. At this Marapper raised a grubby paw.
‘Expansion to your ego, son.’
‘At your expense, father.’
‘And turmoil in my id,’ capped the priest piously, making the customary genuflection of rage without troubling to rise.
‘I have been stroked, father,’ Complain said heavily, taking a mug of yellowish water from a pitcher; he drank some and used some to smooth down his hair.
‘So I heard, Roy, so I heard. I trust your mind is eased by the degradation?’
‘At considerable cost to my spine, yes.’
He began to haul his shirt over his shoulders, taking his time, flinching a little. The pain, as the fibres of the garment tugged out of the wounds, was almost pleasant. It would be worse next sleep-wake. Finally he flung the bloody garment on to the floor and spat at it. Irritation moved in him to see how indifferently the priest had watched his struggle.
‘Not dancing, Marapper?’ he asked tartly.
‘My duties are with the mind, not the senses,’ the other said piously. ‘Besides, I know better ways to oblivion.’
‘Such as being snatched away into the tangles, I suppose?’
‘It pleases me to hear you taking your own part so sharply, my friend; that is how the Teaching would have it. I feared to find you in the doldrums: but happily it seems my comfort is not needed.’
Complain looked down at the face of the priest, avoiding the bland eyes. It was not a handsome face. Indeed, at this moment it hardly seemed a face at all, but a totem roughly moulded in lard, a monument perhaps to the virtues by which man survived: cunning, greed, self-seeking. Unable to help himself, Complain warmed to the man; here was someone he knew and could consequently deal with.
‘May my neuroses not offend, father,’ he said. ‘You know I have lost my woman, and my life feels considerably down at heel. Whatever I have laid claim to – and that’s little enough – has gone from me, or what remains will be forcibly taken. The guards will come, the guards who have already whipped and will whip me again tomorrow, and turn me out of here to live with the single men and boys. No rewards for my hunting, or comfort for my distress! The laws of this tribe are too harsh, priest – the Teaching itself is cruel cant – the whole stifling world nothing but a seed of suffering. Why should it be so? Why should there not be a chance of happiness? Ah, I will run amok as my brother did before me; I’ll tear through that fool crowd outside and cut the memory of my discontent into every one of them!’
‘Spare me more,’ the priest cut in. ‘I have a large parish to get round; your confessions I will hear, but your rages must be kept to entertain yourself.’ He rose to his feet, stretching, and adjusted the greasy cloak round his shoulders.
‘But what do we get out of life here?’ Complain asked, fighting down an impulse to clamp his hands round that fat neck. ‘Why are we here? What is the object of the world? You’re a priest – tell me straightforwardly.’
Marapper sighed windily, and raised his palms in a gesture of rejection. ‘My children, your ignorance staggers me: what determination it has! “The world”, you say, meaning this petty, uncomfortable tribe. The world is more than that. We – everything: ponics, Deadways, the Forwards people, the whole shoot – are in a sort of container called a Ship, moving from one bit of the world to another. I’ve told you this time and time again, but you won’t grasp it.’
‘That theory again!’ Complain said sullenly. ‘What if the world is called Ship, or Ship the world, it makes no difference to us.’
For some reason, the ship theory, well known although generally disregarded in Quarters, upset and frightened him. He tightened his mouth and said, ‘I wish to sleep now, father. Sleep at least brings comfort. You bring only riddles. Sometimes I see you in my sleep, you know; you are always telling me something I ought to understand, but somehow I never hear a word.’
‘And not only in your dreams,’ said the priest pleasantly, turning away. ‘I had something important to ask you, but it must wait. I shall return tomorrow, and hope to find you less at the mercy of your adrenalin,’ he added, and with that was gone.
For a long while Complain stared at the closed door, not hearing the sounds of revelry outside. Then, wearily, he climbed up on to the empty bed.
Sleep did not come. His mind ran over the endless quarrels he and Gwenny had suffered in this room – the search for a more cruel and crushing remark, the futility of their armistices. It had gone on for so long and now it was finished: Gwenny was sleeping with someone else from now on. Complain felt regret and pleasure mixed.
Suddenly, tracing over the events which led to Gwenny’s abduction, he recalled the ghostly figure that had faded into the ponics at their approach. He sat up in bed, uneasy at something more than the uncanny expertise with which the figure had vanished. Outside his door, all was now quiet. The race of his thoughts must have gone on for longer than he had imagined; the dance was done, the dancers overcome by sleep. Only he with his consciousness pierced the tomb-like veil that hung over the corridors of Quarters. If he opened his door now, he might hear the distant, never-ending rustle of ponic growth.
But nervousness made the thought of opening his door dreadful to him. Complain recalled in a rush the legends of strange beings which were frequently told in Quarters.
There were, firstly, the mysterious peoples of Forwards. Forwards was a distant area; the men there had alien ways and weapons, and powers unknown. They were slowly advancing through the tangle and would eventually wipe out all the small tribes: or so the legends ran. But however formidable they might be, it was acknowledged they were at least human.
The mutants were sub-human. They lived as hermits, or in small bands amid the tangles, driven there from the tribes. They had too many teeth, or too many arms, or too few brains. They could sometimes only hobble or creep or scuttle, owing to a deformity in the joints. They were shy; and because of this a number of weird attributes had been wished on them.
And then there were the Outsiders. The Outsiders were inhuman. Dreams of old men like Eff were troubled perpetually by the Outsiders. They had been created supernaturally out of the hot muck of the tangles. Where nobody penetrated, they had stirred into being. They had no hearts nor lungs, but externally resembled other men, so that they could live undetected among mortals, gathering power, and syphoning off the powers of men, like vampires drawing blood. Periodically among the tribes witch-hunts were held; but the suspects, when carved up for examination, always had hearts and lungs. The Outsiders invariably escaped detection – but everyone knew they were there: the very fact that witch-hunts took place proved it.
They might be gathering outside the door now, as menacingly as that silent figure had faded into the ponics.
This was the simple mythology of the Greene tribe, and it did not vary radically from the hierarchy of hobgoblins sustained by the other tribes moving slowly through that region known as Deadways. Part of it, yet entirely a separate species, were the Giants. The Forwarders, the mutants and the Outsiders were all known to exist; occasionally a mutant would be dragged in living from the tangles and made to dance before the people until, tiring of him, they despatched him on the Long Journey; and many warriors would swear they had fought solit
ary duels with Forwarders and Outsiders; but there was in these three orders of beings an elusive quality. During wakes, in company, it was easy to discount them.
The Giants could not be discounted. They were real. Once everything had belonged to them, the world had been theirs, some even claimed that men were descended from them. Their trophies lay everywhere and their greatness was plain. If ever they returned, there would be no resisting.
Dimly, behind all these phantasmal figures, lived another: less a figure than a symbol. His name was God and he was nothing to be scared of: but nobody ever spoke his name any more, and it was a curious thing to wonder how it was still handed on from generation to generation. It had some undefined connection with the phrase ‘for hem sake’, which sounded emphatic without meaning anything precise. God had finished as a mild swear word.
What Complain had glimpsed that wake in the ponics was altogether more alarming than that.
In the midst of his anxiety, Complain recalled something else: the sound of crying he and Gwenny had heard. The two separate facts slipped smoothly together. The man – the approaching tribe. The man had not been an Outsider, or anything so mysterious. He had merely been a flesh and blood hunter from the other tribe. As simple, as obvious as that . . .
Complain lay back, relaxing. His stupidity had been gently nuzzled out of the way by a little deduction. Although slightly appalled to think how the obvious had eluded him, he was nevertheless proud to consider this new lucidity. He never ratiocinated enough. Everything he did was too automatic, governed by the local laws or the universal Teaching, or his own private moods; this should not be from now on. From now on, he would be more like – well, Marapper, for instance, valuing things – but immaterial things, as Roffrey valued the material ones.
Experimentally, he cast round for other facts to match up. Perhaps if you could collect enough facts, even the ship theory might be turned into sense.