by Brian Aldiss
One radical distinction between Forwards and the villages lost in the festering continent of Deadways soon became obvious. Whereas the Greene tribe and others like it were always slowly on the move, Forwards was firmly established, its boundaries fixed and unchanging. It looked the result of organization rather than accident. Complain’s conception of it had always been vague; in his mind it had featured as a place of dread, the more dreadful for being vague. Now he saw it was immensely larger than a village. It was almost a region in its own right.
Its very barriers differed from Quarters’ make-shift affairs. The skirmishing party, as they pushed unceremoniously through the ponics, came first of all to a heavy curtain which, loaded with small bells, rang as they drew it aside. Beyond the curtain was a section of corridor, dirty and scarred but devoid of ponics, terminating in a barricade formed of desks and bunks, behind which Forwards guards stood ready with bows and arrows.
After an amount of hailing and calling, the skirmishing party – which numbered four men and two women – was allowed up to and past this last barricade. Beyond it was another curtain, this time of fine net, through which the hitherto ubiquitous midges, one of the scourges of Deadways, could not get. And beyond that lay Forwards proper.
For Complain, the incredible feature was the disappearance of ponic plants. Inside Quarters, of course, the thickets had been hacked or trampled down, but with indifferent enthusiasm and in the knowledge that the clearance was only temporary; often enough the old root system was allowed to remain covering the deck. And always there had been tokens of them about, from the sour-sweet miltex smell pervading the air to the dried staves used by men and the chitinous seeds played with by children.
Here the ponics had been swept away as if they had never been. The detritus and soil that attended them had been completely removed; even the scoured pattern the roots made on the hard deck had been erased. The lighting, no longer filtered through a welter of greedy foliage, shone out boldly. Everywhere wore such a strange aspect – so hard, bare and, above all, so geometrical – that some while was to elapse before Complain realized fully that these doors, corridors and decks were not an independent kingdom but, in fact, only an extension of their dingier counterparts elsewhere; the external appearance was so novel that it blinded him to its real conformity with the lay-out of Quarters.
The three prisoners were prodded into a small cell. All their equipment was removed and their hands freed. The door was slammed on them.
‘O Consciousness!’ Marapper groaned. ‘Here’s a pretty state for a poor, innocent old priest to be in. Froyd rot their souls for a pack of dirty miltex-suckers!’
‘At least they let you do the death rites for Wantage,’ said Fermour, trying to pick the filth out of his hair.
They looked at him curiously.
‘What else would you expect?’ Marapper asked. ‘The brutes are at least human. But that doesn’t mean to say that they won’t be wearing our intestines round their necks before they eat again.’
‘If only they hadn’t taken my dazer . . .’ Complain said. Not only their dazers, but their packs and all their possessions had been taken. He prowled helplessly round the little room. Like many apartments in Quarters, it was all but featureless. By the door, two broken dials were set into a wall, a bunk was fixed into another wall, a grille in the ceiling provided a slight current of air. Nothing offered itself as a weapon.
The trio had to possess themselves in uneasy patience until the guards came back. For some while, the silence was broken only by an uneasy whine deep in the priest’s intestines. Then all three began to fidget.
Marapper tried to remove some clotted filth from his cloak. Working half-heartedly, he looked up with eagerness when the door was opened and two men appeared in the open doorway; pushing roughly past Fermour, the priest strode over to them.
‘Take me to your Lieutenant and expansion to your egos,’ he said. ‘It is important I see him as soon as possible. I am not a man to be kept waiting.’
‘You will all come with us,’ one of the pair said firmly. ‘We have our orders.’
Wisely, Marapper saw fit to obey at once, although he kept up a flow of indignant protest as they were ushered into the corridor. They were led deeper into Forwards, passing several curious bystanders on their way. Complain noticed these people stared at them angrily; one middle-aged woman called, ‘You curs, you killed my Frank! Now they’ll kill you.’
His senses nicely stimulated by a scent of danger, Complain took in every detail of their route. Here, as throughout Deadways, what Marapper had called the Main Corridor was blocked at each deck, and they followed a circuitous detour round the curving corridors and through the inter-deck doors. In effect, it meant that to go further forward they took, not the straight course a bullet takes to leave a rifle, but the tight spiral traced by the rifling in the barrel.
‘By this method they traversed two decks. Complain saw with mild surprise the notice ‘Deck 22’ stencilled against the inter-deck door; it was a link with all the seemingly unending deck numbers which had punctuated their trek; and it implied, unless Deadways began again on the other side of Forwards, that Forwards itself covered twenty-four decks.
This was too much for Complain to believe. He had to remind himself forcibly how much he was incapable of crediting which had actually been proved to be. But – what lay beyond Deck 1? He could picture only a wilderness of super-ponics, growing out into what Myra, his mother, had called the great stretch of other darkness, where strange lanterns burned. Even the priest’s theory of the Ship, backed as it was by printed evidence, had little power to thrust out that image he had known since childhood. With a certain pleasure, he balanced the two theories against each other; never before in his life had he felt anything but discomfort at the contemplation of intangibles. He was rapidly sloughing the dry husk that limited Greene tribe thinking.
Complain’s interior monologue was interrupted by their guards, who now pushed him with Fermour and the priest into a large compartment, entering themselves and shutting the door. Two other guards were already in the room.
A couple of unusual features distinguished the room from any other Complain had been in. One was a plant bearing bright flowers which stood in a tub, as if for some purpose – though what purpose, the hunter could not guess. The other unusual feature was a girl; she stood regarding them from behind a desk, dressed in a neat grey uniform and with her hands restfully down at her sides. Her hair fell straight and neat about her neck. The hair was black, and her eyes were grey; her face was thin, pale and intense, the exact curve of her cheek down to her mouth holding, Complain felt compulsively, a message he longed to understand. Although she was young and her brow magnificent, the impression she gave was not so much of beauty as of gentleness – until one’s gaze dropped to her jaw. There lay delicate but unmistakeable warning that it might be uncomfortable to know this girl too well.
She surveyed each of the prisoners in turn.
Complain experienced a strange frisson as her eyes engaged his; and something tense in Fermour’s attitude revealed that he, too, felt an attraction to her. That her direct gaze defied a strict Quarters’ taboo only made it the more disturbing.
‘So you’re Gregg’s ruffians,’ she said finally. Now she had seen them, she was obviously inclined to look at them no more; she tilted her neat head up and studied a patch of wall. ‘It is good that we have caught some of you at last. You have caused us much unnecessary irritation. Now you will be handed over to the torturers; we have to extract information from you. Or do you wish to surrender it voluntarily here and now?’
Her voice had been cold and detached, using the tone the proud employ to the criminal. Torture, it was implied, was the natural disinfectant for their sort.
Fermour spoke.
‘We beg you, as you are a kind woman, to spare us from torture!’
‘It is neither my business nor my intention to be kind,’ she replied. ‘As for my sex – that, I think, lies
outside the scope of your concerns. My name is Inspector Vyann; I investigate all captives brought into Forwards, and those who are coy about talking go on the presses. You ruffians in particular deserve nothing better. We need to know how to get to the leader of your band himself.’
Marapper spread his hands wide.
‘You may take it from me we know nothing of this leader,’ he said, ‘nor of the ruffians who serve him. We three are completely independent; our tribe lies many decks away. As I am a humble priest, I would not lie to you.’
‘Humble, are you?’ she asked, thrusting the little chin out. ‘What were you doing so near Forwards? Do you not know our perimeters are dangerous?’
‘We did not realize we were so near Forwards,’ said the priest. ‘The ponics were thick. We have come a long way.’
‘Where exactly have you come from?’
This was the first question of a series that Inspector Vyann thrust at them. Marapper answered them greasily and unhappily; he was not permitted to deviate. Whether she spoke or listened, the girl in grey looked slightly away from them. They might have been three performing dogs hustled before her, so detachedly did she ignore them as people; the two silent figures and the third, Marapper, standing slightly ahead of his companions, gesticulating, protesting, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, were for her mere random elements in a problem awaiting solution.
The direction of her interrogation soon made it obvious that she began by believing them to be members of a marauding gang, and ended by doubting it. The gang, it became apparent, had been carrying out raids on Forwards from a nearby base at a time when other – as yet unspecified – problems pressed.
Vyann’s natural disappointment at finding the trio less exciting than hoped for chilled her manner still further. The thicker grew the ice, the more voluble grew Marapper. His violent imagination, easily stimulated, pictured for him the ease with which this impervious young woman might snap her fingers and launch him on his Long Journey. At last he stepped forward, placing one hand gently on her desk.
‘What you have failed to realize, madam,’ he said impressively, ‘is this: that we are no ordinary captives. When your skirmishers waylaid us, we were on our way to Forwards with important news.’
‘Is that so?’ Her raised eyebrows were a triumph. ‘You were telling me a moment ago you were only a humble priest from an obscure village. These contradictions bore us.’
‘Knowledge!’ Marapper said. ‘Why question where it comes from? I warn you seriously, I am valuable.’
Vyann permitted herself a small, frosty smile.
‘So your lives should be spared because you hold some vital information between you. Is that it, priest?’
‘I said I had the knowledge,’ Marapper pointed out craftily, puffing up his cheeks. ‘If you also deign to spare the breath of my poor, ignorant friends here, I should, of course, be everlastingly delighted.’
‘So?’ For the first time, she sat down behind the desk, a hint of humour lurking round her mouth, softening it. She pointed to Complain.
‘You,’ she said. ‘If you have no knowledge to pour into our ears, what can you offer?’
‘I am a hunter,’ Complain said. ‘My friend Fermour here is a farmer. If we have no knowledge, we can serve you with our strength.’
Vyann folded her quiet hands on the desk, not really bothering to look at him. ‘Your priest has the right idea, I think: intelligence could bribe us, muscle could not. There is plenty of muscle in Forwards already.’
She turned her eyes to Fermour, saying, ‘And you, big fellow, you’ve hardly had a word to say for yourself. What gift do you offer?’
Fermour looked steadily at her before dropping his gaze.
‘My silence only covered my disturbed thoughts, madam,’ he said gently. ‘In our small tribe we had no ladies who rivalled you in any way.’
‘That sort of thing is not acceptable as a bribe, either,’ Vyann said levelly. ‘Well, Priest, I hope your information is interesting. Suppose you tell me what it is?’
It was a small moment of triumph for Marapper. He stuck his hands beneath his tattered cloak and shook his head firmly.
‘I will keep it for someone in authority,’ he said. ‘I regret, madam, I cannot trust you with it.’
She seemed not to be offended. It was a measure, possibly, of her self-assurance that her hands never moved on the desk top.
‘I will have my superior brought here at once,’ she said. One of the guards was sent out; he was away only a short while, returning with a brisk middle-aged man.
The newcomer was instantly impressive. Deep lines ran down his face like water runners down a slope, and this eroded appearance was increased by the inroads of grey into his still yellow hair. His eyes were wide-awake, his mouth autocratic. He relaxed his aggressive expression to smile at Vyann, and conferred quietly with her in one corner, thrusting occasional glances at Marapper as he listened to what she was saying.
‘How about making a dash for it?’ Fermour whispered to Complain, in a choked voice.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Complain whispered back. ‘We’d never get out of this room, never mind past the barrier guards.’
Fermour muttered something inaudible, looking almost as if he might attempt a break on his own. But at that moment the man conferring with Vyann stepped forward and spoke.
‘We have certain tests we wish to carry out on the three of you,’ he said mildly. ‘You will shortly be called back here, Priest. Meanwhile – guards, remove these prisoners to Cell Three, will you?’
The guards were prompt to obey. Despite protests from Fermour, he and Complain and Marapper were hustled out of the room and into another only a few yards down the corridor, where the door was shut on them. Marapper looked embarrassed, realizing that his recent attempt to extricate himself at their expense might have cost him a little goodwill; he began straightway to try to retain his position by cheering them up.
‘Well, well, my children,’ he said, extending his arms to them, ‘the Long Journey has always begun, as the scripture puts it. These people of Forwards are more civilized than we, and will certainly have a horrible fate awaiting us. Let me intone some last rite for you.’
Complain turned away and sat down in a far corner of the room. Fermour did likewise. The priest followed them, squatting on his massive haunches and resting his arms on his knees.
‘Keep away from me, Priest!’ Complain said. ‘Leave me in peace!’
‘Have you no guts, no reverence?’ the priest asked him. His voice became as thick as cool treacle. ‘Do you think the Teaching allows you peace in your last hours? You must be stirred into Consciousness for the final time. Why should you slump here, despairing? What is your wretched, sordid life to care a curse over? Where in your mind is anything so precious that it should not be carelessly extinguished? You are sick, Roy Complain, you need my ministrations.’
‘Just take it I’m not in your parish any more, will you?’ Complain said wearily. ‘I can look after myself.’
The priest made a face and turned to Fermour.
‘You, my friend, what have you to say?’ he asked.
Fermour smiled. He was in control of himself again.
‘I’d just like an hour alone with that luscious Inspector Vyann – then I’d travel happy,’ he said. ‘Can you arrange that for me, Marapper?’
Before Marapper had time to choose a suitably moral answer, the door opened and an ugly face peered in; a hand followed it, beckoning to the priest. Marapper rose, smoothing his clothes self-consciously.
‘I’ll put in a word for you, children,’ he said, and stalked with dignity into the passage behind the guard. A minute later, he was facing the inspector and her superior again. The latter, perched on a corner of the desk, began to speak at once.
‘Expansions to you. You are Henry Marapper, a priest, I believe? My name is Scoyt, Master Scoyt, and I am in charge of alien investigation. Anybody brought into Forwards comes before me and Ins
pector Vyann. If you are what you claim, you will not be harmed – but some strange things emerge from Deadways, and must be guarded against. I understand you came here especially to bring us some information?’
‘I have come a long way, through many decks,’ Marapper said, ‘and do not appreciate my reception now I am here.’
‘Master Scoyt inclined his head.
‘What is this information you have?’ he asked.
‘I can divulge it only to the Captain.’
‘Captain? What Captain? The captain of the guard? There is no other captain.’
This put Marapper in an awkward position, since he did not wish to use the word ‘ship’ before the moment was ripe.
‘Who is your superior?’ he asked.
‘Inspector Vyann and I answer only to the Council of Five,’ Scoyt said, with anger in his tone. ‘It is impossible for you to see the Council until we have assessed the importance of your information. Come, Priest – other matters are on hand! Patience is an old-fashioned virtue I don’t possess. What is this intelligence you set so much store by?’
Marapper hesitated. The moment was definitely not ripe. Scoyt had risen almost as if to go, Vyann looked restless. All the same, he could hedge no more.
‘This world,’ he began impressively, ‘all Forwards and Deadways to the far regions of Sternstairs is one body, the Ship. And the Ship is man-made, and moves in a medium called space. Of this I have proof.’ He paused to take in their expressions. Scoyt’s was one of ambiguity. Marapper continued, explaining the ramifications of his theory with eloquence. He finished by saying, ‘If you will trust me, trust me and give me power, I will set this Ship – for such you may be assured it is – at its destination, and we will all be free of it and its oppression for ever.’
He faltered to a stop. Their faces were full of harsh amusement. They looked at each other and laughed briefly, almost without humour. Marapper rubbed his jowls uneasily.